Choking isn't a brilliant concept to be under in sports. It's a tag that will seemingly not go away. A person/team can try and try and try but with no success. Some might believe it's a once-off and in most cases, it can be. However, in cases such as the South African cricket team, it's a recurring theme.
It's important to define what choking is in sports. It refers to when athletes fail to meet their performance goals, usually during high-pressure situations. Moreover, choking is a product of increased anxiety from the athlete during a pressure situations (Trine University, 2022, cited, Mesagno & Beckman, 2017).
When you are confronted by an external environmental setting, we tend to freeze. These aspects can vary from person to person. When this happens, different physiological reactions take place. Your body releases a cocktail of stress-related hormones like cortisol and adrenaline. These can elevate your breathing and heart rate, dilate your pupils and even cause you to sweat (Meister & Lavanchy, 2022).
When under threat, your working memory becomes impaired, meaning you have trouble making sense of and acting on, new information. You become more prone to recalling and reliving negative emotional experiences and consciously overthink behaviours that should be second nature (Meister & Lavanchy, 2022).
In most cases, athletes experience physical changes too. This can include: tension, increased heart rate and rapid breathing. Athletes also report mental changes, such as anxiety, apprehension, and confusion. Athletes often change their strategy when choking and often perform more tentatively (Cohn, 2012).
Most athletes and coaches would agree that choking happens when you are firmly in command of your performance or the competition and you lose because of a change in your mental state, which learns to a mental meltdown of sorts. You feel pressure or suddenly lose confidence, such as when Rory McIlroy lost a big lead and shot a 43 on the back nine during the final round of the 2011 Masters tournament. Athletes who choke will lose a big lead because they are fearful of not finishing off the game or they perform tentatively or defensively and lose trust in their skills (Cohn, 2012).
A few chokers include:
- Jordan Spieth stood on the 12th tee at Augusta in 2016, in the midst of the most impressive run in Masters history and just seven holes from a second straight green jacket. For the second year in a row, he’d led the Masters wire to wire. He was standing on the edge of Tiger Woods territory … and then it all went horribly wrong. Spieth put his tee shot into Rae’s Creek, then dunked another. His fifth shot, after penalties, flew over the green. He finally tapped in for a quadruple-bogey 7 but the damage was done. He’d led by five strokes at the turn and now he’d thrown that second green jacket into the creek. He’s played in 15 majors since then, and he’s recorded only one win and three top-5 finishes — fewer than the total he’d amassed in 2015 alone. Rae’s Creek may not have destroyed Spieth’s career, but it sure threw up a huge roadblock.
- The United States men’s national team flew to Trinidad on 7 October 2017, nearing the end of it's worst World Cup qualification cycle of the 21st century. Despite the disintegration in Costa Rica, despite losing a final-round home qualifier to Mexico for the first time ever, despite anemic displays in Panama and Honduras, the Yanks seemed as sure a bet for Russia 2018 as could be.
There were 27 scenarios entering the final night of qualifying, and only one of them would eliminate the U.S. The Americans, who’d just smashed Panama 4-0, had to fall to lowly Trinidad and Tobago. Honduras had to win in Mexico. Panama had to topple Costa Rica. With T&T, a country of 1.3 million, having lost eight of nine, mathematical models had the USMNT’s qualification odds around 94%.
When Trinidad, devoid of incentive, rolled out a B-team, those odds likely rose. Then, in a mostly empty stadium, on a hard-to-find channel, a slow-motion train wreck transpired before hundreds of thousands of eyes. Americans in attendance liken it to living the Twilight Zone. They collapsed. Cried, inconsolably. The U.S. lost and for the first time since the 1980's, since a majority of the country didn’t even know what soccer was, failed to qualify for a World Cup.
- The Golden State Warriors blew a 3-1 lead in the 2016 Finals. No sporting collapse has ever become an unrelenting meme quite the way Golden State’s did that summer. It showed up on College Gameday signs and at LeBron’s Halloween party. The three-straight losses themselves weren’t that improbable but the lore surrounding them makes this the second-biggest choke job of the decade.
It also changed the NBA. Those Warriors, at the time, were widely considered the best NBA team ever. Yet nobody will remember them as such. Nobody will remember the 73 regular-season wins. Everybody will remember their memeable downfall. Their backwards legacy takes Ringz Culture to a new extreme. And we wonder why nobody cares about the regular season anymore.
- However, the most prominant example for me is the Proteas. Ever since the 1992 Cricket World Cup, South Africa have never gone past a semi-final. Things seemed to have changed in the recently concluded T20 World Cup. However, the chokers tag still hangs around the team. For the first time ever, they reached a final and were on the cusp of winning the tournament. They needed 26 runs from 24 balls (4 overs) at a run rate of 6.5. However, the chase fell apart like a house of cards with the dismissal of Heinrich Klaasen. The end result was India winning by 7 runs.
There are ways to stop choking. In the world of sports, star athletes such as Serena Williams, Wayne Rooney and Michael Jordan are all strong believers in visualisation. Visualising previous successes at crucial moments has multiple benefits: It prepares athletes for various scenarios and allows them to manage expectations and emotions more effectively. There is also a significant body of scientific evidence showing the power of visualisation to enhance strength, accuracy and endurance as well as reducing anxiety and increasing sense of control in emergency situations (Meister & Lavanchy, 2022).
A pre-performance routine can help you clear your mind, get into the moment and set that well-honed skill to autopilot. At work, you might develop a short ritual, such as breathing exercises, repeating a phrase or mantra, listening to a particular song, sipping a favourite tea, or doing a few physical stretches in your office that can get you in the right mindset to tackle those first moments before autopilot can kick in (Meister & Lavanchy, 2022).
Most athletes know that overthinking in the moment or paralysis by analysis, can make them doubt themselves or focus too much on every aspect of a movement (e.g., the position of your leg and foot when kicking a ball) instead of letting it go (outside of conscious awareness), triggering a choke. To avoid this, some athletes opt for "self-distraction" in the minutes or hours prior to a race or a game. Listening to music, reading or doing something with your hands to stay out of your head are ways to escape from the surrounding elements and thoughts that could add pressure (Meister & Lavanchy, 2022).
It’s important to put your performance into perspective, so the anticipated results don’t overwhelm your ability to perform (or your enjoyment). This involves, for example, disconnecting your identity (i.e., who you are as a person) from the results. That is, a loss doesn’t mean that you are a loser and a win doesn’t mean that you are a winner (Meister & Lavanchy, 2022).
Choking on a constant basis can be horrible to have and carry. It's something that will hang over your shoulder that will never go away. That monkey will get heavier and heavier. However, there are ways to get rid of the label. It's a big burden to get rid of.
If I may use a Homer Simpson quote that every choker might say: D'Oh!
Reference List
Cohn, P. (2012). What is Choking in Sports? [online]. Available from: https://www.performanceanxietysports.com/what-is-choking-in-sports/ (Accessed: 30 June 2024).
Lavanchy, M. & Meister, A. (2022). The science of choking under pressure. [online]. Available from: https://hbr.org/2022/04/the-science-of-choking-under-pressure (Accessed: 30 June 2024).
Trine University. (2022). Choking in sports. [online]. Available from: https://www.trine.edu/academics/centers/center-for-sports-studies/blog/2022/choking_in_sports.aspx (Accessed: 30 June 2024).