Understanding Pressure

Over a month after Superbowl LII, arguably the largest sporting event each year, each of the players, coaches and support staff of the competing teams around are under tremendous pressure to perform well and succeed each time by the stakeholders, owners and fans of each team.

If we take any team in the past 52 years of the Superbowl being a thing, one could probably see the effects of this immense amount of pressure before, during and after the game. However, the most prominent example of this can be related to the Atlanta Falcon’s performance against the New England Patriots in Superbowl LI, just last year! If you don’t know, the Falcons were winning by 25 points - meaning New England had to score at least 3 touchdowns with at least two, 2-point conversions without Atlanta scoring during that period. This is no easy feat for any team in any game, even harder that this difference in score was in the 3rd quarter, so they didn’t even have that long left and were being dominated the whole game.

Low and behold, New England managed to pull this off, bringing the game to overtime in the final seconds. Which they promptly scored on their first overtime drive to win the whole thing. Patriot fans were crying with joys, falcon fans were crying from sadness and disappointment. Being an Atlanta fan myself, I couldn’t even describe my disappointment that they were so close to being crowned the best team in the NFL, but just fell slightly short.

What he caused this implosion on Atlanta’s side? Many have put it down to bad play calling or getting cold during the extended halftime [1], which could both be true, however, there is the element of the pressure affecting them and causing complacency with the score line, or even a pressure-related skill decline (some call choking).

What about pressure causes these skill declines? There are a number of theories surrounding this topic. First of all, there are self-focusing theories [2], which essentially mean that under pressure, athletes use their cognitive resources outside of where they would normally distribute these and distribute them more internally. For example, a quarterback that has thrown the same type of throw hundreds, thousands plus times so he no longer thinks about this because it is so engrained in his muscle memory, but suddenly add pressure and they are now thinking about how their feet should be, how their hips should turn and the positioning of his arm. By now thinking consciously on all these skills, he is ultimately declining the whole process, which is ironic because that is the opposite of the intention.

Another theory is that of distraction [3] which argues that once there is a threat (whatever has created the pressure) an individual’s attention then shifts away from the usual areas and focusses towards the threat. In the example of American Football, a quarterback could then shift their attention away from the receivers he wants to throw to and focus more on a linebacker that is blitzing in to tackle him.

These are two prevailing theories that cover the attention of the individual and how their cognitive resources affect athletic performance with the influence of pressure, but there are numerous other theories regarding choking, such as the processing efficiency theory (3). This theory states that worry, stress, anxiety and/or pressure has two main effects, the first being that these reduce the abilities of the working memory and secondly that there is an increase of effort needed to carry out tasks. What this does then, is create a need for additional effort to perform at a usual ability, which doesn’t necessarily create a decline in ability, but rather in efficiency. If one can use additional effort to boost their performance, they can overcome the pressure effects, but if not, then the decline in ability occurs.

[1] – John Breech • (2017, February 24). Falcons player says Lady Gaga halftime show contributed to Super Bowl meltdown. Retrieved March 09, 2018, from https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/falcons-player-says-lady-gaga-halftime-show-contributed-to-super-bowl-meltdown/

[2] - Eysenck, M. W., Derakshan, N., Santos, R., & Calvo, M. G. (2007). Anxiety and cognitive performance: attentional control theory. Emotion, 7(2), 336.

[3] - Eysenck, M. W., & Calvo, M. G. (1992). Anxiety and performance: The processing efficiency theory. Cognition & Emotion, 6(6), 409-434.