Introduction It is 4th down and 15 yard to go with 3 seconds left in the Super Bowl, the red team comes out of the huddle hoping to be victorious. The quarterback looks at the clock and then at his receivers as the pressure is eating him to win the game for his team. He bends down and hikes the football, drops back and sees his receiver in the end zone and launches the ball. The ball has been intercepted! The quarterback choked in crucial game. How did his anxiety impact his performance? In recent years, many sports enthusiast have experience heartbreak by their favorite sports teams or figures. Just recently, as the NBA season has concluded, many Golden State Warriors fans faced heartbreak after the team blew a three to one game series lead
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Beilock and Gray implied that examples of choking have a distinct beginning and end allowing coaches to distinguish when an athlete chokes and when they finish. When an athlete chokes, the athlete’s performance will decline below their expect level of play and then return to the level they are expected to play at. At any given time, when athlete’s choke, they tend to experience many different physical and psychological symptoms. Some physical symptoms include: tightness, tiredness, heaviness, tension, unsteadiness, shakiness and weakness. Some psychological symptoms include: scared, panic, rushed, unsure, overload, worry and upset. According to research, two main explanations have been developed to understand why athletes do poorly under pressure. The two theories are known as the self-focus or explicit monitoring hypothesis and the distraction …show more content…
As pressure to perform increases, athletes try even harder to control their movements that make-up their skill. When athletes attempt to consciously monitor the movements, the automated processes are disrupted causing their performance to suffer” (Nicholls, Jones 69). The second theory, the distraction hypothesis, which was proposed by Nideffer in 1992. “Nideffer suggest that anxiety increases in high pressurized situations, athlete’s attention shifts from task-relevant (ie. How to execute the next play) to task-irrelevant thoughts (ie. Worrying about the next five games on the schedule)” (Nicholls, Jones 70). Therefore, anxiety acts as a distraction to the athlete, reducing the working memory and the task-focused attention. Hardy et al. in 2201 and Mullen et all in 2005 added to the distraction hypothesis theory by arguing that increased anxiety and task-irrelevant thoughts do not result in automatic choking. Instead, choking is caused when athletes simultaneously compete with the
Beilock and Gray implied that examples of choking have a distinct beginning and end allowing coaches to distinguish when an athlete chokes and when they finish. When an athlete chokes, the athlete’s performance will decline below their expect level of play and then return to the level they are expected to play at. At any given time, when athlete’s choke, they tend to experience many different physical and psychological symptoms. Some physical symptoms include: tightness, tiredness, heaviness, tension, unsteadiness, shakiness and weakness. Some psychological symptoms include: scared, panic, rushed, unsure, overload, worry and upset. According to research, two main explanations have been developed to understand why athletes do poorly under pressure. The two theories are known as the self-focus or explicit monitoring hypothesis and the distraction …show more content…
As pressure to perform increases, athletes try even harder to control their movements that make-up their skill. When athletes attempt to consciously monitor the movements, the automated processes are disrupted causing their performance to suffer” (Nicholls, Jones 69). The second theory, the distraction hypothesis, which was proposed by Nideffer in 1992. “Nideffer suggest that anxiety increases in high pressurized situations, athlete’s attention shifts from task-relevant (ie. How to execute the next play) to task-irrelevant thoughts (ie. Worrying about the next five games on the schedule)” (Nicholls, Jones 70). Therefore, anxiety acts as a distraction to the athlete, reducing the working memory and the task-focused attention. Hardy et al. in 2201 and Mullen et all in 2005 added to the distraction hypothesis theory by arguing that increased anxiety and task-irrelevant thoughts do not result in automatic choking. Instead, choking is caused when athletes simultaneously compete with the