Perform Under Pressure: Change the Way You Feel, Think and Act Under Pressure

Product Information

The best golfers make greater use of positive self-talk, goal-setting and relaxation skills, reporting less worry and less negative thinking. Personality characteristics such as hardiness and even narcissism can further insulate the best athletes from the ravages of anxiety. Ariely D, Gneezy U, Loewenstein G, Mazar N (2009) Large stakes and big mistakes. Rev Econ Stud 76:451–469

Dr Hearns’s work can be compared to Matthew Syed’s Bounce, an insight into how those in Sports and the Arts achieve greatness. However, the unique selling point for Peak Performance is that it is perhaps a more realistic guide to how individuals or teams can achieve consistent high performance. Within the Leadership genre the book sits comfortably next to Chris Fussell’s One Mission: How leaders build a team of teams, which is aimed at mid-level/strategic leaders. Elite athletes are like the rest of us: they get anxious and it hampers their performance. In the last 30 seconds of tight basketball games, WNBA and NBA players are 5.8% and 3.1% respectively less likely to score from a free throw – an uncontested shot awarded to players who have been fouled – than at other moments in the game. When players take free throws in home matches, they are more likely to miss when the crowd is bigger. When pressure is too high, performance decreases. For a while it will exceed that of the comfort zone but soon the effects of stress take over, fatigue sets in and errors are made. Stress symptoms will begin to develop. Frustration, anxiety, poor concentration and shame about not being able to cope take over. Performance begins to plummet. BurnoutChronic stress refers to a state of long-term stress over months or years, whereas acute stress is the result of a single threatening situation and occurs in-the-moment at the appearance of a threat. By this definition, pressure most likely represents an acute stressor, in which the situational stakes pose a threat to psychological well-being (and in the case of life-or-death decision-making, to physical well-being). Chronic stress has been well-studied in both humans and other animals, with the overall conclusion that chronic stress usually has negative impacts on body condition, immune response, and cognitive functioning (Sapolsky 1990). In addition, chronic stress impacts the immediate stress response. Previous work found a negative association between increased chronic stress and cortisol reactivity in-the-moment, suggesting that high levels of chronic stress downregulate the impact of any one stressor (Rich and Romero 2005), although this does not necessarily translate into behavioral differences. Therefore, long-term and immediate stress states probably interact to produce any given behavior or decision, and we should be concerned with both chronic and acute stressors when assessing an individual’s behavioral response to a threat and the underlying decision-making processes. Given that employees perform best when the level of pressure is just right, it makes sense to train managers so they know how to manage pressure in the right way. Beran MJ, Pate JL, Washburn DA, Rumbaugh DM (2004) Sequential responding and planning in chimpanzees ( Pan troglodytes) and rhesus macaques ( Macaca mulatta). J Exp Psychol Anim Behav Process 30:203 Aravind R, Gupta S, Ghayathri Swetha Kumari RA (2022) A pilot study on emotional intelligence & its impact on pre-competitive anxiety: How does it operate in the non-WEIRD Indian sport context? Int J Physiol Nutr Phys Educ. 7:8–16

At the point of stretch, your body’s stress response releases the hormones adrenaline and cortisol, which help us perform at our best. We think more clearly, our vision is sharper, our hearing more acute. The fight-or-flight response raises our game to deal with short-term stress.We know that students get better at taking tests when they take real-time practice tests – it’s all about closing that gap between how you practise and how you perform.” There is, she said, no reason why the same principle would not apply to elite athletes. The very best athletes manage to channel the anxiety they feel positively, especially if they have high self-confidence. Athletes with low confidence view anxiety as detrimental to performance, but those with high confidence tend to perceive anxiety as a sign of being ready for the challenge ahead. This makes them less likely to choke under pressure. LeBron James of the Los Angeles Lakers scoring a free throw earlier this year. NBA players are about 3% less likely to score in the final moments of tight contests than at other points in the game. Photograph: Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images Belletier C, Davranche K, Tellier IS et al (2015) Choking under monitoring pressure: being watched by the experimenter reduces executive attention. Psychon Bull Rev 22:1410–1416