How to Avoid Choking

Ilia Malinin's prefrontal cortex probably got in the way

(Photo by Elsa/Getty Images)

American figure skater Ilia Malinin, the so-called “quad god” for his quadruple jumps, is the best in the world. He came into the Olympics not having lost a competition in two years. And then, on Friday, in his freeskate in Milan, he fell apart.

Early in his program, he bailed out of his signature quadruple axel and did a single axel instead. He then nailed a different quad jump, but then bailed on another one, turning a quad loop into a double loop. Then on another planned quad jump, he fell, and then he fell again. Something was obviously very wrong.

Bewildered, here is what he said afterward:

“I just felt like all the ... traumatic moments of my life really just started flooding my head, and there were just so many negative thoughts that just flooded into there. And I just did not handle it.”

I found his explanation to be powerful and eloquent; I’m glad he shared it. It also helps explain what happened.

Years ago, I spent some time interviewing psychologist Sian Beilock, who studied “choking,” when someone fails, under pressure, to do something they’ve done a million times. Beilock, now the president of Dartmouth, was interested in the topic in part because she sometimes performed much better on practice tests than the real thing in school, and because she was a talented soccer goalie who played the worst game of her life when the national team coach showed up to watch. So what’s going on?

In a simplified nutshell, what’s happening is that skills get “deautomated” under pressure. Think of when you learned to ride a bike, or drive a car. At first you had to think about every move. But with practice, you no longer have to pay attention to exactly how your feet are pedaling, or your hand positioning on the steering wheel. Research by Beilock and others showed that stress and anxiety can undo that learned mastery. It can cause you to start consciously monitoring movements that had become automatic — your brain's explicit attention system hijacking what your body already knows how to do. Suddenly, you’re more like a beginner again, thinking about every move. I once attended a sports psychology workshop where the instructor had people walk along a white line on the floor. We all did it with no problem. Then he put a similar width beam between two tables and had us do it again; some people fell. Same line, more pressure. So how can we make choking less likely?

A few of the suggestions Beilock shared with me had to do with keeping that conscious attention system busy so it can't hijack your movements. Those were simple things like singing to yourself, counting backward, or focusing on some external mantra that might even be written on your hand or arm where you can repeatedly refer to it. Those are in-the-moment tactics; Beilock also talked about something more structural.

She told me about the benefits of having a diversified identity. “I think we often think about professional athletes in terms of one self,” she said. “And we know that when people have multiple identities—they’re a mom self and a tennis player self—they can turn it on sometimes and they’re more relaxed other times, they often tend to be sort of psychologically buffered from failure.”

Identity diversification has been a regular topic in this newsletter. I recently talked to Brad Stulberg about building an “identity house” with more than one room, and the most popular Range Widely post ever is about why hobbies are an advantage.

On top of Beilock’s tips, there’s another approach that’s been useful for me: assuming things will go wrong. Back when I was a competitive 800-meter runner, I sometimes got flustered by things going poorly in warmups. Maybe the schedule was off and so the warmup was too short, or too long, or I was just extra nervous, or a shoelace tore off at the last second, or who knows what else. Eventually, I just started assuming those things would happen, which made it unsurprising when they did, and it meant that I had already thought through backup plans for how to proceed. And I don’t think this is just relevant to sports.

Back when I gave my first TED talk, there was a technical malfunction about thirty seconds into it. The computer monitors and clock just blinked off all at once. The TED staff stopped the session, and people started rushing around the stage. There I was, standing awkwardly on a red circular carpet, elevated above the audience. I remember Cameron Diaz smiled at me, so that was nice. Fortunately, I had actually thought about literally this beforehand. When I tried to envision a realistic worst-case scenario, it was that the slides didn’t work. If that happened, I decided, I’d give the talk anyway, altering one spot that depended on audio, and tweaking a few other things.

After a few minutes, when it seemed like they weren’t going to be able to get the tech working, I told the audience I was going to give this talk anyway — charades if needed. Luckily, that was just before the screens blinked back to life, and the talk proceeded as normal. If you watch the end of the talk (the tech troubles didn’t get posted), you can see I do a “Phew!” gesture as I walk away; it was my nod to the tech difficulties.

I don’t think there’s even close to a foolproof method for dealing with the kind of pressure Ilia Malinin was facing. But the more I’ve prepared for things to go wrong, the less power those moments have when they arrive.

Thank you for reading. And best wishes to Ilia! He’s competing at the world championships next month.

On another note: I started making videos. I just posted this one summarizing 34 books I loved. Last week, I posted this one on everything I know about “desirable difficulties,” tactics that slow learning down but make it stickier. If you take a look, let me know what you think!

Until next time…

David

P.S. If you enjoyed this post, please share it.

P.P.S. You can subscribe here: