Learn to Win under Pressure

I just read a very interesting article in Scientific American Mind (2/11/09) by Elizabeth Svoboda. How to Avoid Choking under Pressure (hat tip to DeadCrab over on the Billiards Digest Forum) explains the scientific basis for why most of us have the problem to some extent or another, and what we can do about it.

photo of a brain
The Brain

There are two parts of your brain that control your body when you play pool, the cerebral cortex and the cerebellum. The cerebral cortex is the thinking, learning, conscious thought part of the brain where skills are first learned. As you develop the skill, it’s gradually handed over to the cerebellum, which is optimized to handle the lightning quick motor activation and control required for complex activity. These are what Galwey referred to as Self #1 and Self #2 in his book The Inner Game of Tennis

The cerebellum, then, is sort of like an autopilot for things you know how to do well. You learn something, and then move it out of the cerebral cortex to make room for the next thing you have to learn. This is a good thing, because the cerebellum is much faster at managing and controlling all the interrelated muscle movements that make up the complex tasks we do all the time.

Because the cerebellum is so much better at managing movement, it’s important to leave it alone and keep the cerebral cortex out of it as much as possible. Quoting Frank Guenther, Boston University neurologist,

“Let’s say you’re trying to play the piano. If you were relying on your motor memory”—just letting it fly—“your motor command would automatically read out the next note in about 50 milliseconds.” But consciously monitoring your performance brings this superfast sequence of motor commands to a screeching halt, resulting in a choking incident of epic proportions. “The feedback from the first note takes 100 milliseconds just to move from your cochlea up to your brain. So if you’re saying to yourself, ‘Okay, I just finished the C, now I have to go on to the D,’ you’re going to have problems.”

This is analogous to computers, where things are initially written in software because the start up costs are much lower and the system is so much more flexible. But when the details have all been worked out, you move to hardware because of the tremendous speed increase and the lower system resources needed.

So how do you do that? Well, many people try to concentrate on a preshot routine, a set of specific steps to do, in a set fashion, that’s the lead in for every shot. This works, but must be done in the right way. Tests using golfers and putting showed that when players were concentrating on words like “head” “weight” and “arms”, their performance suffered as the pressure increased. A different group, focusing on words like “smooth” a word that described the entire motion involved, did not have the performance deterioration when the pressure increased.

One explanation for these results is that the cerebral cortex is interfering with the cerebellum’s management of motor control. Since the cerebellum is by far the better manager, every interruption results in decreased performance. The more specific the thoughts were, the more they were about the physical body, the more interference they caused. Focusing on a word like “smooth” or “forceful” is just the right level of specificity; enough to raise your concentration on the activity, but not so much as to cause interference with your fine muscle control.

How do you block out the pressure and eliminate choking? Make your practice as much like the real thing as you can.

Doing this while you practice is one thing, doing it in a league or tournament match quite another. Throw in the extra pressure of an audience and some people just fall apart completely. How do you block out the pressure and eliminate choking?

According to Raôul R. D. Oudejans, a psychologist at Free University Amsterdam, you want to make your practice as much like the real thing as you can. To test this he used police officers and had half practice on standard cardboard targets and the other half practice (using soap bullets) shooting at each other in simulated firefight conditions. Later, during a graded officer-on-officer shooting simulation, those who practiced on cardboard targets performed quite poorly compared to those whose practice was much more like the real thing.

Without bringing guns to the pool hall, how do you leverage this knowledge? Make at least some of your practice sessions pressure packed. Play like you would in a match; don’t talk to the other player or anyone else. And play for something, make it count. It can be money, but it doesn’t have to be. A friend once told me about his years of playing against his brother. They had a special coin, like a medallion, that the loser used to have to carry on his person every waking hour until their next match. If the winner called him up he would have to admit out loud that “you are the better player.” This admission hurt, and during the next match you can bet that both players fought hard not to be on the losing side.

So get used to letting your cerebellum run the show when shooting; give it lots of experience working under pressure, and get used to winning more often!

Related Posts

Five Ways to Liven Up Your Practice Drills Review of “The Inner Game of Tennis” by W. Timothy Galwey
Driving to Excellence

2 Responses to “Learn to Win under Pressure”

  1. Pat B.No Gravatar - March 29th, 2009

    I relate statements made in this article to examples excersized when I was learning to type.

    If I looked at the keyboard keys and thought about which keys I was hitting or typing incorrectly at the moment I was typing / I typed more letters incorrectly…

    however, If I just looked at the piece of paper containing the paragraphs of words I was attempting to type and just read as I typed.. my typing errors were dimished big time.

    I just couldn’t ever figure out how the heck I could type better if I wasn’t thinking about ‘how to do to it correctly’ ?? made no sense to me..?

    but the fact remains to this day including when I shoot a ball into the pocket…

    If I over think the situation / forget it.
    If I just get up there and get halfway square on the shot I’m about to attempt…. stroke a few times then hesitate just for a second on the back stroke which I feel gives the brain a chance to calculate whatever it has to calculate prior to pulling the trigger.. the shots go right in.

    I call it, shooting with visual imagery.
    A friend of mine is familiar with the book ‘The Inner Game of Tennis’ as well and when we’re competiting together we sometimes stop after a spectacular shot and admit to each other that.. “I didn’t shoot that shot at all” It was my brain that did that..

    It’s a wacky feeling ya get when that happens.. but a nice feeling when it happens more and more..

    So after things like that happening more and more over time, I’ve decided to just slow down a little / stick with the split second hesitiation on the back stroke before pulling the trigger and things seem to be improving better and better over time..

    Not winning any tournaments or anything but at least I’m knocking more and more of my top competetitors out one ball at a time.

    Thanks for starting this blog..
    I really enjoyed reading many of the interesting articles.

  2. John BiddleNo Gravatar - March 29th, 2009

    Pat, welcome to Pool Student’s Blog. I’m glad you’ve enjoyed it so far and hope your return again and again.

    I loved your example of typing, and how it showed so clearly that for many kinds of activity, letting the subconscious part of the brain handle it produces superior results, and by a lot.

    Thanks for the comment, and keep on letting go.

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