Audience screams, cheers, and reacts to athletes’ performance; and athletes make mistakes when they think about it.
Photo from Photoxpress
Several athletes in the Olympics perfect their moves over years but they make mistakes on the day of show. It happens to the most of us. We prepare for a long time but on the exact time we should perform, we gag and choke. We make mistakes we have never committed when we are practicing. This is a familiar feeling to athletes because eyes are on them in every sporting event.
The source of the blunder is when athletes started thinking of their own movements instead of relying on their body’s motor capabilities. Overthinking can intervene with concentration and performance of motor tasks.
For the athletes who aren’t used to the pressure of an audience yet, squeezing a ball or clenching a hand may help. According to the new research published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, doing so before the competition will activate certain parts of the brain.
But it has to be the left hand. In the study, right handed athletes who squeezed a ball using the left hand have lower chances of choking than right handed athletes who squeezed a ball using the right hand. This may be due to the system of our brain’s supervision, where the right brain controls the left part of our body – the side of the brain that directs automated and instinctive behaviors.
The idea is to distract athletes from thinking. “Athletes usually perform better when they trust their bodies rather than thinking too much about their own actions or what their coaches told them during practice”, said Juergen Beckmann, PhD, chair of sport psychology at the Technical University of Munich in Germany.
This technique may also be applied outside athletics, especially in pressing situations.
Do you think this will work for you?
Sources:Squeezing a ball before competition may improve performance, study finds; American Psychological Association
Do You Choke Under Pressure? A Routine That May Help; PsychCentral
Sporting skill improved by just a simple squeeze; drbriffa
Moment Matters 
I believe this. I have these yin yang balls that I do exercises with and they really do calm me down (and also helped when I used to have carpal tunnel).
I fully agree with this!
I’ve suffered all my life with this syndrome. My mind is always active thinking about the scene that is to happen. And that is really overcrowding. One can never concentrate if one is thinking. Mind is not capable of doing two tasks together. If It is thinking then it can’t react. And if it has to Act then it should be stopped from further thinking.
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Oh! My tennis game needs all the help it can get. I’m gonna try this. Thank you!
Idk if it would work for me but I’m willing to try
I’m going to get my whole team to try this!
Interesting. I hope I remember to try that the next time such a situation comes up.
“The source of the blunder is when athletes started thinking of their own movements instead of relying on their body’s motor capabilities. Overthinking can intervene with concentration and performance of motor tasks.”
Do you think it is possible that overthinking can interfere with intellectual and emotional tasks?
I have been taking in some lectures on meditation and one thing I’ve picked up on is that the constant drone of thoughts (I… me… my… what if…) eventually stops after prolonged regular meditation. The speaker of one lecture was saying that after he stopped thinking constantly, he was able to respond SPONTANEOUSLY and APPROPRIATELY to whatever situation was at hand.