Mind Games • Handing the Pressure of Competition • JFMA 2009

 Handling the Pressure of Competition

By Dr. Alan Goldberg, Ed. D.

Dr. Alan Goldberg wrote a series of articles in the 1980s and 1990s specifically for Bull’s-Eye News dealing with the mental aspects of the game.  At the time, the author was the director of Competitive Advantage, a consulting service and sponsor of workshops on stress management for athletes and coaches.  Goldberg, a former two-time Yankee Conference singles champion at tennis, holds a doctorate in counseling.  His dissertation topic was self-esteem and anxiety, and their impact on performance and learning.  The content of the articles Goldberg wrote for Bull’s-Eye News is even more applicable today then when they first appeared in Bull’s-Eye News.  In an effort to provide our readers with the best supportive content, Bull’s-Eye News will re-introduce the series of Goldberg articles beginning with his first article providing concrete suggestions on how to handle tournament stress: Handling the Pressure of Competition. 

Handling the Pressure of Competition • Article 1  

It’s a crucial point in the game, and the outcome hangs in the balance. You’ve been here before. Your mind and body remind you of the unpleasantness: the self doubts and concerns about losing; the tightness across your shoulders and neck, and in your throwing arm; the lump in your throat. Your mind barks instructions to your body to loosen up, but no one’s listening. As you get set to release, you wonder what’s happened to your feel for the dart. Why is your hand trembling so much? Maybe if you took just one more drink, that would calm you down. But you worry about losing your clarity.

When the pressure is turned up high, it’s not unusual for your muscles to respond by tightening up and for your breathing to get progressively shallower. In addition, your thoughts tend to speed up. Concentration becomes virtually impossible. For a competitive darter, this combination of physical and mental changes can be devastating.

Muscle tension in your neck, shoulder, and throwing arm interferes with a smooth, fluid release, shortens your follow-through, and disrupts your throwing rhythm. With tight muscles, there’s a tendency to grip the dart too tightly and to use too much force, with a resultant price to be paid in accuracy and control.

Furthermore, under conditions of stress (in competition or elsewhere), your blood flow is diverted away from the extremities and superficial muscle groups to the deeper ones, an instinctive protective biological response to prevent bleeding to death should you be cut. This phenomenon explains why your hands get cold and clammy under pressure, and why you lose that all-important ‘feel’ for the dart.

Under extreme competitive stress, the dart player has more difficulty focusing on the board and on the appropriate shot combinations needed for victory. Distractions seem more powerful, and they more easily catch your attention. Your strategy suffers, you begin to criticize yourself, and then you lose your self-confidence.

“It is not what is happening to you, or around you, that tightens you up. Instead, it is your response to these external events that is the real culprit in determining how uptight you get.”

But if your game tends to abandon you just when you need that crucial double, don’t despair. There are things you can do to change that ice water flowing in your veins back to warm blood. First, however, you must understand that opponents, bad breaks, missed throws, or pressure situations don’t make you tense. You make yourself tense. It is not what is happening to you, or around you, that tightens you up. Instead, it is your response to these external events that is the real culprit in determining how uptight you get.

If you cause your own tension, it follows that you can also cause yourself to relax. How’s that, you might ask, since every time you try to make yourself relax, you fail miserably?

In point of fact, you can’t make yourself relax anymore than you can make yourself fall asleep during those difficult, sleepless nights. Relaxation, like any other learned athletic skill, is something you let happen.  Once you have sufficiently practiced the skill of relaxation, you will automatically be able to keep yourself loose when the pressure is turned up.

Breathing is one of the first places that tension affects darters. By learning to control the depth of your breathing, you will be able to maintain a relaxed state regardless of what’s going on around you.  Here’s a simple but effective at home exercise that will teach you the athletic skill of relaxation.

Sit comfortably with your back straight and feet uncrossed in a place where you will be undisturbed. Close your eyes. Inhale through your nose to a slow count of 4, filling your entire abdominal area, pause, and then exhale through your mouth to a slow count of 10. Pause, then continue to repeat the whole sequence for 5 to 10 minutes. As unrelated thoughts intrude, gently bring yourself back to a focus on your breathing and counting. Once you have mastered this technique at home, try it while practicing, in between turns. Soon you will quickly be able to calm yourself both physically and mentally in competition, with just one or two of these deep breaths.

Here are five additional strategies for handling the pressure of competition:

1. When your throwing arm or shoulder feels tense, or you’re losing the feel of the dart because of cold hands, try deliberately tightening these muscles more (to about 90% tension). Hold them of 5 to 10 seconds, then let them go. Repeat a second time.

2. Stay in the present. Darters focusing on the past (a miss or a bad break) or worrying about the future (winning or losing, meeting a tough opponent) make themselves tense. Championship darts is played by throwing one dart at a time, in the present.

3. Slow yourself down between turns. Walk slower; take more time to get yourself set at the line before throwing. Keep a steady rhythm of release going in between throws, if your style is more ‘English.’ If you like to take more time in between throws, make sure you slow yourself down at that point in each turn.

4. Check for iron grip. Under pressure, some darters over grip their dart. Make sure your grip is loose and just right for you.

5. Check for iron jaw. Another area where darters put their tension is in the jaw muscles. In between turns, check to make sure this area is loose.

Remember, in any match some nervousness is both natural and helpful to your performance. Learn to use your butterflies as a signal that you are ready and as a reminder to stay loose.