Instant Genius - Peak Performance: The secret tricks athletes use to strengthen their willpower, according to a sports psychologist

Episode Date: July 25, 2024

When we watch professional sports people, we’re no doubt in awe of their physical prowess. But how are their performances affected by what’s going on in their minds, how do they get their headspace ready to perform at their best and what can us mere mortals learn from them? In this episode, we catch up with Tim Woodman, a professor of performance psychology based at Bangor University. He tells us what role motivation plays in our ability to perform, how anyone can benefit from practising visualisation and breath work, and how we really all are performing in one way or another on a daily basis. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hello and welcome to the Instant Genius peak performance mini-series special. Over the course of four episodes, we'll be delving into the science of all things related to sports and fitness. Whether you're looking to get the most out of your gym time, or for the most effective ways to recover after you may have pushed yourself a little bit too far, we've got you covered. I'm Jason Goodyear, commissioning editor, BBC Science Focus. When we watch professional sports people, we're no doubt in awe, their physical prowess. But how are their performances affected by what's going on in their minds?

How do they get their headspace ready to perform at their best? And what can us mere mortals learn from them? In this episode, I catch up with Tim Woodman, a professor of performance psychology based at Bangor University. He tells me what role motivation plays in our ability to perform, how anyone can benefit from practising visualisation and breathwork, and how we're really all performing in one way another on a daily basis. So we're really all performing in one way another on a daily basis. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you very much for joining us. Thank you very much. Thanks for inviting me. You're very welcome. So first off, can you introduce yourself to the listeners? What's your background and what do you do? Sure. I'm a professor of performance psychology. I've been studying this

field in research for the last 30-odd years and I work in elite performance environments behind the scenes trying to help elite performance perform at their very best in the times when it's most important, which is typically under quite a lot of pressure. So yeah, we're going to get into that in a moment. So we're talking all about sports psychology. Obviously, anyone who watches sports knows this is a huge thing now. But, you know, let's go right back. When did this first start being so important? I mean, the sports psychology has been around for as long as sports been around. You know, it's just how we've used it and how we've harnessed it has changed over the years. I think it's become pretty big business these days now. I think in the last sort of 15, 20 years,

I think most sports people and most sports organisations have certainly recognised the importance of psychology. One way lots of people like to think about it is, you know, how much do you train physically and how much do you train mentally? And most people typically 99% physical and if not more and very little psychologically. So whereas when the performance breaks down, it very often can be for psychological reasons. So people have copened on to that quite recently. So you mentioned this word pressure there. I mean, obviously athletes these days

are under an enormous amount of pressure. Do you think that's changed over the years as sports have become more professional? I mean, pressure can be self-induced and other-induced and different types of people will put their own sorts of pressures on themselves. And equally, pressure, whether the source of pressure can come from

all sorts of different places, including financial pressures and contract pressures and fear of failure pressures and crowd pressure, all sorts of different pressures. So different people would perceive those differently. So let's have a look at these in a bit more detail then. So I think one thing that's going to come up, not only for professional sports athletes, but for just as normal people as well, is motivation. So what do we know about that? It's positive and its negative effects. And how can we manage that a bit better? Well, I mean, it used to be that people would consider motivation as either intrinsic or extrinsic, which in essence means internal or external. Am I driven by internal forces

or am I driven by external forces? And what you find in elite sport is people are typically internally driven. They are doing this for intrinsic reasons, that there is a motivation and an enjoyment within that is not motivated by necessarily by the financial or the praise that might come afterward. That's really interesting. So you mentioned there the pressure of crowds. How about that? You know, because often, you know, when you're coming up as an athlete, you're competing in events and there's hardly anyone there. Then suddenly you're in front of these huge crowds. What difference does that make? Again, different people perform differently according to crowds and respond differently internally in terms of how they might interpret a crowd. So some people will interpret a crowd as, oh my goodness,

There's the crowd and everyone's expecting so much of me. This is awful. And others will respond to a crowd as an opportunity. And this is my opportunity to shine in front of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people. What a fantastic opportunity. This is what I dream of. So some athletes talk about that crowd effect, how it's, I've heard, like, I'm a football fan. I support Liverpool.

So I know that sometimes they call the cop is like an extra goal because of the motivation and the cheering that the crowd does. I mean, is that actually a psychological effect? Well, I'm not sure you get an extra goal out of the noise of the crowd, whoever you might support. But I mean, there's home advantage, there's home disadvantage, you know, depending on how you perceive the crowd. So if you perceive the crowd as wholehearted support and you enjoy that support, then obviously that's going to be an advantage. If you actually feed off the idea that the crowd is cheering for your opponent, then, of course, that can be a motivation for some people, depending on how antagonistic someone's. might be, for example. So sort of sticking with this thing for a while, how about the fear of failure? You know, and I think this also, I should point out before we go on to that, with sports psychology,

there's a lot of crossover into everyday life, isn't that? Oh, for sure. I mean, I had to think if it as performance psychology rather than just sports psychology simply because these sports people in these high pressure environments are performing. And the pressures that come to bear upon them are very similar to the pressures that might come to bear upon any person who is in a performance domain. It could be the theatre, for example. It could be all sorts of different performance domains. Again, the fear of failure will be very inter-individual. There'll be lots of different differences between individuals and how people will interpret or how fearful people will be of failure. The most successful athletes tend to be those who don't necessarily fear failure, but they view

everything as an opportunity. So they view these massive events as an opportunity to shine and to be under the limelight and to really learn something about themselves, even if they do fail. So it's not so much the fear of failure, it's an opportunity to shine. So how does that fit into the notion of confidence, if that makes sense? So we've done quite a lot of work with confidence and different personality traits, having different levels of confidence. And confidence typically is a good thing. It's almost a linear relationship. And yet it's not quite an linear relationship. It's a in your relationship in the sense that the more confident one is, typically the better one performs, up to a point. That point's quite high, but there is a point, and beyond that points,

just complacency can just creep in. And when that happens, then the overconfidence can be really quite problematic, and the effort can just come off the boil a little bit, and then performance can suffer. So is that an issue, overconfidence? Again, it'll be mostly individualised, so most people would probably likely not suffer from being overconfident, especially in these major events. And yet, you know, if someone's been to sort of two or three of these major events before and they feel like they've got it all wrapped up, it's a possibility that could still creep in there, yeah, for sure.

And there are personality differences that where confidence would be more or less a feature. So let's stick with this a while then. So how about the notion of some athletes that are so-called front runners? So when they're winning, they're in the zone or whatever. But if they start struggling, if they start struggling, if they start having some adversity, then their performance drops off. Is that a thing? That would speak to someone is not particularly resilient or a team that's not particularly resilience. So, you know, the resilience teams would likely get a bit of an extra boost

from maybe going behind or having some ground to catch up that they'll kick in and dig in and try and perform even better. If they're lacking resilience, then that could easily just drop off for sure. So you mentioned teams there. So something I find really interesting. So obviously Winwoodon's been on. So it's a single person's sport, well, usually other than doubles. How does that compare psychologically to team sports? I mean, there are lots of differences between individuals and team sports. And first and foremost, in the individual sports, the line light is specifically and directly upon you, the individual. And that places enormous pressure on the person. That person, if he or she doesn't physically enjoy the pressure, then that's not going to be a good

place to be. In the team, there's opportunities to shy away from the limelight, to be someone in the background and motoring along in the background. Conversely, there can also be some social loafing. I mean, that is a very well-known psychological construct, which is basically that when people are in teams, teams members can just slack off a little bit in terms of their effort, simply because they think that the team will be able to carry them. In elite sport, that's very unlikely, but that is a feature in the domains. So, say, I'm not an elite athlete, which I'm not. I'm playing Sunday League football.

How can I get the best out of my team? Well, first of all, it depends if you hold a leadership position or not, either explicitly or implicitly. So you might be the team captain, in which case there'll be some things you could do. Or implicitly, you could just be a voice that is listened to and heard, in which case, again, what you say is important. Typically, being motivational, being a strong leader,

showing leadership capacity, motivating one's teammates by giving them some positive, feedbacks and ownership of what they're doing and just reflecting positively on them, yes. Sort of sticking with the amateur thing at the moment. People often, it's not just sports people, it's musicians, like you say, theatre actors. And we all deal with this notion of nerves. So, you know, say it's Sunday afternoon and we're 2-0 down, I've got a free kick from about 30 yards out. I'm going to feel a bit nervous. Is there anything that I can do? Just level myself out a little bit. nerves, you're quite right, the nerves are integral to high performing individuals,

whether it be in sports or the performing arts, wherever it may be. Equally, the interpretation of one's nerves is probably what differentiates the truly elite from the people who may not make it. Because nerves is so integral to how we are as human beings. I mean, the pressure tells us there is a danger, potentially a danger. The danger is I might let my teammates down, I might let my support network down, I might let my family down, whatever it may be. So it's a signal to the body. It's the fight, flight, freeze system that's kicking in there.

How I interpret that is very important. Most high-level performers will interpret that as, yes, I'm nervous, this is important, this is a signal to me that's important. I know that, that's fine, and I'm also excited because I'm prepared. People speak of a balance between being nervous and excited at the same time before a major event, because they're prepared very well for it. They know there's nothing else they can do. They've left no leaf on term, and they're ready, but they're also nervous because it's important. So in terms of that preparation then, so obviously we've got the physical preparation, the skill preparation. How about the psychological preparation? I mean, that is a golden question because it's the holy grail of the psychology of elite performance in the sense that we just cannot replicate that sort of pressure in a training environment. You just can't do it.

So there are things you can do to do so, and that's what high-performing teams do, that they try and create as much pressure as they can, for example, taking penalties in a European championship, for example, you can train for that. as the England team have recently found out, which is great. So, nonetheless, you just can't prepare for that sort of level of pressure. So it's a very difficult one, which is what makes sports such fantastic viewing, simply because the outcome is unknown, because we don't know how each individual is going to respond to that pressure.

So you mentioned earlier this idea of resilience. So can we have a look at that a little bit? Is that one of the key differences between someone like me and a pro national football player, for example? I wouldn't be able to say that, I don't think. Resilience doesn't necessarily differentiate the amateur from the professional. Resilience is the ability to bounce back. You take a knock, you bounce back. And many of people who might be listening to this might be very resilient.

They're able to bounce back in their professional lives and their personal lives. They can show some resilience. The difference, I suppose, being in elite sport, is that you will get knocked back, for whatever reasons. Through injury, through not being selected, through all sorts of different things that may be happening in your personal life and professional life, you will get knocks. your ability to bounce back and bounce back rapidly will allow you to then progress to those higher echelands of sport. Let's move on to American sports, and they have this thing in basketball

called the hot hand effect. I don't know if you've heard of that, but it's suddenly somebody starts scoring baskets, and they can, all of a sudden they're on fire, I suppose we would say. Is that a thing? There's a bit of research being done on those sorts of phenomena, and it's pretty mixed the research. I tend to think if it comes down to some really quite old research in psychology, which is that the main predictor of confidence is the ability to do something. So if you think you can score a three-point basket in basketball and then you do it, but doing it is what gives you greater confidence to do it again. So when someone goes on a streak, gets a momentum, gets a hot hand, whatever it may be in different sports, it's because they're

doing it and they're getting more confidence. So they have to be. have another go and it's something they're trained for. So they're back in training mode. They know they can do it and they just do it. This summer serve up the cookout classics, Heinz ketchup and Kraft singles. Every good burger needs a layer of perfectly milty cheese and thick, rich ketchup. We all know it's not a cookout without Heinz and craft. Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes. At First Citizens Bank, we roll with your goals because we're built for what you're building.

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would have noticed. And that's the manifestation of anger and frustration. You know, you only have to watch football players. Sometimes they'll lash out or even now professional tennis players will damage their rackets and things. So why is that so prevalent? And can we do anything to tamp that down? I'm not sure that tamping down is necessarily going to be doing too much about it. We can regulate our emotions as human beings, we can regulate them and we can regulate them effectively. But equally, we're human beings. We have emotions, including anger. And societyally, we tend to view anger for some reason as somewhat more negative than some of the other emotions who we experience. And yet it is a human emotion. And then there is the degree to which someone is able

to control their anger or not, or the degree to which someone might hold their anger in or express their emotion outward. Now, in different cultures, that comes across differently to the populations in questions. So, for example, in Northern Europe, including the UK, we tend to look a little bit down on anger. We tend to view that as somewhat uncivilized. In Mediterranean Europe, the expression of anger is simply the expression of another emotion. If you ever been caught in a traffic jam in the heat of the Mediterranean traffic, then the expression of anger is everywhere, and it's fine. It's just the way it is. So I'm not a big fan of necessarily thinking that anger is a bad emotion. I don't think any emotions are good or bad. They're just human emotions that we express. Now, the ability

to regulate one's emotions is important than lead sport, because once the emotion takes a hold, then everything that I've trained for is now not what I've trained for, because I haven't trained under these emotional conditions, or are now performing in a different body. That then becomes problematic. So the idea of wanting to smash one's racket or shout out and that sort of stuff is not how I've trained. So therefore, you're moving into unknown territory there in terms of that person's going to perform in these pressure environments. So another thing that I think a lot of people, when you talk about things like this, will say, is routine and even if you take that to the extreme, superstition.

It seems that there's a lot of high-level athletes that really follow these superstitions. Does that actually benefit them? The short answer is yes. And if I'm going to get picky, which I will, because I'm academic, is the word superstition. I don't view them as superstitions, and most of these people wouldn't. view them as superstitions either. They view them as pre-performance routines. So the performance that one might see on television, for example, or whatever adventure it may be, the performance starts well before what we see on TV. So the build-up to those different performances does involve a routine.

And it's the same in golf, for example. There'll be certain things that people will say to themselves and prepare and hold a club in different ways and that sort of thing, all sorts of different routines that people will have, which some people might view is superstitious because I'm putting a bottle down some particular way or something like that. But it's not a superstition. It's more, this is part of my routine. If I do this, then good performance follows. So I've made that part of my routine. So another thing that people often talk about these days, which I've heard people talk about, is this notion of visualization. And that's quite a new thing to me. What is that? And what's the theory? Well, there are different theories actually associated with visualization.

The best way to think about visualization is in two ways. One is viewing one. It's perform through one's own eyes. So that's called internal visualization or internal imagery. I'm looking at my performance as I would be on the day. In other words, I can't see myself, but I'm looking outward. And the other is external visualization, which is to see myself performing as if I were being watched on television or seeing myself on television. And different people benefit from different visualizations, that's quite individualized. And there is another form of imagery or visualization and whatever you want to call it, which is kinesthetic. which is the feel of the movement.

And it's the feel of the movement that you'll see this sometimes when you're watching elite performers. You'll see them sometimes going through in their mind what it feels like, and you'll see their body moving as if they are going through a certain routine. Climers use it quite a lot, for example,

that they'll picture a sequence of climbing moves and they'll left arm up, right leg up, etc., push on there. And you'll see them doing that before they actually get on the wall and have to go. So their ability to read the wall, for example, is important there. And so presumably any of us can benefit from that.

Absolutely. I mean, imagery is a fantastically valuable tool to practice. It does require practice, but it's definitely a valuable tool. So let's say then, you know, most of us aren't elite athletes. What can we do? Just to sort of say, you know, we play tennis on the weekend or during the week or we play football or we play basketball, is there anything we can do just to get our minds in a slightly better space so that we can perform better? That's a great question, because there are so many things. You know, I've done a lot of work with a lot of people. And I tend to to think that as sports people, we are ultimately a body. It's the body performing. What I mean by that is that I don't mean it's a physiology. Of course, it's the physiology of what's going outside the body, but ultimately, the ability to control the emotional side of my own performance is crucial. So how do I do that? How do I control my emotions reasonably effectively without having to do years of training, that sort of thing? And really, it's down to breathing and breathing low down in one's

belly, you know, below the abdomen. Just learning how to take a single breath, a really effective drawing in of the breath, and a breath out, can be extremely effective in just settling oneself for a performance. I don't mean that before you go and play tennis for an hour. I mean that, you know, when you're changing ends in tennis or, you know, each time you take a serve or something, or which time you return a serve. Great. And you mentioned some others there. If you could share some of those, that would be great. Well, you mentioned superstitions earlier which is a term I wouldn't use naturally, but ultimately a pre-performance routine. So that could be a breath. It could just be a single word to oneself. It could be a word that allows me to focus on

something to do with my routine or something to do with what's going to help me to perform well. It could be a visual cue. So, for example, most performance theories suggest and research suggest that a lot of performance breaks down. When it's expert performance, it breaks down because people think too much. It's the classic paralysis by analysis. What's happening, there is that the performers can do these things almost with their eyes closed. They're so used to doing these movements. When they start to think about it, they're effectively slowing down their performance. It's going from a smooth performance to an erratic performance because they're moving from being an expert to back to a beginner because the beginner has to think about it. The expert

doesn't have to think about it. So when the expert starts to think about it, they become a beginner. They're not literally a beginner, but their performance move backwards. So using some sort of visual cue. Some movement, using an animal, for example, as a cue to what the movement should feel like can really be helpful in just helping people not to think too much and just have a go, just trusting their own movement. So sort of by way of summing up, then, anyone can use these techniques. Oh, for sure. I mean, in elite sport, we're talking about performance, but we perform on a daily basis. I mean, you're performing today by running this podcast. I'm performing today by trying to provide you with some interesting information. Everyone's performing who's listening to you and me right now.

performing at some level in their lives. So performance is global. It's specific to each of our individual lives and performance techniques, such as the ones we've discussed, are available to everyone. Thank you for listening to this episode of Instant Genius. Brought you from the team behind BBC Science Focus.

That was Professor Tim Woodman. To find out more about the science of sports and fitness, check out some of the other episodes in the Peak Performance mini-series special. If you liked what you just heard, please do consider subscribing to Instant Genius. on your preferred podcast platform. The current issue of BBC Science Focus is out now.

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