On choking

A very strange thing occurred to me the other day: I choked.

Of course, I mean choking as in the sporting sense – of someone suddenly rendered incapable of performing at a level that, under normal circumstances, would come naturally. These are skills and talents perfected over many years that, at a crucial moment, disappear.

In my case the talent was talking and my choking moment arrived thanks to a film crew thrusting a camera in my face in order to make a promotional video for What’s Stopping You?, which comes out next month (by the way). Faced with a camera – rather than my usual experience of facing a person exhibiting various stages of confusion or boredom – my usually fluid speech deserted me to the point where I could hardly utter four coherent words in a row.

Luckily, this was a recording and the patient film crew could just inwardly roll their eyes and start again. More usually choking occurs at the very moments where no take-two (or three, four or five) is possible. At such times a voice inside our head is shouting: “this is it, this is the moment, it’s now or never” and that very knowledge renders us incapable of performing – making choking a key psychological concern for many people, even those at the top of their game.

Choking was first recorded as a phenomenon by Dr Roy Baumeister who described in his paper Choking Under Pressure (1984) a “sudden, catastrophic breakdown in skilled performance…characterized by an inability to perform well-learned and well-practiced skills”.

And the symptoms are not just psychological. Golfers describe the “jerks” or “yips”, which are spasms impacting the lower arm, and cricket, snooker, bowling and darts all have their own physical symptoms – Eric Bristow’s “dartitis” in the 1980s being a famous example.

Yet the most famous episode of choking I can recall – or most other people come to that – involves tennis: the 1993 Wimbledon final between Jana Novotna and Steffi Graf. In fact, this incident is so famous Malcolm Gladwell uses it as his key case study when writing about “The Art of Failure” in his 2009 book, What The Dog Saw.

I’ll let him describe what happened (although most people already know):

“There was a moment in the third and deciding set...when Jana Novotna seemed invincible. She was leading 4-1 and serving at 40-30, meaning that she was one point from winning the game, and just five points from the most coveted championship in tennis. She had just hit a backhand to her opponent, Steffi Graf, that skimmed the net and landed so abruptly on the far side of the court that Graf could only watch, in flat-footed frustration...

“Novotna was in white, poised and confident, her blond hair held back with a headband – and then something happened. She served the ball straight into the net. She stopped and steadied herself for the second serve – the toss, the arch of the back – but this time it was worse. Her swing seemed halfhearted, all arm and no legs and torso. Double fault. On the next point, she was slow to react to a high shot by Graf and badly missed on a forehand volley. At game point, she hit an overhead straight into the net. Instead of 5-1, it was now 4-2. Graf to serve: an easy victory, 4-3. Novotna to serve. She wasn’t tossing the ball high enough. Her head was down. Her movements had slowed markedly. She double-faulted once, twice, three times. Pulled wide by a Graf forehand, Novotna inexplicably hit a low, flat shot directly at Graf, instead of a high crosscourt forehand that would have given her time to get back into position: 4-4. Did she suddenly realize how terrifyingly close she was to victory? Did she remember that she had never won a major tournament before? Did she look across the net and she Steffi Graf – Steffi Graf! – the greatest player of her generation?”

Of course, Graf went on to win the match, resulting in one the most memorable episodes in a women’s final. Gladwell again:

“At the awards ceremony, the Duchess of Kent handed Novotna the runner-up’s trophy, a small silver plate, and whispered something in her ear, and what Novotna had done finally caught up with her. There she was, sweaty and exhausted, looming over the delicate white-haired Duchess in her pearl necklace. The Duchess reached up and pulled her head down onto her shoulder, and Novotna started to sob.”

So what caused this faltering under pressure? For those with a fear of failure, these are the key moments where it all goes wrong – where the monkey on our shoulder gets the upper hand, no matter how hard we’ve practiced or how on top of our game (or material) we feel. Certainly, any High-FF (as I call those with a high fear of failure in What’s Stopping You?) watching that Wimbledon final would have nodded at the weeping Novotna and said, “yep, that would have been me”.

But why? What creates that all-important distinction between the Grafs and the Novotnas? Gladwell went in search of an answer and found Daniel Willingham, a psychologist at the University of Virginia. He told him about the difference between explicit learning and implicit learning, and their connection with choking.

Willingham sets his students video-game tasks and notices that they start learning sequencing games via explicit learning – focusing hard on each element of the task and consciously trying to acquire the skills and knowledge to master it. Progress with explicit learning is steady and deliberate but – because it is explicit and therefore based on awareness and concentration – slow.

Yet after a period of explicit learning, implicit learning takes over. It’s as if the brain has absorbed the conscious-learning requirements in order to master the basics and can now do them unconsciously, which allows the implicit learning system to take over. This takes place beyond awareness, so we learn faster and with far greater fluidity. Soon, we act like naturals, which is the take-off moment from which we move from good to great.

Yet, crucially for the choker, under conditions of stress, the explicit system reasserts itself. As Gladwell writes:

“When Jana Novotna faltered at Wimbledon, it was because she began thinking about her shots again. She lost her fluidity, her touch…in a sense, she was a beginner again [and one now facing Steffi Graf].”

And the same thing occurred to me when stuck in front of a camera. Ask me about fear of failure and I can bang on about it until the cows come home, get their washing done, catch up with their old mates and then leave for pastures new. Ask me to do it in front of a camera and I have to think about what I say. This is for the Amazon website so it has to make sense. It has to be accurate, fluid, confident. And it must have gravitas. Suddenly I’m no longer the cocky gobshite rattling off about 1960s experiments on American schoolkids. Suddenly, I’m staring into a camera and wondering whether my facts are correct and my turn of phrase suitable. And – as truly as if I’m facing Steffi Graf on the other side of the net in a Wimbledon final – I’ve become wracked with doubt, and that monkey on my shoulder has notched up another victory.