BREATHE AND FOCUS
We all choke. Winners know how to handle choking better than losers.
—JOHN MCENROE
You have to learn how to get comfortable with being uncomfortable.
—LOU PINIELLA
Choker.
It’s the ugliest label in sports.
Society views choking in competition as dishonorable, shameful, and unforgivable. Athletes who choke are seen as cowards. Weak-willed. Their moral character is flawed. The Houston Rockets blew a twenty-point lead in the fourth quarter at home against the Phoenix Suns in a 1994 NBA playoff loss. The next day’s condemning headlines in both Houston newspapers screamed “CHOKE CITY.”
“Why our town?” one sportswriter moaned in print. It was as if he took the team’s defeat personally. His face burned with shame.
In sports there is no more damning gesture than a mocking hand to the throat, the choke sign. Yet choking happens every day. It happens at Wimbledon. It happens at the Olympic Games. No one is immune.
“We all choke,” said golfer Curtis Strange, who won back-to-back U.S. Open championships. “You’re not human if you haven’t. We get just as nervous as the average guy playing for the club championship.” Lee Trevino compares an athlete who caves in to anxiety with a race-car suffering mechanical problems. “Everybody leaks oil.”
In 1996 Greg Norman blew a six-shot lead in the final round of the Masters. His fate inspired comparisons with the late-season collapse of the ’64 Phillies and the Hindenburg disaster. Last spring Blaine McCallister only had to par the last hole in New Orleans to win his first PGA tournament in seven years. He made bogey. Then he missed a four-foot putt on the first playoff hole that would have clinched the victory. McCallister lost on the next hole to Carlos Franco.
“It had been a long time and the old nerves were going a little bit,” McCallister said, when asked to explain his unraveling. “I felt like I bled all over the place out there. I’ll be the first to admit I choked it and missed it (on the 73rd hole). It cost me, and I’ll hear about it awhile.”
McCallister wasn’t the only one. A week earlier, Craig Stadler had a chance to win for the first time since 1996. His putter failed him on three playoff holes. He finished second to Robert Allenby at the Houston Open.
Choking is a normal human reaction, a physiological response to a perceived psychological threat. To demonstrate what choking is, I ask athletes to stand and do the breathless exercise. You can do it, too. First, I tell the group this is a contest. I am going to watch each of them and judge everyone’s performance carefully. Then I begin barking verbal commands. “Look left … look right … look left … look right … look left … look right … look right…” Some automatically dart their eyes to the left, anticipating that command. As they continue the task, their anxiety increases. Their breathing pattern changes. Without realizing it, many hold their breath.
Oxygen is energy—it’s juice. Oxygen helps relax muscles and clear the mind. When you hold your breath, you are creating pressure and a nervous feeling. Athletes who choke start to become nervous about being nervous. Anxious about being anxious. One psychologist says anxiety is excitement “without the breath.”
The pattern of your breathing affects the pattern of your performance. When you are under stress, deep breathing helps bring your mind and body back into the present.
Over the years I have handed out thousands of little stickers to athletes that read “Breathe and Focus.” A baseball player will place the bright orange circle on the shoulder of his uniform or underneath the bill of his cap, or on the barrel of his bat. A hockey player might affix it to his stick. Firefighters I have worked with place the stickers on their self-contained breathing apparatus. The stickers serve as a reminder. Whenever they feel themselves growing anxious, breathe in energy. Breathe out negativity. Breathe in relaxation. Breathe out stress.
One year at spring training, the Mariners tested a new pitcher they had acquired in a trade. The club wanted to see if he could go five innings. In the fifth, he began to fade. He gave up a hit, then another, then another. Seated in the dugout, Lou Piniella turned to me and shook his head. “Mack,” Piniella said, “this guy doesn’t know how to be comfortable with being uncomfortable.” Piniella sent his pitching coach to the mound. When he returned, the coach told Lou, “His eyes are in the back of his head.” Translation: the guy isn’t there anymore. Piniella took the pitcher out.
What did he mean by learning how to become comfortable with being uncomfortable? Have you ever stepped into a cold shower or icy lake or swimming pool? The cold takes your breath away. Your first impulse is to get out. But if you breathe and stay focused you gradually become accustomed to the water temperature. The experience is akin to performing under pressure. By breathing and focusing you can systematically desensitize yourself.
In addition to changing their breathing patterns, athletes under stress become internally self-conscious instead of externally task-conscious. Their focus turns inward. I suggest athletes who become anxious focus externally. When one of my best friends, Jim Colborn, pitched for the Brewers, he refocused on the task by looking at the flagpole in Milwaukee’s County Stadium.
Judge Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote the following about bird hunting, but the advice applies to any athlete in competition: “If you want to hit a bird on the wing, you must have all your will in a focus. You must not be thinking about yourself, and equally, you must not be thinking about your neighbor; you must be living in your eye on that bird.”
Choking is nothing more than paying attention to your physiology when you should be focusing on your opponent and the task.
At times we all get nervous and anxious. Learn to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. Use your breathing to focus your energy. Let your breath center your mind and body in the present.