Sport Psychology  The Head Decides

Elite athletes use mental techniques to enable them to perform under extreme pressure. What many people don’t realize is that the same methods can also be useful in everyday life, helping to prevent stress from causing excessive strain. Professor Markus Raab from the German Sport University Cologne explains how.

When athletes compete at the very highest level, mental strength will be the decisive factor – all other things being equal. But what exactly happens in the brains of top athletes when there’s everything to play for in the final, and how do they prepare themselves for this challenge?

Markus Raab, a professor of psychology and head of the Department of Performance Psychology at the German Sport University Cologne, is studying precisely this. As part of the project in:prove (supported by the Federal Ministry of the Interior via the Federal Institute of Sport Science), his team is supervising nearly 900 athletes from German national teams throughout one complete Olympic cycle. Cognitive skills such as task-switching, emotional self-regulation and decision-making speed are measured twice a year. On the basis of the results, the athletes then receive individual recommendations about which techniques they should focus on improving. Countless books explore mental tricks in top-class sport. Essentially, however, Raab believes that the most important methods can be boiled down into five key points:

1. Attention control: learning to focus on relevant information and ignore distractions – such as cheering or shouting from spectators.
2. Self-talk: short, action-oriented instructions to oneself aimed at regulating emotions or getting back on a stable trajectory following an error.
3. Routines under pressure: consistent routines before and after a competition that give one a sense of reassurance and control amid even the most chaotic situations.
4. Emotional self-regulation: the ability to consciously control emotional reactions, in order for example to reset quickly following an error.
5. Visualization: the ability to mentally run through critical situations and motor processes before they occur.

With support from a sports psychologist, athletes train systematically to perfect such techniques – in many cases for years before they face a crucial match. But is this also worth doing outside the world of sport?

From Sports Arena to Everyday Life

Raab’s response is unequivocal: “We need to regulate our stress levels in all high-pressure situations. This doesn’t happen only in top-class sport, but also when nurses have to take decisions under pressure, when managers have high levels of responsibility or when single parents face long-term stress and have little time to relax and unwind.”

The techniques are just the same as those used in sport. However, the advantage that athletes have is that – ideally – they will be systematically trained to deal with high-pressure scenarios. The rest of us tend to have to improvise. And yet the methods are directly transferable: breathing exercises and brief reset rituals for emotional self-regulation, conscious focus setting rather than multitasking, self-talk to remind oneself to remain calm and concentrate on the essentials. “All of this can help in stressful situations. These methods can be systematically practised and the effects measured psychologically,” says Raab.

Reframing can also be helpful – in other words actively looking at a problem from a different perspective. Rather than viewing something as a threat, one tells oneself for example: “That’s a challenge I accept.” In sports psychology this is known as “controlling the controllables”. By contrast, anything that cannot be controlled needs to be managed by accepting and regulating it. This also applies outside sport: a single parent must learn, just like an elite athlete, that it’s not always possible to control all factors. Not every situation requires the same mental preparation, however. “Ahead of cognitive tasks such as an exam it is particularly important to get one’s worries and fears under control,” says Raab. The classic worry is what will happen if one fails the exam. “In the case of motor tasks, on the other hand, it’s about keeping excitement levels down so that one doesn’t tremble or react too nervously.”

What Happens If Stress Isn’t Controlled?

In Raab’s view, one thing is clear: the social costs of excessive strain in everyday life are considerable. Acute stress that is not controlled can escalate and become chronic stress, leading to a burnout or depression.

“For good mental health, it is vital to practise not only routines but also emotional and cognitive coping strategies. Wherever our health is at risk – for example because of our jobs, training or personal lives – we can learn how to cope with fears and excessive strain,” he explains. The potential benefits are huge: in the world of work, where managers could be taught to act more rationally when faced with high-pressure decisions; in education, where teachers and students could learn to deal better with the pressure to perform, and in the healthcare sector, where nurses are worked virtually to breaking point on a daily basis.

“As a society, we spend more and more of our time sitting down and increasingly using social media and AI,” says Raab. “In this environment, sport and sports psychology could help improve not only our performance but also our mental health.”

The evidence to back this claim up is clear. Doctors and psychologists agree that mental strength contributes to an overall better performance – even when it’s not necessarily a question of who comes out on top. Many factors will obviously determine whether a person wins a gold medal – not only their cognitive abilities. But Raab still believes firmly in the rule of thumb: “All other things being equal, it’s the head that decides.”

Related Links