Latest / Wellness in Today's World / Ep. 18: Mastering Pressure: How Athletes Thrive Under Stress

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Ep. 18: Mastering Pressure: How Athletes Thrive Under Stress · Wellness in Today's World

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  Hello and welcome to "Wellness in Today's World," a space where we talk about the latest insights in wellness, psychology, and mental health.
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  Thank you for being here today.
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  Today's episode is focused on performance, identity, and mental health.
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  We are going to unpack the benefits of sports psychology in high-performance situations and learn about what kind of skills
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  that a sports psychologist would use with athletes.
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  Today, we have Dr.
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  Sara Hickmann.
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  Dr.
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  Hickmann is a sports psychologist who has over 20 years of experience with high school, college, and professional athletes.
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  She has worked as an embedded psychologist with the Los Angeles Kings hockey team and the Los Angeles Clippers
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  professional basketball team.
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  She also has worked with the New York Jets football team as well as the Brooklyn Nets basketball team.
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  I'd like to welcome you here today, Dr.
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  Thank you Debra.
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  It's great to be here and thanks for having me.
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  You're welcome.
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  I'm gonna call you Sara from here on out.
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  Perfect.
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  Okay, let's start off with what led you to becoming a sports psychologist?
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  Yeah, so I mean, I think like a lot of people who go into psychology, they have a life experience that shapes them.
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  And for me, it was gymnastics.
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  I know we share that in common.
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  You also competed in gymnastics.
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  I found that as much as I loved it physically, mentally, it took a huge toll on me.
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  As a young person, I didn't really know how to deal with the ups and downs and the big highs and lows that came with competition.
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  And I really struggled with kind of the emotional, psychological space that was required, especially in a dangerous activity like gymnastics, where you flip upside down, you can
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  really hurt yourself and injure yourself.
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  So you have to find ways of being confident and focused and prepared so that when you go on under pressure, you're able to do well and stay safe and...
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  and feel good about yourself.
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  And many times I would make mistakes or fall off the beam and the coaches didn't really know how to deal with me.
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  They didn't know how to guide me mentally.
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  They just said, "Shut up and move on.
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  Like, let's let this go and get over it." And I couldn't easily get over it.
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  I was a perfectionist.
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  It was something I wanted to do perfectly.
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  And that in and of itself created a lot of pressure.
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  So...
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  From a very young age, I knew I wanted to be a sports psychologist to help young people deal with that environment that can be so challenging.
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  Yeah, you know, I know as we were talking about this podcast, you really wanted to focus on that pressure that young athletes face.
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  So tell me a little bit about your experience in working with athletes and the pressure that they find themselves under, especially when it's a high-stakes event.
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  Yeah, I mean, I think it's amazing to see how early it starts with young people, the demands on them, whether it be evening practices.
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  I had one high school student who told me she started her hockey practice at 9:00 at night and had to be at school, you know, in the morning at 7:30 a.m.
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  So she wasn't getting home until midnight and then was hungry and had to eat.
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  So even from 16 years old, it was the pressure of time, the pressure of no sleep, the pressure of energy management, expectations from coaches, from parents.
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  Parents tend to put a lot of time and energy and money into their young kids, their sports, and it costs a lot of money to have ice time or court time or...
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  you know, go drive them around, fly to different tournaments.
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  So the young person kind of feels all of that and feels now they have to perform at high levels.
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  They have to advance.
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  There's a lot of social pressures.
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  They feel like they're missing out with their friends and being able to be normal.
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  I could never really go to things on the weekends because I had practice or meets.
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  And my young athletes now express similar things, that they feel
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  kind of out of the loop with their friends, that they have to focus so much on getting better and doing well and preparing that they miss out just kind of being a kid, just
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  having fun and being free.
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  There's often such demand that there's no downtime.
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  They don't have an offseason anymore.
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  It's kind of year-round training, even as early as elementary school.
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  You know, I hear parents talk about, you know, travel ball, fall ball, winter ball, summer ball.
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  There's every kind of season of ball and it's hard for them to feel like they can just take a break, without missing out or falling too far behind.
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  And it leads to injuries.
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  It leads to burnout.
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  It leads to a lot of anxiety and stress.
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  And so, if they're lucky, they find themselves in my office or someone equivalent to me to be able to kind of unpack
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  and sort all those things out, to put things in perspective.
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  Because there are higher-pressure things coming, including trying out,
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  right? They have to try out to make the
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  team. They have to see if they can get on the best high school
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  team. And then of course they want college scouts to see them and perform under the pressure of a scout evaluating
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  them. And then the college athletes, if
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  are talented enough, they have their sights on the pros and being able to get signed with the best colleges, with the best amount of money, the most amount of money with NIL money.
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  There's a lot of pressure to keep their brand up, the social media presence.
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  And so there's a lot, and there's only 24 hours in a day and we're hoping they're sleeping for eight of them.
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  And a lot of them are trying to juggle school or other
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  things. Even
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  professional sports, you know, they have families, they have loved ones, they have kids who want them to be there at their school play or their sports.
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  And so I think you see a lot of pull to be in different places.
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  Yeah, you talked a lot about expectations and now the cultural context of NIL, social media, expectations, and betting, which has really changed on these young athletes.
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  I mean, student athletes, but also
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  you were even talking younger.
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  I know kids that are playing soccer now and the pressure they're getting, you know, "I have to try out for the club team," you know?
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  And so talk about that pressure that these young athletes are having to face and deal with.
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  Yeah, I think there are so many places they're looking for approval.
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  So when you say "expectations," there's expectations from parents that might be inherent, that aren't like spoken.
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  A lot of parents will say, "Well, I tell my, you know, my son or daughter that I just want them to have fun." But those same parents are...
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  the child is looking at, or the young person is looking at them, spend money or spend their time.
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  And so they do feel a sense of obligation
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  to do well and make this work out.
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  But there's expectations from coaches, from teammates, from friends.
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  Once you are good at something, once you become exceptional, now people kind of pay attention to you.
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  They start noticing you, they start watching you, they follow you.
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  And there's this belief of, "I have to sustain that.
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  I have to keep that level of performance.
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  And how do I outdo myself time after time after time?"
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  So a lot of times, the pressure comes from needing to be a high level night after night after night, right?
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  These athletes are all talented, otherwise they wouldn't be on the court or on the field or on the ice.
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  But can they do it night after night, day after day, game after game?
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  That is the true stress that can come with that.
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  And as we see now with the playoffs in some of the sports
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  there's more at stake.
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  There's more money at stake.
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  There's jobs at stake.
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  There's, you know, expectations from fans, now that fans can bet on individual athletes.
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  And you see athletes kind of cracking, moreso.
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  The same athlete who can catch a ball easily in practice will drop that ball in a playoff game because their focus is in too many different places.
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  Their mind and the,
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  pressure on their mind is creating self-doubt.
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  So it can create an environment that's not ideal for performance, for high performance.
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  You know, you're talking about those moments that you're being called on and it's like having to do it time and time again.
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  So I wanted to ask you about the clutch performance and the choking.
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  I mean, I think about a clutch performance and I think about Freddie Freeman, because I'm an LA Dodger fan, and he hit that home run,
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  and it was at the end of the game, they won, you know, he came through.
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  And so what is the difference between someone that's able to do a clutch performance versus someone that underperforms in those situations?
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  Yeah, so I mean, think Freddie has the opportunity to choke.
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  We just want to be clear that every high performer has the ability to lose it and to fall apart.
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  But what helped Freddie in that moment is likely where he was mentally, right?
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  Because he hopefully saw that as an opportunity, as something he wanted to do, that he knew
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  and believed in himself to be able to do.
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  He wasn't thinking about, "Oh, man, if I miss this, blah, blah, blah." He was thinking, "All right, here we go." Probably.
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  I mean, I can't speak for Freddie.
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  Of course.
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  I would love to know what was going on in Freddie's mind.
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  And hopefully when he was interviewed by the media, some of what I love to do is read the media comments of athletes' quotes because it kind of gives us an insight into what was
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  going on in their mind at the time.
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  A lot of them will say, "I wasn't thinking at all.
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  I was just focused on hitting the ball as hard as I could, as far as I could." And really simplifying it to, he's done this before, he's prepared, he's probably visualized this
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  ball going out into the stands or high, you know, into the stands and not giving the other team a chance to even play defense, right?
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  So he probably saw that moment as opportunity and not pressure and not a place he could fail.
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  Because when you feel good, when you're like at your best and you're ready, you're excited, you're happy, you are likely to play free and you play smooth and easy and in a
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  flow state.
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  If you're worried and doubting and thinking, "Oh, man, what if I blow this?" That is going to create tension in your body.
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  It's going to create stress hormones in your body.
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  It's going to create the mind racing and overthinking it.
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  So,
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  those are things that contribute to underperforming or choking.
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  When we think of "choking," it's basically an athlete who can do a skill, right?
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  They are able to do the skill and they're able to do it usually 10 out of 10 times without much thought.
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  But when we add the expectations, the what could be lost, "when I don't do this" into the mix, we now create something that
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  is a fight or flight response.
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  It's a fear response.
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  It's a, "Oh, no, what if I don't?" And we don't tend to be at our best in a fear response, in a fight or flight.
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  If this is a threat, something that could hurt me.
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  We want to see it as like, cool, let's see how this goes, right?
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  Like, let's do this thing.
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  And so an athlete's self-talk is huge in that moment.
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  Yeah.
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  One of the things that I think about is Simone Biles had the "twisties" or other athletes may call it the "yips." Tell us about that particular maybe mindset or situation that
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  athletes find themselves.
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  Phenomenon, right?
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  It's a phenomenon of where an athlete who is so super skilled, who is elite, who is the highest performer in their sport, can no longer do the basics of their sport in that
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  moment.
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  And when we think about the Olympics, the buildup of the Olympics is off the charts.
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  I mean, you're preparing for four years to compete and you have one shot.
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  And that is probably the highest amount of pressure an athlete could experience.
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  You know, an NBA season has 82 games, an NHL season's 82 games.
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  Playoffs, you have multiple games.
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  But this, in gymnastics, you have one shot to go do your routine.
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  And so what can happen is this logjam of your mind, where you stop sending signals freely to the body.
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  That is muscle memory, right?
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  There goes my muscle memory of being able to talk.
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  It is being able to
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  really have that smooth connection of, "Easy.
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  I got this!" Suddenly when you do have a complex, very difficult skill like Simone was trying to execute, that is a higher level of processing.
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  But she's done this before, right?
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  So for her even, that was still something her brain/body needed to be in sync with and usually was.
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  And she talked about that in post-competition interviews, which was that her mind and body were not connected.
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  They were disconnected and she became afraid because what she was doing was very dangerous.
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  And when the mind/body are no longer syncing up, that presents a danger again.
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  It's danger.
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  So at our core, we are designed to protect ourselves and that is going to trump anything else, including performing at the Olympics.
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  If she believed she could die or severely hurt herself, then her fight or flight and her
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  reaction to freeze and not move forward.
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  So there's fight, fight, flight or freeze again.
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  And sometimes we
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  freeze. We just say, "I can't do
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  this. I can't move forward." Some research studies have shown that when we have too much pressure,
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  right? So there's kind of this ideal amount of pressure where when it's too little, we don't care that
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  much. When it's too high, the brain stops sending signals of
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  of being in motion because it's trying to conserve and protect us.
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  So if we now get into that high level of pressure where we feel that exceeds our resources, like "I can't handle this," then our brain actually functions differently in
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  terms of how it messages our body for movement.
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  So we want to respect that in terms of being mindful of...
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  Our own resources matter, our own internal world matters, what we think of ourselves, our ability to see this is something I do, it doesn't define me.
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  It's not my whole life, my whole world.
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  Sometimes that helps reduce the pressure of being able to relieve some of that pressure.
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  Because when you apply too much pressure in any one situation, it can turn into where it's too much for that person,
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  despite how talented they are, despite how well they've done under pressure before.
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  So yeah, I think sports psychologists are uniquely designed to handle that kind of situation and be able to understand what's going on for the athlete and help walk them
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  through in a safe manner.
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  So how would a sports psychologist kind of deal with, you know, they're walking into this high-performance situation or event like the Olympics where you get one shot and only one
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  shot.
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  Yeah.
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  So I love the media, how they always, they hype it up, right?
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  Like you hear this a lot, or coaches hype it up, or even fans hype it up: This is one shot.
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  You've got to do this.
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  And for some athletes that hypes them, that makes them excited.
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  That's like, yes!
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  For other athletes, it's like, "Oh no, that's a lot." So some of the work with the individual or team athletes, it's, "Is that working for you?
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  What works for you?"
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  That hype out there, you don't have to buy it.
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  It could fuel you, but it also might dampen you to where now you feel worse.
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  So ignore it.
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  If that's not helpful, like block out that noise.
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  This is just another day at work.
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  It's just another day at work.
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  What you do out on the court or on the mat or on the beam or on the ice is no different.
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  That 80,000 people are watching, a million people are watching, you can't focus on that.
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  Your focus has to be on feeling good, feeling loose.
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  And I know in your previous podcast in December, there were some really good suggestions given around sports psychology and pre-competition routines is one of them.
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  I think how you prepare yourself and...
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  really reducing how many decisions you have to make.
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  So if you have to think, "Do I want eggs for breakfast or do I want yogurt?" Like that's reducing your battery.
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  Having athletes have a morning routine, a pre-competition routine, helps them feel good.
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  Being able to have them do activities that lightens their load, that makes things lighter.
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  Because when you walk into the Olympics, the pressure's there.
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  You feel it, your body feels it.
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  You don't have to hype yourself up.
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  So now we need to dial you down a little bit to kind of take that edge off because again, that arousal curve, if it's too high, we tend to have lower performance, our performance
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  suffers.
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  So we want to kind of keep ourselves in that sweet spot of feeling good, feeling focused, comfortable, at ease.
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  An "I got this" kind of mentality.
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  So, self-talk, visualization, pre-competition routines.
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  And I want to be clear, self-talk has to be believable.
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  So we can't just say, "Go have fun" if it's actually not that fun to be in these circumstances.
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  Sometimes it's not that fun to show up to work day after day after day and be our best.
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  Athletes, they have a job to do just like an executive or a musician or any other high performer.
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  And sometimes work is hard.
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  It's a hard day at the office.
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  It's not going to be the easiest, but I can find a way to still be at my best.
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  Even in these circumstances, I can be comfortable being uncomfortable.
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  And finding a way to prepare for that is important.
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  I think using self-talk that's believable, and I will work with athletes a very long time on creating just the right thing to say in just the right moment.
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  So there isn't one size fits all for every athlete of how they talk to themselves.
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  But being able to know that you have support, being able to feel that you've survived adversity, that you're resilient and focusing on your effort and attitude.
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  'Cause at the end of the day, Sean White has, he has a great video where he talks about, you know, he got injured and he had to fight to come back.
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  And then he's standing at the top of his slalom run.
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  And he, his head's going a million directions.
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  And finally he's like, "Who cares?" And that's what he said to himself.
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  "Who cares?" And it lightened his load.
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  It loosened him up mentally.
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  And he slid down that hill and nailed it.
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  And for him, that was the phrase that unlocked him and made him feel so, you know, at ease.
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  And that's, that's the beauty and magic of how athletes can
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  solve these puzzles and figure out what works for them.
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  So talk to me about how athletes recover from failure.
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  Ooh, yeah.
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  Look at your face.
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  I mean, even your face is showing like how painful that can be.
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  Very, very painful to have something they care about so much not go their way.
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  You know, even in, again, the playoffs with the NFL, you saw players have a ball hit their face and...
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  or drop a punt on a punt return.
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  Something that, you know, you watch the athlete go to the sidelines and cover their face and cover their head with a towel.
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  And I actually will give a shout out to Sean McVay, the coach of the Rams, after one of his players had a failure, he came over and just put his hand on his knee and said, you
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  know, you couldn't tell what he was actually saying, but you could see that he was trying to give him encouragement and not let him swim in his, you know, his feelings and not be
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  alone in the fact that we're a team and we make...
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  people make mistakes.
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  And so I thought that was great to see him really go out of his way in the middle of the game
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  to attend and care for his one player who was hurting so much because he let his team down.
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  And they ended up winning the game.
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  So in some ways, that's something that an athlete can think, "This is the end of the world.
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  This is the worst thing that I could have ever done." And ultimately, I try to help athletes determine between, is this a mini mistake?
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  Is this a regular mistake?
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  Is it a mega mistake?
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  Because in their minds, they think everything's a mega mistake.
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  And sometimes they're small mistakes that don't end up affecting the outcome of a game.
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  But mentally they do have to learn how to let it go, how to do a hard right.
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  Meaning, "I've got to just drop this and refocus and get my mind back on what I need to be doing," if it's during a game.
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  I also love the idea of giving only a certain amount of time after a loss to let that be a thing that they think about and worry about.
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  So oftentimes in the NFL, we would give the players
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  24 hours.
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  You get 24 hours to worry, feel bad, you know, but now fix it.
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  How can you go back, evaluate what led to that mistake, whether it's mental or physical or both, and then work on addressing that so that you take your feelings and put it into
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  motion and do something with it and about it instead of sitting and really, you know, letting that overwhelm you.
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  So thanks for asking that question because it's so important.
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  It almost seems like compartmentalizing it and resetting so that you can move forward.
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  Yes, excellent.
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  A reset is something I definitely teach as a skill of, what is your reset button?
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  Is it something physical?
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  Sometimes players will tie their shoe or they'll adjust their uniform or they'll look at the sky and point up or look at the scoreboard.
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  And sometimes it's a phrase, you know, "next play." And they are able to do a reset where they let it go and refocus.
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  So tell me, you know, we focus on mental health.
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  And so I really want you to talk about, you know, both the young college and professional athletes and their mental health and keeping it in an optimal place.
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  Yeah, I mean, I think fortunately we've seen more attention be paid to the mental health of athletes since the pandemic, especially, when a lot of athletes at all levels really
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  were suffering from feeling isolated, from feeling lonely, from feeling disconnected.
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  Our whole world was going through that.
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  And I think what came to light, one of the benefits was how important it is to take care of your mental health
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  in the face of all these demands that athletics typically puts on young people and professionals.
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  I mean, all the way up, right?
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  There's a lot of demands in terms of travel and practice.
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  And as I alluded to before, all of the expectations.
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  And so depression and anxiety are very real for athletes who have this grueling schedule and don't get to see their friends and family very often, might feel isolated, even though
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  they're very...
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  talented and get a lot of attention on social media, they might feel alone.
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  And so one of the beauties and benefits of being a clinical and sports psychologist is that I do take the whole person into consideration when I work with them.
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  And a lot of teams are beginning to hire people who have training in both clinical and sport performance.
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  So we want to look at those things and make sure we're not missing out on
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  things that may be hampering an athlete's ability to be their self, best self.
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  One thing that we see a lot is
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  trauma. So athletes will come in the door with a lot of trauma from their childhood or upbringing that tends to limit them and have maybe some internalized core beliefs about
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  themselves in the
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  world. And sometimes athletes develop OCD, Obsessive
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  Compulsive Disorder, which requires a special type of treatment, as we know, to actually get better.
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  They can hide within the world of sports very easily because their obsessiveness and compulsions are put to good use.
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  So we want to be mindful of athletes and just what might be going on for them if they're not at their best and making sure to prioritize mental health as part of what will
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  contribute to their high performance.
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  And I would think that being very cognizant about their personal life impacting them, their professional life as an athlete.
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  Absolutely, yes.
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  Kind of making sure that we care about them in a holistic way and what's going on for them, you know, off the court and off the field.
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  Oftentimes, you know, they bring that into the practice facility and sometimes they do need time to go deal with things.
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  They need time away to go handle a personal matter.
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  And, you know, how do we respect that and still, you
• 27:10
  know, allow room for them to be human.
• 27:12
  So as we kind of wrap up, what would you say, you know, because you've worked with all of these different athletes, but you know, in terms of what you've experienced, what would
• 27:25
  you say a key takeaway for the athlete and the non-athlete that you could use in your everyday life?
• 27:32
  Yeah, I mean, I think there's so many obviously that are tremendously helpful, but one of the things is find what works for you.
• 27:42
  Find what makes you feel focused and comfortable and at your best and be able to create a menu of things that you can turn to.
• 27:52
  I think too often we find something that works and then we just want to repeat that over and over.
• 27:59
  And that's why superstitions occur, right?
• 28:01
  Because we think, "Oh, it's the lucky t-shirt.
• 28:04
  It's the lucky sweatshirt.
• 28:05
  I have to keep wearing that because that's what made me perform so well." And then we get ourselves trapped, right?
• 28:13
  Part of wellness and why I think this podcast is amazing is because we're talking about flexibility, cognitive flexibility; being able to, to be water, to be able to adjust,
• 28:25
  adapt, and work with what we have.
• 28:28
  And that striving for excellence is an admirable goal.
• 28:33
  We can't be perfect in anything.
• 28:36
  And I don't tend to admire perfect people.
• 28:39
  So allow yourself to make mistakes and be real, be authentic, and still strive for excellence.
• 28:47
  All right, well thank you so much for joining us.
• 28:50
  I just, I thought the information and your experience helped me know more about high performance.
• 28:59
  And so I really appreciate you being here and thank you to the audience for being with us today.
• 29:06
  And just like Dr.
• 29:08
  Hickmann said, remember: Wellness is a journey, not a destination.
• 29:13
  So thank you, take care, and we'll see you the next time.