One of the very staples of mental performance & pressure management is Controlling the elements of sports performance that are within our control. Many psychologists, performance coaches and elite level athletes preach controlling the controllable.
Where did the phrase “Control the controllable” come from?
The phrase is accredited to Austrian psychiatrist Viktor Frankl as a tool to assessing psychological risk. While there is some element of physical risk in sport (injury) most athletes train to avoid the physical risk. Sports such as boxing or bull-riding train to protect themselves from the physical danger.
But most athletes aren’t trained to manage the psychological risk of sport. Mostly this comes in the form of “fear of failure” or a “fear of judgement from others”. This can result in struggling to contain emotions, such as anger, frustration, nerves and anxiety, disappointment.
Now, let me address the fear of caring about what others think. Most people wake up in this world with intention to do good by others and themselves. So it is completely natural to care what others think. But in the heat of competition, as soon as you put your focus into others, you’ve already lost. Can you turn it off? No. Can you control your focus elsewhere? Yes.
So what does “controlling the controllables” really mean?
It is focusing or putting energy or directed thoughts into the elements of sports performance that are 100% within our control. Most of these reside internally in our inner athlete. Our thoughts, emotions, decisions, perspectives, and actions. If we control these to the best of our ability does it mean that we will have a flawless performance? No. There are still going to be mistakes made, and results that don’t go our way. But what you will find is more consistency, meeting a higher level of skill potential, and a greater influence in getting the desired results.
In essence, it’s near impossible to have the perfect performance when you are competing against others. In fact, the more competitors involved, the less likely you are to compete flawlessly. And that is because, each competitor has different, thoughts, self-talk and mental imagery that influences their actions, in order to impact competition. And it is essentially our thoughts that have the greatest effect on our results.
What are the elements of competition that we can’t control?
This is basically everything external of ourselves. The venue / location of competition, the weather, accidents that cause competition to be stopped or cancelled. The crowd or opposition, and the things they say or do. Teammates freezing you out, coaches decisions and playing time, referee or umpires calls. In fact, there is a lot to detract your focus that you just cannot control.
So, what happens in the brain when we are thinking about that past mistake we made or we’re worried about what the coach or teammates might say? We go into what is known as a fear state of mind. This triggers our stress response. The brains one job is to keep us alive. And when there is any sort of risk danger or danger to this, in this case psychological danger. It hits the warning button. It does this with great intentions and that is to keep us safe and alive. So how does it warn us? By releasing cortisol into our brain. In turn, we feel these unhelpful emotions such as fear, embarrassment, guilt, disappointment, anxiety and so on.
As part of the brain sounding off the alarm, these emotions create uncomfortable feelings within the body. This can be in the form of an elevated heart rate, the weak knees, the sweaty palms, the butterflies in the stomach, etc. etc. And because these feelings feel so real it influences our actions. This generally results a lack of focus or a split-focus which can affect your ability to impact competition to the best of your ability.
This can spiral too. One bad play turns into the next, and so on, and so on, and then all of a sudden, your emotions are at an all-time high. But this is just the brain trying to keep you from taking risks to avoid the negative emotions.
The conscious mind, the thoughts that we are aware of likes to feel in control. Fear is the sense of loss of control. So it makes sense to please the conscious mind, so we don’t go into a fear or stress state by directing our focus to controlling the controllable.
To add to this, as humans / athletes, we have a strong negative bias. 80% of our thoughts generally have a negative connotation and being creatures of habit / routine – 95% of those thoughts are a habit or repeated thought. This further promotes the idea that we are built to survive, not thrive.
A simple example of this is if I ask you the question of “what if?” – the automatic thought is what if ‘bad’. What if I mess up? What if I miss this shot? What if I lose this race? What if I turn the ball over? Very rarely do we think – what if I have a great game? What if I hit a personal best? What if I win.
A athletes, we only have a limited amount of physical and emotional energy, so when we direct thoughts into elements of sport that are outside of our control it can leave us feeling absolutely drained. An example of this, is if you can go back to a time where you had a bad day. One thing went wrong, and then the next, and then the next, and so on. That spiraling effect most probably had you feeling completely exhausted by the end of the day. And conditioning is such a big part of sports – you know when you’re tired. The negative self-talk or more victim-like self-talk kicks in as a result of the discomfort the mind or body are going through.
The release of cortisol into our brain also has the ability to cloud our thoughts and speed everything up as a way to highlight the risk. So, sometimes when the game feels like it is going at a lightning pace, we first need to slow everything down internally to slow everything down externally.
So how do we do that? Well first we need to slow down the heart rate. One of the most prominent signs of entering a stress / fear state is the elevated heart rate.ย We can slow this down through our breathing. Long deep breaths allow us to slow the heart rate and in turn send a message to the brain that the danger or risk has passed. But at this point we are still in our head, trying to consciously control our performance, and that is where we need to get back into our body, trust our skillset and allow muscle memory to read and react in competition. And we do this by directing our thoughts to an element of competition within our control.
Whenever we go into a fear state, it is triggered by something that has happened in a past moment or future thinking. Because we cannot control either the past or the futureย the mind goes into a state of panic. But it is impossible to be in a fear state and peak performance state at the same time. It is impossible to be comfortable and uncomfortable at the same time. It is impossible to be calm and feel any type of negative emotion at the same time. So we are either in one or the other. And that is why we need to direct our thoughts back into the present moment. To What’s Important Now.
Every result has a process to getting that result. That is why every score starts at 0-0 and it is why every race starts with 0 seconds on the clock. It is the attention to the finer details of each moment in competition that ultimately gets you the results you want – or at least has a strong influence. Controlling the process influences your results.
You may have experienced this (and you even see it at professional levels) where teams or individuals have already lost before the competition has started. And that is because their focus is on everything outside of their control – whether that is on what the opposition are doing, or the status of their opposition, or whether it’s looking too far ahead and triggering a fear of failure. There is a process to every win. So coming back to the here and now, focusing on ourselves, focusing on our strengths will better equip us and go a long way in influencing a better, more desired result.
Coming from a basketball background, I know a lot of basketball players put an emphasis on making shots and scoring points. Truth is we can only influence this part of the game. Same with many ball sports as soon as that ball leaves our hand, foot or even head we no longer have control of what the ball does. Sometimes a shot can feel great off the hand or off the foot, but still miss. For some athletes this small portion of the game can cause disconnect in confidence and trust in their skillset. In turn, they allow the results – something they cannot fully control impact the rest of their performance and cause hesitancy, overthinking, and a fear of failure.
Another element of performance we can influence but not control is injury. We can stretch, warm-up, fuel our body the right way, hydrate, and prepare ourselves to the best of our ability but unfortunately, injury is a part of sport. Especially acute injuries, like rolling an ankle or twisting a knee, or injuries caused by overuse such as soft tissue type of injuries.
One very common part of competition that many athletes experience is worrying about making mistakes. And we all know happens if you worry about making mistakes, you start to make more mistakes. The brain has a harder time processing the negative messages we send to the brain. That is, if we say something like don’t think of a yellow car. The first image that pops up is a yellow car. That is why it is important to prepare ourselves both physically and mentally in competition in order to experience less surprises.
In 2008 Michael Phelps became the Greatest Olympian of all time winning 8 gold medals at the Beijing games, and winning 28 Olympic medals – 23 of which are gold over his career span. Phelps accredits a lot of his success to swim coach Bob Bowman who coached him form the age of 12. Diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) which impacted Phelps focus as a young kid, Coach Bowman introduced him to visualisation as a relaxation technique before going to bed at night.
This became Michael Phelps superpower as the practiced evolved from not only visualizing himself winning races but he incorporated how he would react if he faced adversity throughout competition such as getting off the blocks late, his swimsuit ripping or his goggles filling up with water mid-race. This preparation technique allowed him to feel comfortable in the most pressurized of environments and the results obviously speak for themselves.
How can you ‘control the controllable’ in your next competition?
Write down 1-3 specific things you would like to focus on in performance – Keep them simple and short but be specific. Is it a basic fundamental action that will help you get a desired result? Is it something you might say to yourself to reset? Is it a superstition or behaviour that helps you perform at your best? Is it a certain emotion or feeling you want to feel that allows you to show up as the best version of yourself while creating peak performance? Is it an effort-based action or a word that keeps you in a positive mindset?
Whatever it isโฆ write these down and read over them so you remember them and can use them at the appropriate times in competition. Have fun and play around with these over time and see what controllable mental cues create peak performance for you. Remember peak performance isn’t a result of luck but a series of thoughts, feelings and actions that have created a resilience to distraction and allowed you to trust in your skillset deeply.
The second thing you can do is create a “what-if plan” like Michael Phelps. How will you react to certain scenarios? How will you react if you make a mistake? Or you haven’t had time to get through your full preparation? Or sit on the bench for extended minutes at a time? How will you respond? There is a level of comfort to peak performance. And comfort comes from preparing for anything and everything.
I’d love to hear what controllable elements you choose to focus on in competition?
Thanks for reading.