something stuck, sir?
OK, I’m no professional sportsman or athlete but I do a little bit of what I fancy every now and again and still (try) to punch above my weight on the squash court four or five times a week, so, I have had the fortune, perhaps misfortune, to witness this phenomena in the here and now: the infamous ‘choke’. In fact, there are a couple of brothers that play the same circuit I do, who are renowned for this. Crueller players (OK, me!) have gone as far as actually naming it ‘the Davey choke’.
‘Choking’ refers to the situation a sportsman finds himself in when he just can’t get over the winning line, he can’t hit the ace to win the match, convert the winning try, sink the pot or slot home the penalty. They lose their rhythm, tighten up, the killer-instinct goes awol, aggression is nowhere to be found, form deserts them and the winning mentality becomes a dim and distant memory.
Perhaps due to our repressed emotional outlook Britain is no stranger to the choke. Reading the newspapers, listening to the media or overhearing the ubiquitous pub conversation you’d be forgiven for thinking the choke is our national pastime! Do I need to mention last week’s penalty shootout? Again. This week will be Andy Murray’s turn. Again. Just earlier today on the radio I hear that Paula Radcliffe is distraught at being injured. Again. Who can forget poor Jimmy White who lost six snooker world championship finals, failing to pot an ‘easy’ championship-winning black against Stephen Hendy in 1994.
Then there’s Graeme Hick. Hick was going to be the redemption of the England cricket team. Putting aside for a second the fact that being Rhodesian (aka Zimbabwe) he shouldn’t have been considered for England in the first place, he scored county runs like nobody else but when his chance on the big-stage finally came, he blew it. For any number of reasons, he failed to deliver at Test level – poor management, cruel captaincy, nerves, poor technique et al. The bottom line is he choked.
It’s probably true that all of us choke at some point in time in our lives, whether it’s at a job interview, on a hot-date, in an exam or simply when we’re on public display. When you walk, move and behave normally you don’t need to think about it, and consequently you don’t think about it. But when we have to ‘perform’ we can start to over-analyse the situation and panic can all too often set in. A couple of months ago, on what I had wrongly confused with a first-date, I fell head-first into a rose bush. I kid you not. Needless to say there wasn’t a second!
Sports psychologists and psychiatrists the world over have attempted to understand the nature of the choke. The closest I’ve come across in simplifying this breaks the human brain into a two part model of ‘chimp & human’. When it’s working well, the brain’s a fully-functioning computer but when things start to go wrong, either the chimp (emotion) or human (reason) kick in. The chimp starts telling you that you can’t lose this, you mustn’t look stupid in front of all these people, you’re not fit enough, you’ll never beat your opponent. In the same vein the human rationalises all your actions and movement and you lose the natural skill, talent and spontaneity that you’ve spent years building. Either way you’re on a hiding to nothing.
NB Get this. I started writing this yesterday. Last night in a wee tournament I came up against one of the aforementioned Davey’s. Any idea on the outcome? Yep, for the first time ever he whupped me. B*gger. But don’t think for one second I choked. One man’s miss is another man’s choke!
