For lifters I would say to first of all try to
figure out early on what is the cause. Learn
from your mistakes. If you process your mistakes
constructively you can return to competition
much stronger much more resilient athlete control
what you can in the meantime just get back to
training focus on what you can and then very
very slowly you know work on building up your
mental resilience play around with different
techniques that might help you to focus whether
that's a pre -performance routine whether that's
certain music whether it's breathing techniques
like figure out what works for you and do it
in training Hi Hilary, it's my pleasure to have
you on Evidence Strong Show. If you could briefly
introduce yourself. Hi, thanks so much for having
me. My name is Hilary Galvin. I'm a weightlifting
coach, personal trainer and recent psychology
graduate. Congratulations. Thank you. And your
thesis was on weightlifting, so I'm stoked about
it because any thesis on weightlifting, but that
was your undergrad thesis, wasn't it? Yes, yes.
So I did an undergraduate degree in humanities
with a psychology major, so psychology and philosophy.
And for my final year... project, I wanted to
look at choking under pressure in competitive
weightlifting athletes. Awesome. Very excited
for the topic. And let's start with some kind
of definition what choking is. Cool. So choking
is a recognized phenomenon within sports psychology.
It describes a sudden and significant performance
decline under perceived pressure. So the key
two parts of that definition is that it is sudden,
unexpected. It's usually doing something that
the athlete could do any day of the week, could
do in training, so in weight. lifting that would
be like a lift that they know that they could
normally achieve something that's automatic and
the other part of the definition that's important
is the perceived pressure so it might not be
a pressurized situation but the athlete perceives
there to be pressure all right why did you decide
on this particular topic because you're a weightlifting
coach you could research anything related to
weight eating or not but you have decided to
research choking why so i just think it's such
an interesting phenomenon and when for my own
like knowledge i was looking at all in the research
I couldn't find anything to do with weightlifting
there was a lot of papers on golf basketball
even some martial arts but I couldn't find anything
on weightlifting and just from my own experience
in what is involved in the sport like there is
appears to be a lot of pressure in the competition
environment it's a kind of all eyes on you moment
when the weightlifter you've got your six lifts
you've got your one minute clock so i wanted
to see like was there anything specific to weightlifting
that we could find um what does this look like
for weightlifters essentially why choking happens
from what we know from other sports so what we
know about choking under pressure in other sports
the research kind of shows that it's not caused
by like one specific thing it usually comes from
like a combination of a psychological factors
emotional factors and environmental factors that
can then all like interact in the moment so psychologically
there's kind of three main explanations well
three like front runners there's there's a few
diversional theories but so the first main two
theories are attentional models so they are like
distraction and self -focus so distraction model
suggests that anxiety can distract the attention
from the task relevant cues to like total irrelevant
things so this could be internal or external
which will then overwhelm the attentional resources
of the athlete so you know for example athletes
going to lift and either a thought comes into
their head about something else or they're thinking
about lots of different things or there's a noise
or something like another athlete something else
has diverted their attention away so that's this
sort of distraction model then the second attentional
model is a self -focus so this is when the perceived
pressure makes the athlete overthink the movements
that are normally automatic to them so like instead
of just lifting the bar they'll start consciously
monitoring like oh like where's my hand like
what you know how it feels and that disrupts
the performance And my thought behind it was
weightlifting could potentially be particularly
vulnerable here because it's so technical and
often taught very explicitly, like it's very
cue focused. So it could potentially make things
easier to like overanalyze under stress. So they're
the two sort of attentional models behind why
choking might happen. And the other model is
self -presentation. So that's basically worrying
about how others perceive them. So yeah, so this
would be like more like. is the athlete identity
tied up into themselves as a weightlifter do
they have a self -imposed pressure to appear
competent behave in a certain way especially
might be more athletes who are already have like
high trait anxiety or perfectionism well this
trait this theory in itself is like highly reliant
on personality theory so it's not very generalizable
but essentially all three the most important
thing to think about with those is that anxiety
is like at the forefront of those three theories
so that then ties in with how the athlete can
regulate their emotions and how they experience
anxiety. Will there be some lifters who will
cope with these situations better than the others?
Are there types of lifters that are more prone
to having problems in these situations? Yes,
definitely. So when it comes to these theories
that like essentially the anxiety from whichever
um whatever kind of pressure internal external
like if that can take over it could that what
happens is the brain's focus is overloaded and
there's only so many things that you can think
about so therefore they can't execute the movement
and so but there are certain types of athletes
who might be for example better at regulating
their emotions or they have spent a lot of time
this may have happened before so they've figured
out right okay Like, I know this happens. Where
is it coming from? What can I do to like, to
get some techniques in to actually improve this?
So yeah, I would say there are definitely some
athletes that can experience this, are more likely
to experience this. There is some interesting
research about choke susceptibility and it's
actually a measure that you can look at, but
it's not something that I looked at for my project,
but I think it would be really interesting to
look at on a broader scale. Do we know how to
measure choking in other sports? So choking susceptibility
is a relatively new... concept that can be measured.
However, it's not been practiced enough. The
majority of choking research that I have read.
has been qualitative because a lot of the experience
is so personal to the athlete and it can't be
generalized really because there is like it's
not black and white what other factors could
be influencing you said there are some psychological
aspects how the athlete is experiencing the competition
and or or situation doesn't have to be competition
but the situation and how anxious they are what
coping strategies and and how much of them they
can use so that's the psychological part what
else so So emotionally, again, so the emotional
side and the psychological side are very interlinked.
So it's down to their own like emotional regulation
and how when they have those physical sensations
of the emotions, how they're able to bring that
back down because it's essentially like overloading
the capacity of the athlete to execute the movement.
Being too aroused can throw off the rhythm, the
coordination, but also how the athletes interpret
the pressure does matter in this. So if they
see competition as a threat rather than... than
a challenge they are more likely to have a choking
incident also previous experiences could make
this worse something like you know it's happened
before or they might have bombed out I could
not find a single paper that had the words bombing
out in it in my in my literature review but it's
something that's it's real it's obviously a colloquial
term but something that is so real in the world
of weightlifting as a fear for athletes so bad
experiences in the literature can you know get
people into a bit of a cycle of creating that
anticipatory anxiety before they even go to like
lift essentially if it was a weightlifter then
when it comes to the environment like the environment
in the literature is very varying because things
like the audience presence is something that
was studied quite a lot across different sports
varied so much in different sports like it was
seen as a bit of a distraction in some team sports
but then with powerlifting I think I looked at
a bench competition and they found the audience
to be like really motivating so that Being a
strength sport, I know you can't generalize,
but maybe that might have had more in common.
That was the theory. Again, it wasn't really
looked at so much in weightlifting. Other like
influences that could potentially get in the
way is like the order of the competition. Obviously,
Olympic weightlifting is a little bit like unforgiving
in you've got your attempts. They can be changed
any time. You've got your time limits. You've
got your live rankings. So that dynamic type
of competition also could be like an influence.
pressure influence on the athlete we looked at
warm -up rooms and how that could be stressful
the tournament structure of the weightlifting
competition means that athletes are temporarily
ranked in real time they don't receive their
final placements until everyone has made their
final attempts and that ongoing ranking could
potentially create fluctuating pressure environment
so in other sports that might have a type ranking
it could show that athletes who are near the
top might be more likely to choke because of
the height and like stakes that kind of like
do or die additional pressure and then or there's
also like the seemingly like minor environmental
disruptions such as unexpected noise during a
lift or last minute changes to the order could
potentially interrupt that attentional focus
i think the key to it is keeping it calm because
keeping the athlete calm because central to all
of these theories around why athletes choke is
unregulated anxiety so it might come from external
it might come from internal but it's still the
same thing so you at the end of the day what
you want to do is keep the athlete calm so however
that looks like totally individual to the athlete
right how did you design your study let's start
with what was your research question and who
did you invite to the study so my research question
was what psychological emotional and situational
factors influence the likelihood of choking in
competitive weightlifting so the aim of that
study was i wanted to understand choking under
pressure from the perspective of competitive
weightlifters themselves. So rather than measuring
like performance outcomes, I wanted to explore
the athlete's lived experience of pressure and
choking in competition. So eventually after recruitment
period, I managed to get eighth athlete. I believe
it was three. men and five women they who had
all competed at at least a national level we
had a couple of people who had competed internationally
as well which gave for a good mix of perspectives
so once we had recruited everyone had signed
their consent forms I invited participants to
take part in an interview on zoom we just recorded
voice only which was then anonymized and transcribed
so when I was designing the questions I once
the athletes signed up they took part in a one
to one semi -structured interview, which was
conducted via Zoom. Each interview was around
30 minutes, which allowed enough time to explore
experiences in depth without being overly demanding
for the athletes. We followed a flexible, semi
-structured interview. We started with background
questions just to build that rapport and moved
into discussions about pressure, choking experiences,
how the athlete was thinking and feeling throughout
the competition and how factors like the audience,
coaches and the competition environment affected
their performance. Athletes were also asked about
coping strategies, resilience and... whether
or not they'd experienced a positive performance
under pressure which is called a clutch performance
and while this isn't something that I was specifically
looking at it's good practice when looking at
choking under pressure to also ask about the
opposites just to see as well how the athlete
can handle pressure and can perform under pressure
so once the interviews were done they were audio
recorded transcribed and then checked very very
carefully for accuracy and then we well I used
the four stage interpretive phenomenological
analysis process, which essentially you immerse
yourself in the data. So it was a four step.
You read, read, read, read again until you know
them back to front. And then you will go individually
through each transcript and pick out some themes
with each athlete's story. And then once you've
got all the themes individually. of your each
transcript you then look at it on a broader scale
and see can we identify anything across the data
any patterns that's coming through so very time
consuming but this method is really really good
for getting that like lived experience of the
participant the analysis found for superordinate
themes with each of them having two sub themes
so it was quite a lot of information so the first
major theme was the perceived precursors of choking
for these weightlifters so the two sub themes
within these main themes was self -imposed pressure
and expectations so the athletes reported that
the majority of the pressure they felt came from
within which was really interesting like it was
didn't come from coach or other athletes came
from their own standards their own like goals
expectations the desire to win the desire to
get medals that's where the pressure seemed to
come from for the majority of lifters there was
a couple of lifters that spoke about bombing
out and what would happen if you bombed and potentially
getting into that cycle of it happening again
because of the fear and so that did seem to cause
like a quite a lasting emotional impact for the
athlete the other precursor of choking like main
one was overthinking and intrusive thoughts so
the athletes described being trapped in their
own minds like fixating on missing the lift before
they'd even had a chance to try the lift which
then was disrupting that automatic movement and
the focus and they said that the intrusive thoughts
could temporarily block the execution of the
lift particularly on the platform so do they
have any words of advice or maybe you have some
advice from your reading how to block the the
circle of these building up consequences and
pressures and overthinking going to the next
competition and so on how did the athletes deal
dealt with that i think particularly in this
study the athletes who had experienced the failure
and moving on from that the ones that were like
that were successful in this took a bit of time
like they took took their time to be upset and
you know whatever that was a cup might have been
an hour might have been a couple of days but
then went back and said okay like what happened
here really looking into like how am I thinking
about this like what's what what has got in my
way to take away that focus on on what I'm doing
so a lot of the athletes who have struggled with
this said that getting back into competition
relatively soon with like a less pressure environment
would be and by less pressure I mean not going
necessarily for like personal best like going
in to try and get a consistent competition feel
what it's like to be on the platform again feel
what it's like to you know have your one minute
clock and and all that and so that was a takeaway
from athletes who had looked and that was just
getting back getting back to it getting back
getting back on the platform okay so our next
major theme was the how athletes themselves actually
experienced choking so the first first way they
did described it was a kind of cognitive disruption
so the athletes experience like mind blank or
like mental blackout where they knew what to
do but they felt like they couldn't do it like
so a cognitive overload and they would approach
the buyer and think oh i don't know what i'm
doing here so this would represent a more extreme
form of intentional disruption rather than simply
just overthinking what you're doing it's essentially
a disconnection between the mind and the body
and how that manifested physically was very very
specific to the athlete like there was some athletes
found that they were really tense some athletes
found that they were had like uncontrollable
shaking others found that they had quite like
panicked responses like feeling afraid and really
doubting themselves so the kind of physical sensations
and then the psychological side were like interact
in creating like a force that then impaired their
performance. So that was the experiences, how
the athletes felt the choking. Yeah. And then
there was quite a few perceived social and environmental
influences, which was quite interesting. And
I think potentially specific to weightlifting.
So the athletes talked about the like social
pressures and mental games of being in the competition
environment. It was interesting. Quite a few
of the athletes recognized that other athletes
were getting in their heads. Whether that was
intentional or not, that was something that was
repeated by quite a few of my participants. They
spoke about verbal intimidation or non -verbal,
as if they were trying to create stress. So having
an awareness that, okay, the other athletes,
maybe they're nervous. Let's make them more nervous
kind of thing, which was really interesting.
So the stress in the warm -up area was quite
prevalent in the athletes I spoke to anyway.
When we spoke about audience, it was pretty mixed,
but actually... most athletes felt that they
didn't really see the audience at all that the
audience had either a motivating effect when
they were getting cheered on or that they were
pretty unaware that the audience was even there
which you know obviously shows that that focus
that focus is there I look at it a little bit
more when I speak about coping strategies but
a lot of the athletes spoke about like a pre
-performance routine so that the platform lifts
felt no different to the lifts in the back room
or the lifts in training so the other social
influence that was really really prominent actually
was the coach athlete relationship we had athletes
that found if they could trust their coach it
took away a lot of the other stresses of the
competition so the thought of like where am I
at on the board what lift what weight am I gonna
lift all of this And while if you're for the
majority of us, if you're at a really high level,
you potentially will have a consistent probably
two coaches consistently. But, you know, national
level in Scotland, you might not have that. Or
for coaches that were athletes that were coached
remotely, having to have someone on the day that
they wouldn't necessarily even even see for one
part of the year to the next. And then they have
someone there that might not be their coach,
might not be the person who does their program.
And that was an additional stressor for. some
of the athletes that I spoke to so yeah that
that coach athlete relationship and that trust
was a huge buffer for the stress and other environmental
factors meant that the weightlifter could literally
just focus on their lifting they didn't they
didn't worry about anything else so yeah it was
really really really interesting would it be
okay to go as far as saying that if you want
to reduce the likelihood of choking as a coach
you do everything to make it predictable the
same as in the gym keep it calm what else yeah
I think that is I mean in an ideal world if we're
not in a situation where a coach might have like
a few athletes in the one session like you know
you do what you can but I do think that the communication
and the trust is key for the coach and athlete
in especially in the back room especially if
the athlete is kind of a tendency to feel a bit
anxious anyway I think as well as a coach you
get to know your athletes you get to know their
needs that seems to be the most important aspect
of it because it's not a one -size -fits -all
you might have your athlete that is super confident
has done so many competitions and actually would
just rather they do their little routine you
just tap them on the shoulder when it's time
to lift and that's it where you might have your
athlete that kind of needs a bit more kept calm
kept things like light -hearted even they might
need like some jokes you know it just it's so
like specific to to the athlete awesome and then
the final like superordinate theme that we found
was coping perceived coping strategies and mental
preparation so this was so unique every single
athlete had their own like method that worked
for them which is really interesting yeah really
interesting actually so some of the athletes
had like a pre -performance routine and that
would be like you know tapping their foot with
a belt like they or it would be like pacing back
and forth like there was so many different ones
and other people really liked the breathing management
um like deep breathing management grounding and
visualization was mentioned other athletes spoke
about isolating themselves mentally with either
headphones or like the towel like we mentioned
earlier other athletes mentioned positive self
-talk like you know reminding themselves that
they can that they can do it and social support
was another one so A couple of athletes mentioned
that their having known that their like family
was present or knowing that like that loved one
was there made them feel that bit more calm when
they would they knew they would go out. And they
would see that person and everything would be
OK. So very, very unique to the athlete. And
then the kind of training and mental preparation
that athletes use to reduce that choking likelihood.
So a really important one actually was to focus
on the controllable factors within training.
So athletes spoke about, you know, if your training
is on point and your nutrition is on point and
your sleep is on point, like you've you've controlled
all the controllables you can like. So you've
taken away like. a lot of the stress that could
be seen there you know there was also general
like positive mindset training all of this outside
of competition and then also regular competition
experience was really important into building
that resilience and confidence and like coming
back after a hard like a bad competition or a
choking experience is to like come back out and
do it and know that you can do it And, you know,
that helps to build that confidence, keep the
athlete calm and carry on after having experiences.
If an athlete does have an episode where they
choke, I think try early on to figure out why.
Like figure out, is it because they're like constantly
thinking about something? Like whatever it may
be, like there's something on their mind that's
getting in the way. Like you need to kind of
figure out what's the root cause early, I would
say, before it starts becoming into a cycle where...
it's affecting training and you know it kind
of spirals into other things you know it's one
of those things about like if you're going for
your one rep max and it's your sixth attempt
would we really consider it to be choking like
because what's important is that the athlete
is capable of it you know and like if you're
testing something like you don't know yet if
you're capable of it so yeah I think the most
important thing is just early recognition figure
out why and then you can start developing your
own like techniques your coach to help you or
get you know a sports psychologist and get your
own techniques to figure out how you're gonna
like get that focus dialed in because it's so
unique so unique I've learned to the athlete
and how that they can cope with this so yeah
anything unexpected you discovered from the athletes
you interviewed I think I didn't anticipate just
how much the coach would be like pretty much
like seven out of eight athletes mentioned how
important the coach inside of things was and
how important it was that they could trust their
coach in the competition so there was a lot of
reliance there that was kind of unexpected for
me how much that was brought into it But yeah,
overall, pretty much all of the information that
the athletes had to give me was fairly tying
in with other research. And then... There was
some sport specific stuff. So like the back room
and yeah, the back room was the majority was
quite a surprise as well. How much sabotaging
there was perceived to be, which I hadn't really
thought about, to be honest. Interesting. I wonder,
is it the athletes thinking about it or is it
really happening and kind of is imposed on them?
It's really hard to know. Like, I think maybe
a mix. I think it was maybe a mix because the
intimidation tactics. I got like the people who
mentioned them I said could you tell me a bit
more about that and totally ranged from someone
just totally staring into someone's eyes and
opposite platforms to actually commenting on
each other's lifts or taking plates off other
platforms like coaches taking plates off other
lifters platforms and stuff so that was yeah
it very very interesting but I will caveat and
say that like my study was taken in a Scottish
sample like at one particular point in time so
there's so many things that like might not be
like general like a generalized view across weightlifting
worldwide but that was just the results that
I got interesting what would be your advice for
coaches and lifters around choking and how to
deal with it so for lifters I would say to first
of all try to figure out early on what is the
cause learn from your mistakes if you process
your mistakes constructively you can return to
competition much stronger, much more resilient
athlete. Control what you can in the meantime,
just get back to training, focus on what you
can and then very, very slowly, you know, work
on building up your mental resilience. Play around
with different techniques that might help you
to focus, whether that's a pre -performance routine,
whether that's certain music, whether it's breathing
techniques, like figure out what works for you
and do it in training. Don't train at the new
one competition day, as we all know. And then
for coaches, just be that stabilizing force.
for your athlete be there be supportive as you
can try and help reduce that pressure for them
like try not to be an additional source of pressure
for the athlete if they're already dealing with
a lot of pressure just be consistent build that
trust and remember that each athlete is unique
so yeah choking happens but with the right skills
support preparation lifters can learn to stay
calm confident it's not going to be something
that happens forever you can get out of it and
carry on a successful weightlifting career awesome
i think we could think about it as a similar
to a technical mistake during the heavy lift
you know how to lift You know how to lift heavy
weights. You made this particular mistake, which
was you lost focus. So unexpected. Do you like
it? Of course not. But it's not the end of the
world. It doesn't define you as a lifter necessary.
It's just about going back to it, learning the
skills to be better in general, to have better
technique or better ability to focus and or deal
with the stress. So maybe that's how we should
think about it. Definitely, definitely. It totally
doesn't define who you are as an athlete. You
see it as like a tiny little like pinprick on
the whole colourful career you'll have as an
athlete. It doesn't, yeah, absolutely doesn't
define you. And it's so easy to go into the gym,
do your squats, do your pulls, you know, work
on that, do your accessory work. But the mental
side of things can sometimes feel like another
task. But it is just as important for athletes
to... practice i have two short questions i usually
ask the first one is what is your favorite lift
my favorite lift is snatch from the blocks oh
why because you can get really really explosive
all right and if people want to see what you're
doing where should they go online um you can
find me on instagram at hillary .weightlifting
awesome thank you so much hillary all the best
thank you thank you so much