USOC Mental Training Skill #5: Concentration Exercise 2

Focusing Under Pressure

Below are several ideas for ways to practice focusing under pressure.

1. Change-of-focus drill. Select a period of time (anywhere from 30 seconds to two minutes) during which you direct your focus to only one aspect of a performance or skill. Change focus during the following time interval.

For example, if you are running, switch your focus among the following three areas:

1. Footwork – how do my legs feel?
2. Arm Position – where are my arms?
3. Breathing – am I breathing easily?

2. Simulation training. Recreate a competitive situation in practice.
Simulated competition experiences enable you to become so familiar with competing stimuli that you are no longer distracted by them.

3. Distraction drills. Practice following your performance routine despite verbal and visual distractions deliberately performed by your teammates, coaches or others. For example, a tennis player may play a practice match while an audio recording of crowd noises is played over the loud speaker, or the coach may instruct the line judges to deliberately make bad calls, testing the athletes ability to recover from the unexpected.

4. Quality Practice. This workout design is short and intense. You must be ready as soon as practice begins and warm-up ends. Only one misplay is allowed. After two missed chances you must stop the practice of that skill. Time yourself. Over time, you ability to focus intensely while performance well will increase.