News & Features

by Ray Brown, 2 October 2014

Special from EASI Academy

When someone "chokes" in a tennis match, there is an assumption that the person is flawed in some way.

This is very misleading. Choking occurs when two separate and very unrelated parts of the brain are in disagreement as to what action to take. As a result, they sort of "stalemate" each other resulting, in tennis, in an apparently inexplicable error.

What is at work in this instance is complex. The prefrontal cortex tells the player that everything is a "go" for his/her intended action. The limbic cortex, over 450 million years in the making, disagrees for reasons that may be impossible to discern. Since both parts of the brain have access to the motor cortex, there is a conflict which results in opposing actions being promoted by the different parts of the brain. The result is something we describe as choking because humans need a sociological explanation for events that are otherwise incomprehensible.

That we choose a pejorative explanation in our assessment of the individual is more a reflection of who we are than who the player is.

To throw a little more technical light on this subject, note that the limbic cortex can act like a blind animal striking out at shadows or windmills it believes to be threats. How the limbic cortex decides what is a threat can be very difficult to discern. Often it goes all the way back to early childhood experiences and makes an association which, if examined rationally, would be considered absurd by any civilized standard.

Here are some technical details: The amygdala has direct access to the voluntary motor systems through the striatum. There is also a connection between the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex and the voluntary motor systems. The prefrontal cortex provides us with the ability to anticipate the consequences of our actions. This part of the brain is not completely developed until around age 24. Voluntary actions originate in the prefrontal cortex but "meaning" can be associated to an action from the amygdala. What a mess!

The amygdala is so powerful that, in a crisis, it can freeze an individual in their tracks. This "freeze" has a name: catatonia. However, catatonia need not be pervasive. In tennis it can be localized to the arms and legs - only retarding their action rather than outright freezing them. Hence, on an important point, the arm can feel restrained and the legs become difficult to move. While the amygdala has a fight or flight response, the trigger that brings on the involvement of the amygdala need not be simply fight or flight. In particular, the amygdala works in conjunction with the hippocampus to access memories or impressions that have been established before the age of five. The child's perception of themselves based on the actions of the father, and their interactions with him, at an early age can have lasting effects. In cases, a father standing on the sideline can trigger an adverse reaction in the amygdala, making it impossible for the child to perform to the best of his/her ability.

To cope with, and alleviate, the effect of these childhood impressions, they must be dealt with directly off-court so that they do not compromise performance during critical times on-court in match play. This can be done, and it is done in military training routinely. The most important point is to not give the "choking" response a sociological meaning because this will lead the student away from a solution into a state where no solution can be found. Also, bravado and exhortations will be of no permanent value. The student must deal directly with the issues that are causing them to be unable to execute shots in the match which they would routinely hit in practice.

In summary, tennis can bring out associations during which we see windmills as adversaries without any help from everyday life. The countermeasure to this is to know yourself, to reflect on your belief system, and to search for something inside yourself that can make sense of your actions. Pop psychology will be useless in this search.

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About Ray Brown

Dr. Ray Brown entered tennis late in life through medical research over 17 years ago. His main focus was to determine whether tennis could be used as a new venue to learn more about the human brain than could be achieved in a laboratory setting alone. While the main objective was to advance science, the result was the development of a new approach to tennis training, EASI, organized around understanding and teaching the mental game from the start.

Dr. Brown received his PhD in nonlinear dynamics from U.C. Berkeley and has published numerous a scientific articles in the top refereed journals, the most recent publication being this year.

Additional information about Dr. Brown can be found at the EASI Academy website.