Dealing with the Pressure
by Steve McGill
In track and field, the pressure to perform can be a very real thing, and the inability to deal with that pressure effectively can sabotage a race, a season, and even a career. This topic of discussion came up in a conversation/interview I recently had with my former athlete Keni Harrison, who is undefeated thus far this year in the women’s 100 meter hurdles, and recently convincingly won the USA championship in that event, putting her in position to vie for the World Championship in October.
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The last time I had spoken with Keni, other than text messages, was in the summer of 2016. She had just come off of breaking the world record in a blazing time of 12.20. The accomplishment was all the more remarkable because she had just failed to make the Olympic team two weeks earlier–a huge disappointment after having broken the American record earlier in the season and looking invincible.
When I talked to her then, I asked her what she thought had happened at USA’s, and she explained that she simply wasn’t ready to deal with the pressure. Physically, she said, she was far more advanced than she was mentally. Her body, she said, was ready to do great things, but in her mind she still harbored doubt regarding her abilities.
In a text-message conversation earlier this summer–shortly after her Diamond League victory in Monaco–I praised her for running so well and executing her technique with precision for the entire race, as she had fallen behind early and made a huge surge in the second half of the race. She lamented that she had a bad start, saying that she still needs to get her start together. I responded by saying, hey, the start will come, but in the meantime, recognize that even with a bad start, nobody can clear the hurdles as efficiently as you do for all ten, and you’ve proven that time and time again. That’s when she wrote something that surprised me. She said that when she has a bad start, she gets anxious and loses focus on her own lane.
The reason I felt surprised was because I had thought she had moved past those self-doubts that had plagued her in 2016, and also in 2017, when she ran poorly in the World Championship final. But no, the self-doubt still lingered. When I interviewed her last week, we explored the topic further.
What I love about Keni is that she’s very honest about her flaws; she owns up to them and seeks to improve upon them. She now sees a sports psychologist regularly, and is also learning to acknowledge her strengths–her impeccable technique and her ability to take control of a race with her speed between the hurdles. By acknowledging her strengths, she feels less anxious about her weaknesses. I feel confident that she will win her first outdoor world championship this year. I feel like she’s ready now, and that she’s traveled far to get to where she is now: quietly confident and at the top of her game.
***
Track is an unforgiving sport. We all know this to be true. All the hard work, all the sweat and strain, all the training on the track and in the weight room, all of it comes down to what was your time and what place did you get. Dreams are fulfilled or shattered within the space of a hundredth of a second, or even less. Any mistake, even the most miniscule mistake, can make the difference between making a final vs. watching it in the bleachers, making a championship meet vs. watching it on television, earning a big contract vs. paying your own way to meets. As a result, learning to deal with the pressure that comes with literally laying it all on the line is something that must be incorporated into an athlete’s training. For a professional like Keni, for whom running professionally is her primary source of income, hiring a professional sports psychologist, like she has done, makes a whole lot of sense. I really think that having mental-health expert on your “team” is as essential as a massage therapist, dietician, strength coach, etc. As Keni pointed out, if your body is ready but your mind is not, then you will fall short of your potential, regardless of whether or not you’re the most talented athlete on the start line.
When I was interviewing people several years ago for the biography I wrote on Rodney Milburn, one of the people I spoke with was Thomas Hill, who was one of Milburn’s rivals and good friends in the 1970’s. In addition to many other races, they competed against each other in the 1972 Olympic Trials and Olympic Games. Hill compared competing in such high-pressure meets to being lined up to face a firing squad. It’s like, you either do it or you don’t, right here right now. There are no re-do’s, no second reps.
This is an aspect of competition that is unique to individual sports, particularly to sports like track and swimming. Even in boxing or tennis, there is a chance to take a break, regroup a little bit, then head back out there. In team sports, you have teammates you can rely on, and you have timeouts and half-times to regroup. But in track, especially in a race like the 100/110 meter hurdles, the entire race lasts for the blink of an eye. If you make a mistake, you have to recover on the fly, instinctively. I personally feel that track is the most psychologically demanding sport there is. I’m biased, of course. But I played basketball back in high school, and I have no memory of the pressure ever being as intense as it is in track.
In my experiences as a coach, I’ve found that each individual athlete has to discover, primarily through trial and error and instinct, the most effective strategies that enable them to enter into the competitive zone–to enter into that space where the chattering mind, full of fears and doubts, quiets down so that the body can do what it has been trained to do. Techniques like visualization, various forms of meditation, various yoga practices, listening to certain types of music, and surrounding yourself with supportive people who believe in you and are real with you are all methods to prepare the mind for the pressure of high-level competition. Not everything works for everybody, so when you hit on things that work for you, keep doing them, and make them a part of your daily routine.
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