How Can I Get into The Zone: "5 Pillars of Peak Performance.

Welcome to Sports Psychology Monthly! Awareness Athletics? will be providing new insight, tools and mental performance advice from researchers and practitioners from the sports psychology world. If you enjoy the science side of mental skills training, this series is for you!

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As athletes, we have all heard of, or directly experienced, what it is like to be in ‘THE ZONE’ when we are out there on the field. It’s that feeling of being ‘automatic’ and focused to the point where everything external fades away. How does an athlete identify their zone? And beyond that, how do they get INTO their zone?

In studying peak performance, and/or optimal functioning, research has found that individuals actively IN the zone experience “feelings of self-confidence, expectations of success, strong focus on the task, & feeling(s) of control” (Schweickle, M. et al., 2021). Peak performance, and identifying one’s zone, is both a physical and cognitive process. It is physical in developing the requisite motor skills to compete at a particular level and cognitive in the mental strategies needed to regulate emotions to better affect an active focus.

The "5 Pillars of Peak Performance" are a framework that we use at Awareness Athletics to best describe the zone experience and explain to athletes how they can effectively recreate it. The “5 Pillars” are a system, a tool, to implement and integrate mental skills to positively affect overall optimal functioning and HELP YOU GET INTO THE ZONE.

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Pillar #1 - Motivation (GRIT)

There is always a lot of conversation about the fickle nature of motivation because it can be difficult to cultivate at times. How we define “motivation” corresponds to both mental and physiological processes; involving intrinsic (i.e. internally sourced) or extrinsic (i.e. externally-sourced) origins. These sources of motivation work in conjunction with our physical state (i.e. sport-specific movements), our physiological response (i.e. heartrate, visual field, etc.), and our ability to attribute that physical response (i.e. causal relationship). ?This reciprocal relationship functions through our approach to mastery and orientation; Am I trying to master this skill or is this skill a means to an end (goal orientation)? This orientation, whether goal-oriented or mastery-oriented, affects our reluctance to either add new skills/new challenges (avoidance) or enhances our eventual resilience to persevere through adversity (GRIT). Motivation (GRIT) becomes a catalyst for resiliency when implemented effectively and consistently – corresponding to our ability to establish a powerful “Why” endure any “How”.

Struggles with motivation may present as:

·???????? Lack of effort

·???????? Avoidant behavior/thought-patterns

·???????? Detachment

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Pillar #2 - Focus

Focus is both a visual and an emotional skill. Focus can shift almost instantaneously between external and internal cues, processing stimuli in both the occipital and parietal areas of the brain. Using an external focus is beneficial when learning a new skill (i.e., ball mastery, technique etc.) while an internal focus is more beneficial in regulatory processing (i.e., assessing wins & losses). Enhancements in focus are most seen in physiological processes, as are our deficits. One key element is CO2 output – our breath. The ability to regulate our breath can positively affect our ability to focus – enhancing mental processing speed and mitigating some of the adverse physiological response.

Focus is also the process most responsive to perceived pressure and our ability to frame (or assess) pressure. Our experiences of pressure can narrow our focus, pull our focus towards unhealthy thought-patterns, and/or shift our focus from rational to irrational perspectives – increasing past or future thinking. Try a quick exercise: Take a moment to think of the last time you experienced a pressure situation. What happened to your heartrate? Did your breath increase or decrease?

Struggles with focus may present as:

·???????? Excessive anger/frustration

·???????? Repression

·???????? Uncharacteristic fatigue

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Pillar #3 - Confidence

Confidence is a cumulative process. We gain confidence in practice, competition, and through our attributions of our physical experience. Our self-efficacy beliefs are a direct reflection of that gained confidence. Self-efficacy beliefs are the beliefs we hold in our ability to accomplish a given task. Unlike self-esteem, self-efficacy beliefs are not blanket statements about our “goodness” as a person (or competitor) but rather reflect the belief that we can successfully execute a given skill/task.

We can better affect our self-efficacy beliefs in analyzing the language we use to attribute our successes/failures (Coffee & Rees, 2008). Attributions represent the causal relationship we use to describe our performance(s) - for instance, was it skill that allowed me to perform well or was it luck? Was the referee and/or coaches’ fault that I was unable to be successful or can I actively improve?

These causal relationships represent our attributions when describing our experience and can have a direct impact on our overall self-efficacy beliefs. The ability to use rational (as opposed to "irrational") language has shown to positively affect confidence and resilience in providing present (active) assessment. This active attributional process plays a key role in optimal functioning, and our zone experience, in maintaining our sustained confidence towards those feelings of automaticity.

Struggles with confidence may present as:

·???????? Self-limiting language

·???????? Excessive worry

·???????? Grandiose self-image

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Pillar #4 - Emotion Regulation

One of the most vital indicators of the zone experience, emotion regulation, reflects our ability to not only modify negative emotions but also to effectively integrate positive emotions.

Our zone experience, while sometimes allusive, is characterized by a high feeling of intensity even though very little cognitive effort is allotted towards our physical movement (Van Der Lei & Land, 2016); meaning our body is in a heightened state while our mind is relatively relaxed.

Our self-talk, or inner dialogue, plays a critical role in achieving this state. Self-talk can be motivational, or instructional, but function in the frontal lobe of the brain and has a corresponding effect on our focus & confidence. One mistake many make when developing self-talk is the notion that it MUST be positive. Functional self-talk is not an “either – or” dynamic; functional self-talk is continuum, a scale, that reaches from healthy to unhealthy in regard to the frequency and saliency of the language we use.

Struggles with emotion regulation may present as:

·???????? Overexcitement

·???????? Exhaustion

·???????? Inability to recall past performances/details

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Pillar #5 - Actualization/Zone

Here’s where it all comes together. Actualization is the active integration (and culmination) of these key mental skills into behavior. This is where we FIND OUR ZONE.

Research has identified the Inverted-U to best describe the actualization process. The Inverted-U, also known as the Yerkes-Dodson Law, assesses the relationship between arousal and motivation to identify peak performance. It states that our performance increases as our arousal increases until we reach peak performance, any more arousal beyond our “peak threshold” will result in decreased performance (hence the inverted “u”).

This scaling of our arousal means we can train ourselves (mentally) to actively increase our peak performance threshold. We can actively develop skills to augment the physiological effects of pressure to increase our focus, better regulate our emotions, and successfully reach our zone experience.

In short – athletes actually have a LOT of control over their ability to get into ‘the zone’ and reach peak performance. Through this mental skills framework of motivation, focus, confidence and emotion regulation IT IS POSSIBLE to identify your zone and learn how to cultivate your own zone experience on demand.

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References & Additional Resources:

Schweickle, M., Swann, C., & Vella, S. (2021). Exploring the “clutch” in clutch performance: A qualitative investigation of the experience of pressure in successful performance. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, Vol. 54.

Confidence pp:?

Coffee, P. & Rees, T. (2008). Main and interactive effects of controllability and generalizability attributions upon self-efficacy. Psychology of Sport and Exercise.

Emotion Regulation pp:

Van der Lei, H. & Land, W. (2016). Individual arousal-related performance zones effect on temporal and behavioral patterns in golf routines. Psychology of Sport and Exercise.

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The Inverted-U additional resources:

https://journals.humankinetics.com/view/journals/tsp/8/4/article-p360.xml?rskey=BhxVOX&result=8

https://journals.humankinetics.com/view/journals/jsep/9/1/article-p33.xml?rskey=BhxVOX&result=6

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10413209308411307