WebBall.com - Lesson 5: Breaking Out of the Slump

Your Brain on Baseball

So how does a player break the choking cycle and can his coach ever truly help?

First, let's get rid of the idea that everyone chokes.
Like many clichés, "Beginner's luck" may be real because beginners are still learning explicitly; they're unlikely to choke. In fact, only experienced players choke. To quote Prof. Dan Willingham of the University of Virginia...

"Choking occurs only if use of the conscious mode leads to worse performance than use of the unconscious mode. This should be the case only if there has been some opportunity for the unconscious mode to learn - if the [player] is a novice, there is no harm in using the conscious mode, because the unconscious mode has little or no task-relevant knowledge yet. Thus, skilled performers should be more susceptible to choking effects than novices."

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