Inaugural Lecture

Stress in Sport:From choking to the yips

Professor Richard MullenDivision of Sport, Health and Exercise

Overview1. Research: Anxiety in sport, implicit and explicit

learning, mental skills training

2. Teaching: Postgraduate students

3. Applied work: Coach education, mental skills

training with teams and athletes

The Sport ExperimentThe technical skills of the contestants, if the experiment has been set up correctly, cancel each other out. The sport experiment is not concerned with the skill that the subject has brought with him (sic)to the contest. His skill is not really at issue . . . The deciding factor is not his skill, but his ability to perform it under stress.

(Patmore, 1986)

“Choking”

The “Yips”“Dartitis”

NeurologicalPsychological

Anxiety

• Evolutionary mechanism

–Mental component

–Physical component

• Effects?

Some issues

• Relative novices

• Effort?

• Performance measures

The expert paradigm

Heart Rate Variability

VLF: 0.00 - 0.07LF: 0.07 - 0.15HF: 0.15 - 0.40

Applied implications• Goal setting strategies

–Outcome–Performance–Process

• Part process goals• Holistic process goals

Mullen & Hardy (2010)

Basketball free throw

Golf putting

Teaching• Post graduate students

– Andrea Faull (UWIC): Conscious processing

– Eleri Sian Jones (Glamorgan): Conscious processing. Measuring performance anxiety.

– Claire-Marie Roberts (Glamorgan): Tranistions out of elite professional sport.

– Giorgios Loizou (Brunel): Circumplex models of emotion.

– MPhil: Hayley Brown

– Stuart Jarvis

– Dean Parsons

Research at Glamorgan• Paul Rainer: Fundamental movement skills

• Dave Adams: Reflection and curriculum

development in football

• Morgan Williams and Ryland Morgans:

Fatigue and performance indicators in

football

Applied Work

Inaugural Lecture

Stress in sport:From choking to the yips

Thank you for listening