Sport Psychology Tactics - How Polyvagal Theory Explains Athlete Peak Performance & The Yips
About the Author
Ben Foodman is a licensed psychotherapist & performance specialist. He owns his private practice located in Charlotte North Carolina where he specializes in working with athletes to help them overcome mental blocks (the yips), PTSD, ADD / ADHD and achieve flow states through the techniques of Brainspotting & Neurofeedback. If you are interested in services, use the link here! Enjoy the article below!
Introduction: Why Sport Psychologists & Athletes Underestimate The Importance Of Social Connection
In the field of sport psychology, there is a heavy emphasis on the individual aspect of mental performance. Whether sport psychologists and mental performance coaches work with individual athletes or teams, there will always be an emphasis on improving a single athlete’s focus. While there are ‘team-building’ exercises or leadership development activities that these professionals frequently employ, there is very little understanding of the deeper implications that social connections and interpersonal relationships have on athlete performance.
Because this is both such an under-discussed issue, yet vitally critical towards athlete performance, I wanted to take the time to explore how social connections affect athlete performance as well as how this can affect the yips. First in part I. I will discuss how social connections actually affect athlete performance. Next in part II. I will review the neuroscience that explains what is happening during human connection-based experiences. Finally in part III. I will review strategies athletes can use to enhance their social connections. Let’s begin in part I. by reviewing how social connections actually affect performances.
Part I. Understanding How Social Connections & Interpersonal Relationships Affect Athlete Performance
When people think about the social aspect of sports, they often focus on team sports. The mistake here is assuming that social interactions truly ‘count’ in that sport context, but not as much as in the individual sport space. The fact of the matter is that social connection matters equally in both sport spaces and for many of the same reasons. One of the main points for this is because people only focus on the teammate social interactions and do not understand how social connections and interpersonal relationships both inside and outside of sports affect the individual athlete’s psychological health. Examples of social connections in sports that get overlooked yet have a dramatic impact on athletes include athlete-coach relationships, relationships that coaches have with other athletes, athlete-fan interactions, fan interactions with athlete social support systems, athlete relationships with athletic department administrators, and athlete relationships with sponsors and support staff.
Where things get really interesting is when we explore all of the social connections and interpersonal relationship issues that directly and indirectly affect athlete performance. Examples of how these interactions with athletes include the following: romantic relationships that athletes are involved in, dealing with institutional racism, sexism, homophobia and other macro-level social biases, the loss or stress of maintaining friendships or other non-sport related relationships, conflict with family members such as siblings, parents, grandparents, etc., the stress of being a parent, stress of being a guardian, etc. People often wonder how do these issues affect sport performance outcomes? The answer to this lies in our understanding of how the human brain is designed and how it functions. Two theories that help us understand this are Polyvagal theory and trauma-informed neuroscience. Let’s dive deeper into the literature on this subject matter.
Part II. How Polyvagal Theory Explains The Connection Between Athlete Performance & The Yips
As previously mentioned, Polyvagal theory is one way we can understand the science behind social interactions and how this affects athlete performance. In Bessel Van Der Kolk’s book The Body Keeps The Score, the author discusses Polyvagal theory in a way that can help us better understand the how social interactions impact our brain: In 1994 Stephen Porges, who was a researcher at the University of Maryland at the time we started our investigation of HRV, and is now at the University of North Carolina, introduced the Polyvagal Theory, which built on Darwin’s observations and added another 140 years of scientific discoveries to those early insights. (Polyvagal refers to the many branches of the vagus nerve-Darwin’s ‘pneumogastric nerve’ which connects numerous organs, including the brain, lungs, heart, stomach, and intenstine’’’.) The Polyvagal theory provided us with a more sophisticated understanding of the biology of safety and danger, one based on the subtle interplay between the visceral experiences of our own bodies and the voices and faces of the people around us. It explained why a kind face or a soothing tone of voice can dramatically alter the way we feel.
The author continues: Human beings are astoundingly attuned to subtle emotional shifts in the people (and animals) around them. Slight changes in the tension of the brow, wrinkles around the eyes, curvature of the lips, and angle of the neck quickly signal to us how comfortable, suspicious, relaxed or frightened someone is. Our mirror neurons register their inner experience, and our own bodies make internal adjustments to whatever we notice. Just so, the muscles of our own faces give others clues about how calm or excited we feel, whether our heart is racing or quiet, and whether we’re ready to pounce on them or run away. When the message we receive from another person is ‘you’re safe with me’ we relax. If we’re lucky in our relationships, we also feel nourished, supported, and restored as we look into the face and eyes of others. When we dig deeper into Dr. Porges’s work as well as the research involved in trauma-informed therapy is that one of the first cues we use to assess our safety is through social engagement. If we feel we are at risk or not safe (e.g. whether that be in a life threatening situation such as a car accident, or performing in front of fans during a sporting event), we will look for social support to transcend that issue. However, if our social support systems or interpersonal relationships are not there for us in our time of need, this is when we begin to become at increased risk for trauma.
When we lose our social connections or have interpersonal relationship issues in times of high stress is when we start to revert back to our primal behaviors of dysregulation. In the sport context, Dr. David Grand explains this eloquently in his book This Is Your Brain On Sports: ‘In parallel fashion, the brain attempts to always move toward a state of psychological equilibrium. Over the course of our lives, we are exposed to a variety of life experiences, some positive, some neutral, and some negative. Through a natural assimilation process, the brain adaptively processes these experiences so they are constructively integrated. What is useful from the experience is learned and stored in the brain with the appropriate emotion and is available for future use. When an experience is successfully assimilated or digested it is stored in the brain with little attached intense emotion or physical sensation. When we recall such an incident, we don’t reexperience the old emotion or sensation with it. In this way we are informed by our past experiences and memories but not controlled by them and with sports our present athletic performances are not burdened by emotional or physical baggage from the past, only learned experience. By contrast, trauma or any strongly negatively charged experience isn’t adequately assimilated or processed. Instead, the upsetting incident remains stuck in the system in broken pieces’.
The author continues, ‘ The body instantly memorizes the physical experience of the trauma in exquisite detail, including the body sensations of the impact and pain, along with the associated sights, sounds, smells and tastes. The attached emotions and where they are felt in the body are frozen as well. The brain is overwhelmed and instead of getting digested, all of the information attached to the injury, including the negative thoughts is stored in the brain in exactly the same form it was initially experienced. Days, week, months or even years later when the athlete is in a situation reminiscent of the original trauma or experiences prolonged stress, the upsetting experience may be unconsciously activated, thus interfering with the performance of the moment. These components represent all of the sensory details from the earlier event that were frozen in the brain and body in their original disturbing state: the images, lighting, emotions, physical movements, sounds, or smells. The unique sensory details later returning to consciousness cause the performance disrupting symptoms so common in mental blocks.’ In conclusion, the interplay between the stress of sports combined with the stress test of losing social engagement or dysfunction with our interpersonal relationship issues leaves athletes in a vulnerable state, by extension increasing the risk that we develop the yips, a mental block, or trauma symptoms.
Part III. Strategies Mental Performance Consultants Use To Help Athletes Enhance Performance Through Social Connection
Now that we have a better understanding of how our brain is wired to be sensitive to the stress of relationships and absence of connection, we need to establish what are some strategies we can use to overcome these issues. I have talked about this issue in previous Training Reports, but I believe that it is critical that athletes establish strong boundaries between their sport identity and their whole identity. One way athletes can do this is by carving out time in their personal life that is exclusively dedicated to fostering social connections or healing interpersonal relationships that are unrelated to their sport environment.
And while not all psychological issues are solved through psychotherapy approaches, athletes can significantly benefit from working with sport psychologists, athlete counselors and mental performance coaches. While this type of social connection is therapeutic in nature, this type of interaction still offers many of the same psychological benefits that traditional, non-therapy interventions offer from a mental health standpoint. Athletes can experience the positive effects of healthy transference in a session, while also healing through the social attunement of sports psychotherapy. If this is something you are interested in exploring on a deeper level, use this link here to find out more!
Note To Reader:
If you are an athlete reading this segment of the TRAINING REPORT, hopefully this content was helpful! I put the Training Report together because I felt like many of the discussions on issues such as the Yips/mental blocks, strength training & other subject matter on athlete performance concepts were really missing the mark on these ideas (e.g. how trauma is the direct cause of the Yips). If you are interested in learning more, make sure to subscribe below for when I put out new content on issues related to sport psychology & athlete performance! Also, if you are looking to work with a mental performance specialist, you are in the right place! USE THIS LINK to reach out to me to see if my services are the right fit for your goals!
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