From Choking to Clutch: How to Thrive Under Pressure

John Nallon is a Tennis and Performance Coach and Academy Director at the TBarM Tennis Academy.

One of the biggest questions that I get asked as a performance coach is how to handle pressure. 

What I’ve learned over time is that pressure and stress are often used interchangeably, but have very different meanings. Everyone’s mind and body react differently to stress. Pressure can be perceived negatively until you learn how to manage and overcome it. Maturity and experience in tough situations are the greatest teachers. Anxiety and an overstimulated nervous system can be calmed down because you’ve been there before and have learned how to respond. By default, your view of what’s happening changes over time, and so does your perception of tough situations. A key principle in sports psychology is that pressure is based on perception and is only as powerful as an athlete allows it to be.

To succeed in high-stakes situations, an athlete needs a comprehensive skill set to manage the pressure. A match can expose your limits in many ways. It could be a physical test of endurance you aren't ready for, or a strategic one where an opponent constantly targets your weaknesses. As a competitor, stress and pressure can make you perform either 20% better or 20% worse. Often, the difference between a positive and a negative outcome depends on your ability to embrace the moment and trust in your skills to back it up.  

If you think of it like a math equation, a high-stakes moment plus the lack of preparation and skill equals stress/pressure. Conversely, if you have a high-stakes moment, plus great preparation and skill equals high performance outcome.  

​​Let's dive into five key types of pressure (situational, positional, tactical, score and competitive) and break down how to manage them, and most importantly, how to leverage them for peak performance.

Situational Pressure is manifested in point, game, set, and match-ending situations.

An example of this is the difference between 5-2 up in the set versus 5-5 in a tiebreaker. Your nerves are stimulated because you are very keenly aware of what’s immediately at stake.  

Positional Pressure is your ability to navigate court positioning and impose your position on an opponent. Think, what does it do to your opponent when you move up on their second serves? What about when you take balls out of the air and attack versus staying at the baseline and rallying? Applying positional pressure creates stress and generally requires your opponent to perform at a higher level.

Tactical Pressure means finding and exploiting your opponents' weaknesses and designing your strategy around them. If someone doesn’t have the skills to respond, it creates stress and frustration for them. If a player can’t move well, run them. If a player can’t volley well, bring them in. If a player doesn’t like variety, mix things up.  

If you experience Score Pressure, remember this: When you are aheadup, play like it. When you are playing your best tennis and feeling confident, what do your points look like? If you are up by two or more points in a game, your tactical pressure should reflect that. Attack and add stress to them! This can also come into play in regards to closing out a match. Example: You’re up 5-2 (that’s good),  you sense situational pressure and remember that you lost two matches ago when you were up 5-2, anxiety starts creeping in (that’s bad). What happens next all comes down to whether or not you can get back to the present and remember that when you have score pressure, you play to win. 

Competitive Pressure is challenging for younger players and those with short attention spans. Consistently showing up on every point, mentally and physically, is a weapon. Like any weapon on the court, it has to be trained. Your “Attention Span” is how long you can focus, and your “Attention Focus” is what you are focusing on. It is very easy to fall into the trap of losing focus, as well as falling into the trap of focusing on the wrong things.  

Understanding these types of pressure gives you a major competitive edge. To turn a negative stress reaction into a positive performance, you must train your mind and body to handle these five pressures while also learning to apply them to your opponent during a match. Recognize your trends and tendencies, build your skills, and consistently work towards becoming a better competitor. As with all sports and competitions, the key to all of it is to absolutely enjoy what you’re doing and love competing.