Sport Psychology Tactics - How Professional Motorsport Athletes Mentally Train Aggression For Focus
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: How Sport Psychologists Train Aggression In Motorsport Athletes
In motorsports such as NASCAR, IMSA and Rally, one of the most high-pressure moments of a race happens in an event called qualifying, which occurs before the race begins. During qualifying, race car drivers attempt to drive the fastest lap on the race track. Drivers with the fastest lap time will start at the front of the grid, whereas drivers who fail to produce a quality time are placed at the back of the grid. The driver who secures the best lap time starts at the front and is referred to as the pole-sitter. Because starting at the head of the field yields immediate competitive advantages, drivers are under immense pressure to perform at their best.
One of the behaviors that best helps drivers accomplish this task is aggression. This is because the right type of aggression can increase focus. While this behavior can be incredibly useful to master, one of the main reasons athletes have difficulty training this behavior is because there is no standardized approach or understanding for how to increase aggression through mental skills training. Because it is such a common experience for race car drivers (and all athletes) to be told to be more aggressive with no blueprint for how to accomplish this, I wanted to provide a potential framework for how athletes and mental skills experts can approach this issue.
Part I. What Aggression Looks Like In Sports
Aggression has been defined as ‘hostile or violent behavior or attitudes toward another - readiness to attack or confront’. Upon initial review, this definition can understandably seem antithetical to the environment that coaches and fans want to create in sports where there is a heavy emphasis on “sportsmanship” and “role-model behaviors” are prioritized. Even researchers in sport psychology have an uncomfortable relationship with aggression in sports as evidenced by the high volume of articles that focus on the negative impact aggression can have on the athletic community. But if this behavior is considered to be such an extreme detriment to the sports environment, why are so many athletes consistently told by leaders within their organization to be ‘more aggressive’? It’s because on a certain level, we view the physical manifestations associated with aggression as representations of ideal sport performance outcomes. For example, in motorsports the faster a NASCAR athlete drives the car around a turn, the more “aggressive” this may appear. In other sports, if an athlete is moving full speed towards an opponent, or contesting a ball in the air without reservation, we recognize that there is some type of ‘psychological commitment’ that mirrors behaviors of aggression. But why do we view these behavior exhibitions in this way?
According to Dr. Stephen Porges, our minds and bodies are specifically designed to respond on a physiological level according to our perceptions of the environment. This is referred to as neuroception. Our brain is always creating a map of our external environment in order to determine where our body ends and where the world begins. The vagus nerve in our body creates physiological responses that drive survival responses if we feel that ‘map’ is at risk for being compromised. One of the many aspects of our environment that we are trying to determine if we are safe or in danger, is the behavior of other people. If we see that people move in certain ways, or change the pitch of their voice, this can signal to us what their possible intentions are, therefore allowing us to either make an alliance with people or create distance between us. This is what neuroception is (Porges 2011). While behaviors of aggression may not be ideal for normal day to day encounters, in many sports situations these are actually desired traits, which is why athletes and coaches want to tap into this. What many performers and sport psychologists are recognizing however is that it is not enough to just tell an athlete to ‘be more aggressive’. There are specific step by step procedures that need to be taught to the athlete in order to maximize this behavior in a healthy manner. Let’s dive into how to do this.
Part II. How Sport Psychologists Assess Aggression & Use Mental Skills Training
Before coaches and sport psychologists can start teaching aggression, they first need to evaluate if there are mental blocks that are preventing the athlete from doing this. Most of the time when athletes are unable to be more aggressive, it is because coaches notice that there is a type of hesitation that the athlete is exhibiting before a high conflict event in sports (Clarke & Akehurst 2015). What most coaches don’t understand is that a significant amount of the time this hesitation response is involuntary, which is key to understanding this issue because there is a high likelihood that this behavior is a defensive mechanism that is the result of either unprocessed stress or a trauma event (trauma DOES NOT mean you have PTSD). When we experience a stress or trauma event, this is a type of sensory overload experience (e.g. significant sports injuries, car collisions, concussions, etc.). During the experience of trauma, sensory information converges in a structure within the brain called the thalamus (Van Der Kolk, 2014). Next, the emotional significance is analyzed by the amygdala which in turn signals the production of stress hormones by the hypothalamus and the autonomic nervous system. This surge of hormone production and electrical activity mutes the ability of our prefrontal cortex to respond, therefore generating an involuntary flight, fight or freeze response.
Once the trauma event has subsided, our brains can remain in a hypervigilant state, thus creating an increased quantity of fear-generated responses (e.g. hesitation, freezing) to any event that is too stressful for the brain to process. Athletes need to collaborate with sport psychologists who utilize trauma-informed mental skills training (e.g. EMDR, Brainspotting, etc.) to identify what the trauma event may be, and thoroughly process the event in order to shut down the freeze response and move towards becoming voluntarily aggressive when necessary (Anderegg, 2015). Second, coaches should try to not only be aware of athletes that exhibit freeze responses, but they should also re-evaluate if there are athletes who are exhibiting aggression that is more of an involuntary fight response rather than the desired voluntary aggression. There are some athletes who exhibit too much aggression that can appear ‘wild’ or ‘out of control’. While there may be brief moments where this appears to produce desirable sport outcomes, this behavior is too unpredictable, and most importantly not healthy for the athlete. One way to determine if this aggression is trauma-based is to see if this behavior also occurs outside of sports. If it does, and it is too excessive during competitions, then there is a significant likelihood that the athlete in these instances is also dealing with a form of unprocessed trauma, and the same approaches used to help the ‘frozen’ athlete should also be considered for the individual that is in a trauma-based fight mindset. So once these issues are cleared, what is the next phase of training athletes to be aggressive in sports?
Part III. Aggression Mindset Training For Professional Racecar Drivers
In my work helping train NASCAR drivers to be more aggressive during qualifying, I have found that there are two reliable methods that can work for almost all racecar drivers (and athletes in other sports): quiet eye and preloading. In the article Quiet Eye Training: Effects on Learning and Performance Under Pressure by Vine & Wilson (2010), the authors cite the following definition for Quiet Eye, “the duration of the final fixation towards a relevant target prior to the execution of the critical phase of movement and has been accepted within the literature as a measure of optimal visual attention control”. When athletes use Quiet Eye, they move their gaze on a specific target and focus on not allowing their eyes to move. This process appears to activate three neural networks (posterior orienting, anterior executive and vigilance networks) that stabilize the athlete’s gaze on the target eliminating visual disengagement from the point of fixation to an irrelevant point in the visual field. When we consider what some of the desirable traits of aggression are, athletes that exhibit the ideal traits of this behavior appear to be intensely focused on the task at hand, which makes Quiet Eye a relevant tool to help athletes increase these mindsets. In my work with drivers, I have found that when they use Quiet Eye right before qualifying (sitting in the cockpit stationary before driving), these athletes report feeling more focused and “locked in” before they attempt to win pole position.
The other method that athletes can use is preloading. Preloading is a process that has been used in the sport of Olympic-style weightlifting where an athlete creates tension in their muscles right before the Olympic weightlifting movement begins. This process creates stored energy in the muscles to generate the necessary power needed to lift the weight, and also provides the appropriate amount of stimulation needed to activate Type II muscle fibers, which can only come online once a stimulation threshold has occurred. Activation of Type II muscle fibers is what allows athletes to generate explosive movements, whereas Type I muscle fibers are utilized for more endurance-based movements (Potach, D.H., & Chu, 2016). The only way to bring Type II muscle fibers online is by generating an aggressive response...essentially an all or nothing outcome. If athletes can successfully create a preload response before certain situations in sports, they can voluntarily tap into the aggression needed to accomplish their goals and stand out amongst their peers. Again, the NASCAR drivers I have worked with that use this before qualifying report a sharp increase in focus and as such have seen significant improvements during qualifying.
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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