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From clumsy failure to skillful fluency: a phenomenological analysis of and Eastern solution to sport’s choking effect

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Abstract

Excellent performance in sport involves specialized and refined skills within very narrow applications. Choking throws a wrench in the works of finely tuned performances. Functionally, and reduced to its simplest expression, choking is severe underperformance when engaging already mastered skills. Choking is a complex phenomenon with many intersecting facets: its dysfunctions result from the multifaceted interaction of cognitive and psychological processes, neurophysiological mechanisms, and phenomenological dynamics. This article develops a phenomenological model that, complementing empirical and theoretical research, helps understand and redress choking. It aims at describing the experience of choking as experience, and to discuss strategies to palliate or prevent its onset at the pragmatic level at which athletes engage the phenomenon experientially. An overview of current empirical research and theoretical models highlights key ideas and points out contentious issues. The model describes the common structure of the choking experience. It identifies four core constitutive elements: A) disruptive proprioceptive and kinesthetic dynamics, B) a malfunctioning background or Jamesian fringe of consciousness, C) dislocated time dynamics, and D) emotional disturbances. The novelty of the remedy is that it is designed to cross disciplinary boundaries between phenomenology, historiography, and hermeneutics, and moreover connects theory to praxis as it looks at Japanese dō (道), practices of self-cultivation. It focuses on actual do-or-die situations, not putative ones such as important business deals or competing for a medal. To this effect, it examines medieval Japanese swordsmanship and training manuals and also engages risk sports, where death is indeed a real possibility. The manuals, which arise in the context of choke-inducing life or death duels, and risk sports, afford keen phenomenological observations and practical advice that prove invaluable for today’s sports world and beyond.

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Notes

  1. Stewart 2007, 675.

  2. A third type, overload theory, which adduces that cognitive and motoric demands overwhelm agents, can be posited as a sub-mechanism that results from the primary processes SFTs and DTs identify.

  3. Baumeister (1984) seems to consider that mere inferior performance suffices for choking, but this seems too low a standard, as variability in actual athletic performance is quite marked for any given athlete.

  4. Ilundáin-Agurruza, in press b, Essay 8, Fractured Action, develops an analysis of these as well as the aforementioned diverse contexts that complements this article.

  5. Developed elsewhere but not yet in print, it is not feasible to ascertain its explanatory power. However, the holistically and ecologically broader base, amenable and congruent with the phenomenology presently developed permits an optimistic outlook.

  6. Expert performance in sport poses a problem of its own that space limitations prevent from addressing presently. Moe (2005) and Birch (2010) show, as they assess computational claims from the perspective of sport philosophy, that the key challenge is how to account for the need to process countless numbers of items of discrete information in too short an amount of time for explicit symbolic manipulation. Some phenomenological views such as the Dreyfus brothers’ on mindless coping and automaticity (1986) face problems in accounting for risk sports in particular (Birch 2010).

  7. John Dewey best and most succinctly exemplifies this. In the context of explaining action, Dewey (1963) is at pains to point out that there is an underlying body-mind unity richly connected to the environment and modulated by action that is primary. He forwards his holistic views to bypass dualistic tendencies. Body and mind are integrated, or rather, there is a continuum where more perfected states equal a higher degree of integration (this is considered again in part III). Expertise in skilled movement evinces such integration. Some empirical studies concerning the novice-expert domain show how experts perform differently relying on different cognitive functions, whether it be memory, attention, or other skills at the sensorimotor level (respectively Beilock et al. 2002; Beilock and Gray 2007).

  8. To assuage concerns regarding the validity of personal experience, I would like to offer the following justification. It seems plausible to think that phenomenology is merely subjective and anecdotal, a common charge. But as Gallagher argues among other reasons, phenomenology a) is concerned with the first-person approach (as opposed to the third-person), b) is objective, but in the sense that it excludes biases not that it entails observing objects attentively, and c) involves intersubjective validation (2012, 56-60). The analyses I have carried out are not concerned simply with inner sensations or phenomenal consciousness, but rather proceed from methodological examination that also enlists b and c above.

  9. In particular, attendees of the 1 st International Conference on Sport Psychology and Embodied Cognition at the United Arab Emirates University-Al Ain, 24-27 February, 2014. Notably, Benjamin Aguda, Max Cappuccio Tom Carr, Dan Hutto, Mauro Maldonato, Zuzanna Rucinska, and professional golfers Tom Buchanan and Fraser McLaughlan.

  10. For more on these qualities, rhytmicities, and kinetic melodies, see The Corporeal Turn, 233, 273-4, and 317.

  11. It is important that the empirical evidence and the phenomenology agree. Shaun Gallagher argues that, “We need to work with what there is […] to create a coherent and contextually rich background theory that supports and explicates the connections that actually exist among the elements of the embodied cognitive system” (2005a, 6, his emphasis) without postulating “theoretical models, causal mechanisms, or representations” (ibid, 5).

  12. This extended and situated facet cannot be pursued presently, see Ilundáin-Agurruza (in press b).

  13. See Ilundáin-Agurruza (in press a), for a fuller discussion of this sort of spontaneity in the context of Daoist Zhuangzi (essay 5), and Ilundáin-Agurruza (in press b), in the context of skillful fluency (essay 7), and Japanese swordsmanship (essay 9).

  14. Climbing is a sport that allows for measured and thoughtful ascents, other sports with faster dynamics require faster decisions. This does not mean these actions are automatic or without conscious thought. These athletes undergo much prior deliberate and deliberative training that develops requisite skills. With pertinent changes, the current model can also accommodate this.

  15. Influenced by Wilhelm Dilthey, we find geo-historical applications that are coetaneous and even precede Husserl in Ortega y Gasset (1962) and Watsuji (1996).

  16. Following Japanese custom, family name comes first. Afterwards the first name is usually the norm. Then, the custom is to use the first name to mention again the person in question.

  17. Rinzai Zen Buddhist Monk Takuan Soho penned a letter to Munenori that much influenced the latter’s thinking. When Munenori’s ideas clearly derive from Takuan’s letter to him, these are referenced in the latter’s work also.

  18. For an East–west comparative account of mushin and flow, see Krein and Ilundáin-Agurruza (2014).

  19. See Krein & Ilundáin (2014), Ilundáin-Agurruza & Hata 2015, and Ilundáin-Agurruza (in press b, essay 9) for a fuller discussion of mushin.

  20. I am very grateful to the helpful anonymous reviewers and to this special issue editor, Max Cappuccio, for their thoughtful and helpful feedback. I am particularly and deeply indebted to John Sutton for his thorough comments, extensive suggestions, and perceptive analysis on two previous versions of this article. If not in print, he is a co-author in both spirit and merit.

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  1. Linfield College, McMinnville, OR, USA

    Jesús Ilundáin-Agurruza

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Ilundáin-Agurruza, J. From clumsy failure to skillful fluency: a phenomenological analysis of and Eastern solution to sport’s choking effect. Phenom Cogn Sci 14, 397–421 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-014-9408-5

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