Have you ever entered a race with absolutely no expectations only to find that you achieve a performance that far exceeds what you thought you could achieve?
This paradoxical phenomenon may seem bewildering, and in such situations we may ask ourselves: “if I do so much better and enjoy races more when I don’t put pressure on myself, then how can I repeat that?”
It’s a good question, but it isn’t always as simple as just not putting pressure on ourselves - there are reasons for us experiencing pressure that require more in-depth exploration than a blog post can provide (if you’re interested in doing so, get in touch!). But there are things we can learn from this experience. This could be particularly relevant for you if you feel that pressure and nerves are stopping you enjoying racing and at times leave you wondering whether to quit.
So why, despite not aiming for or expecting anything, can we end up delivering the kind of performance we’d be really happy with if we had aimed for something? There are many person-specific reasons that we can’t cover in this post, but we’ll discuss a couple of common ones here.
Caring about achieving a goal also means caring about not failing at it. The relative prominence of this concern about “failure” varies amongst people - for some it is just a background thought and they can stay focused on trying their best to hit their target, whereas for others it is a distracting anxiety or outright fear of failure, overshadowing any excitement about achieving the goal. The prevailing sentiment in this latter scenario tends to be “I have to get the time or [insert negative outcome/sense of dread]."
To be clear, the research available so far on this topic has produced inconsistent results regarding whether these concerns impact performance much. Our experience suggests that they do for some people but not others, in part because of how they respond to these concerns and what other psychological experiences are going on. But for people whose performances are affected negatively, this tends to be because of a series of knock-on effects that come with an overwhelming desire to avoid failure:
Worry over worst-case scenarios or things going wrong occupies a certain portion of attention which is then not being paid to things that might facilitate performance.
Increased vigilance to cues that could be interpreted to indicate negative outcomes (e.g. we might be quicker to notice feelings of fatigue or the possibility of being overtaken).
Interpretations of cues that are ambiguous or indicate a potential threat to performance (such as the above) are likely to be more negative (e.g. “if my legs are burning I’ll have to slow down and I won’t get the time”).
Difficulty accessing more “approach-oriented” states of mind, i.e. thought patterns that focus on the opportunities in pursuing the goal (e.g. “I’m going to see how close I can get to my goal” or “it’s not over yet, I could get this”).
Unpleasant emotional experiences which tend to increase the rate of “escape thoughts” (e.g. “I just want this to be over with,”)
Physiological changes that occur due to anxiety may sometimes hinder performance. Again the research on this is complicated and inconsistent, the outcomes depending on which physiological measures are being used amongst many other factors. But we know that there are cardiovascular and biochemical changes that occur with feelings of threat-focused anxiety, and so the possibility of performance hindrance exists. Either way, even if the physiological changes themselves don’t impede performance, the interpretation of them as unhelpful might due to the knock-on effect of that to our attention, thoughts and actions.
But imagine you are not encumbered by any of this - you don’t react to your physical and psychological experiences in these ways. Therein lies one of the answers to the question of why having no expectations can sometimes result in better performance: not having a specific goal can result in less imposed psychological limitations. If we are there to just see what we can do (assuming we are intending on racing rather than just jogging it) we are more likely to simply run as hard as we can according to the limitations offered by our environment (e.g. weather, course profile) and our bodies (e.g. our fitness). In other words, we bump right up against our physical limits without interpreting those sensations in any particular light. We don’t jump to catastrophic conclusions about the time, we don’t get down on ourselves about our performance, and our attention isn’t filtered through a threat-based lens. We are more open-minded to different outcomes.
Of course it's also possible that the reasons for our original lack of expectations can have a hand in the outcome. Perhaps you’ve dropped your expectations because you’ve had a month off and assume you’ll be “rusty”, when in fact that month off has left you unusually fresh and recovered. Or perhaps you have underestimated your ability for some reason.
Either way, getting a more detailed understanding of how pressure limits how you react and behave can give you a clue as to what helps and hinders your performance. You will notice that some of these things are under your control, and that awareness affords you more choice over your decisions. As we said before, it’s not always straightforward to just decide not to put pressure on yourself, and we are not suggesting you should avoid (or even can always avoid) setting goals and expectations (we will explore the benefits of this in another post). But it is worth trying to notice how pressure affects you compared to those time when you go into a race much more relaxed, and make the decisions you would make if you had remained open to different, more positive outcomes.

Chloe
Psychology of Movement
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