Elite sportspeople face pressure to perform, but so do ordinary workers

MATTHEW SYED
March 22, 2018
The Australian

Pressure, a term synonymous with elite sport. Can you handle it? Can you put your reputation on the line on the field of play? Can you cope with the defeats and setbacks? Can you handle the idea of your reputation, your livelihood, hinging on a swing of a golf club, swish of a tennis ­racket or, in the case of soccer, a flourish of the boot?

In a candid interview in Der Spiegel, Arsenal defender Per Mertesacker eloquently articulated the demands associated with professional soccer: being constantly judged; the jeering from the stands when you misplace a pass; the need to get back out on to the pitch as soon as possible after injury.

“My stomach starts churning and I feel like I’m going to throw up. Then I have to choke so hard that I tear up,” the 33-year-old said about the moments leading up to big ­matches. “At some point you realise that it’s all a burden, physically and mentally, that you’re supposed to handle and deal with. That it is no longer in any way about having fun and that you have to deliver, with no ifs, ands or buts, even if you are injured.”

There have been many interviews that offer similar insights into the ironies of elite sport. Matthew Pinsent vomited before an Olympic final. David Beckham used to visit the bathroom several times before going out for big games. Michael Johnson told me that the atmosphere in the call room before the Olympic 200m final was so ­intense that one of his competitors asked if he would take part in a group prayer. Johnson, as it happens, rejected the offer.

The association between sport and pressure is so deep in our culture that large companies often look to the lessons of elite sport when seeking to help their people handle the psychological demands of the workplace better. The idea seems to be that sport contains unique mental challenges; challenges that most jobs don’t touch.

I would like to question this presumption, however. Doesn’t pressure of the kind faced by top athletes exist in many, perhaps most, professions?

My grandfather worked in a coalmine from the age of 14. He went deep into the earth in a metal lift, then walked 1600m to the coalface to work in intense heat. He returned to his home — a two-bedroom flat shared with his parents and 10 siblings — and his mother would scrape the soot off his back. He spent much of his later life working 18-hour days as a warden in an old people’s home, caring for those near the end of their lives. Grandad knew about pressure. 

My mother stacked shelves at Asda. She did so on what was, back then, less than today’s minimum wage. She had difficult bosses. She had sexist colleagues. She endured long hours and had to come home and cook for us kids, read to us, bathe us.

I remember one day she went to work with a stinking cold; we children could not understand why she didn’t just stay in bed. The truth is that we needed the money, and she was willing to go the extra mile. Mum understood pressure, too.

There are, of course, different varieties of pressure. Pressure of time, pressure of expectation and, perhaps most pertinently in the context of Mertesacker’s ­interview, the pressure assoc­iated with being judged on performance. But even this latter aspect is not unique to sport.

There are high stakes almost everywhere. Lawyers, however eminent, know their employment depends on the recurring ability to deliver for their clients. Financial traders, however ­exalted, know their reputation can be shredded by a losing streak on the markets.

Indeed, anyone who has had a big job interview has faced a life-changing moment contingent on performance. The best talk I ever heard about dealing with pressure was not from a sportsman but from a call centre worker. The demands of the job are complex, solving the myriad problems of consumers in real time, and where performance (customer satisfaction, average call time and so on) is measured every day on a matrix pinned to the wall.

He spoke from the heart about getting into the zone, about learning from every interaction and about dealing with the anxiety that underperformance might lead to the termination of his contract. This was performance psychology at the coalface.

Footballers have to deliver on the pitch on match day, and this creates all sorts of stresses. But, on a typical training day, they are free after their morning session. They also have professionals to look after their logistics, their ­accommodation, their travel, their day-to-day needs.

The thousands of people on zero-hours contracts have a somewhat different existence. They work with zeal when they are lucky enough to get the call but, when the working day ends, they have to stay in top gear.

This is emphatically not to say: “Pull your socks up, Mertesacker, you have it easy!” On the contrary, clubs should offer far more support to players who are struggling with anxiety or injury. The German was right to suggest there remains a stigma in sport, as in society, about admitting to mental weakness or vulnerability. But shouldn’t we do more to recognise the pressures faced by care workers, nurses and teachers? Shouldn’t we do more to celebrate their resilience and heroism?

Elite sport is psychologically demanding, to be sure. My sense, however, is that the demands are just as intense and perhaps more multifaceted in other sectors of the modern economy.

The Times