Confidence Under Pressure: performance moments

01

Before this course, and what pressure does

In simple words

You can ride your bike easily around the block. But if the whole class is watching and there is a prize, your legs might feel wobbly. Pressure can make easy things feel hard. The good news: you can prepare for pressure, just like you prepare for the ride.

Before this course: Building Confidence: practice and exposure (course 9.13.2), which came after Confidence & Self-Talk (course 9.13). You already know self-efficacy, the four sources of confidence, helpful self-talk, saying "I'm excited", the inner-critic thought check, confidence ladders, predict-and-check experiments, deliberate practice and an evidence log. This course is about the big moments: the test, the match point, the interview, the stage. A line marked "Tip" is practical advice, not a research finding.

Key facts

Pressure here means a moment where doing well matters a lot to you: a test, a game, an audition, a job interview, a speech.
Choking means performing clearly worse than your usual skill level because the moment matters so much.
A 2026 position statement from Exercise and Sports Science Australia (ESSA), based on a review of systematic reviews and other studies, says pressure can help or hinder performance. It highlights four evidence-based approaches: pre-performance routines, implicit attentional strategies (ways of focusing that do not make you think step by step about your movements), psychological skills training and mindfulness-based approaches. It also recommends training under pressure (Lessons 3, 5 and 6).
One reason skills break: Beilock and Carr (2001) studied golf putting and a thinking task. Expert golfers remembered little about individual putts, which suggests the skill ran "on autopilot". Under pressure, putting choked, but the thinking task did not. Practice that got people used to feeling self-conscious removed the choking in putting. The authors concluded that paying step-by-step attention to a well-learned skill can disrupt it (called "explicit monitoring").
Another reason: worry about the result can get in the way, especially on tests (Lesson 7).
Limits: these studies used lab tasks with volunteers. Real performances are messier. Choking is not a personality label: it is a moment, and moments can be trained for.

Kind of task	What pressure can do	Lesson
Well-learned movement (a serve, a putt, a song you know by heart)	Overthinking the steps	5, 6
Thinking task (an exam, a hard question in an interview)	Worry crowds your thinking	7
Any task	Body signals feel scary	2

Step by step

List three performance moments coming up in the next two months.
For each one, write what is at stake and who will be watching.
Write whether it is mostly a well-learned movement, a thinking task or both.
Remember your last big moment. Write what went wrong, if anything: overthinking the steps, worry, or body signals.
Choose one moment to work on in this course and write its date.
Check: you have one dated performance moment and a guess about what pressure does to you.

Watch on YouTube

Why we choke under pressure, and how to avoid itTED · YouTube · youtube.com

Videos by other creators on YouTube, for reference. They are not made by or affiliated with The Future Market.

LESSON 01Before this course, and what pressure does

LESSON 01 / ANIMATED LESSON / AI VOICE00:00 / 01:00

Voice

Read the video script

[Host] "Why do easy things go wrong when it matters most?"
[Text on screen: Pressure can help or hinder] "Sports scientists say pressure can help you or hurt you. It depends partly on how you prepare."
[Screen: golfer over a putt] "In one study, experts choked when they started thinking about each step of a skill they normally do on autopilot."
[Host] "So this course is about preparing for the big moment: your body, your routine, your attention and your practice."

Try it now

Pick your performance moment, write its date, and write one sentence about what usually goes wrong for you under pressure.

ClaudeStuck? Copy a ready-made prompt for Claude

Copy this, open Claude, paste it, and Claude will walk you through the lesson step by step.

For a grown-up: Claude is for adults (18+). Copy this, paste it into Claude, and use the answer to explain the lesson to your child.

I'm learning "Confidence Under Pressure: performance moments" on The Future Market. Lesson 1: "Before this course, and what pressure does".

What the lesson teaches:
- Pressure here means a moment where doing well matters a lot to you: a test, a game, an audition, a job interview, a speech.
- Choking means performing clearly worse than your usual skill level because the moment matters so much.
- A 2026 position statement from Exercise and Sports Science Australia (ESSA), based on a review of systematic reviews and other studies, says pressure can help or hinder performance. It highlights four evidence-based approaches: pre-performance routines, implicit attentional strategies (ways of focusing that do not make you think step by step about your movements), psychological skills training and mindfulness-based approaches. It also recommends training under pressure (Lessons 3, 5 and 6).
- One reason skills break: Beilock and Carr (2001) studied golf putting and a thinking task. Expert golfers remembered little about individual putts, which suggests the skill ran "on autopilot". Under pressure, putting choked, but the thinking task did not. Practice that got people used to feeling self-conscious removed the choking in putting. The authors concluded that paying step-by-step attention to a well-learned skill can disrupt it (called "explicit monitoring").
- Another reason: worry about the result can get in the way, especially on tests (Lesson 7).
- Limits: these studies used lab tasks with volunteers. Real performances are messier. Choking is not a personality label: it is a moment, and moments can be trained for.
- Kind of task - What pressure can do - Lesson

The exercise I'm working on:
Pick your performance moment, write its date, and write one sentence about what usually goes wrong for you under pressure.

I'm stuck. Please:
1. Explain the main idea in plain, simple words with one everyday example.
2. Walk me through the exercise one small step at a time. Ask me what I've done so far before giving the next step.
3. Don't just give me the final answer. Help me do it myself, and check my work when I share it.

I'm a parent helping my child (about 8 years old) with a lesson called "Before this course, and what pressure does" from the course "Confidence Under Pressure: performance moments".

Here's what the lesson says:
You can ride your bike easily around the block. But if the whole class is watching and there is a prize, your legs might feel wobbly. Pressure can make easy things feel hard. The good news: you can prepare for pressure, just like you prepare for the ride.

The activity:
Pick your performance moment, write its date, and write one sentence about what usually goes wrong for you under pressure.

Please explain this so an 8-year-old understands: short sentences, a fun everyday example, and no hard words.
Then give me 3 simple questions I can ask my child to check they understood, and a way to do the activity together, one tiny step at a time.

Open Claude

Sources

Schweickle et al. (2026), "Performance Under Pressure in Sport: A Position Statement from Exercise and Sports Science Australia (ESSA)," Sports Medicine, 56(8), 1851-1867: doi.org/10.1007/s40279-026-02472-x
Beilock & Carr (2001), "On the fragility of skilled performance: What governs choking under pressure?," Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 130(4), 701-725: doi.org/10.1037/0096-3445.130.4.701

My notes

I learned this

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