If every championship tournament game, and all of the regular season conference games were decided by a 40 point margin each and every night, very little ?pressure? would exist in the game of basketball. The dominant teams would roll into arenas full of confidence and perhaps even arrogance, expecting another blowout and the poor opposing much weaker team would play with a hope of just trying to keep it as close as possible and a hope to ?look good? losing. But we all know that there is no such thing as 100% certainty in sports. Further, games are often decided by single digit deficits, and at times by just a point or two. A cursory glance at last year's NCAA tournament brackets and the deciding score line will quickly reveal what every coach in America and every sports fan already knows; games often go down to the wire.

So why spend a short paragraph writing about something that is already so well understood? The purpose is to provide a strong reminder of the critical link between tight games, clutch situations and pressure, a concept and a link that is not so well understood.

More than anything else, pressure affects an athlete's ability to relax, which in turn can alter shot selection, assist to turnover ratios, shooting percentages, overall clutch performance, and the list goes on and on. Yet for many coaches, composure and the ability to relax is a double edged sword, with some coaches believing that in order to remain relaxed, intensity must be sacrificed. This is simply not true. An inverse relationship between composure and intensity does not exist. A player can maintain 100% intensity, yet still be fully composed and relaxed when she needs to be.

The dangerous approach

So how do we develop composure in our players? Lets us begin by exploring how NOT to develop the trait. Yelling, screaming or evenly quietly admonishing players to ?RELAX!? during a timeout or game is certainly not the most efficient way of achieving player composure. In fact the opposite effect sometimes is unintentionally created by the coach. A command to relax that is given to a player who does not have the skills to relax and deal with the pressure, is only going to make that player increasingly anxious and nervous, making them increasingly aware of their state of anxiety in addition to their inability to deal with the nervousness, tension and lack of composure. Any coach will tell you that a team can only consistently execute a terrific flex offense if they know what the flex offense is and have practiced the flex successfully together as a team at some point. Can you imagine the look of astonishment on the faces of the assistant coaches if the head coach yells to the point, ?run the flex.? ?Ummm Coach,? the apprehensive assistant coach might begin, ?we've never run the flex before?.they don't know it.? Obviously, few head coaches would call for the flex to be run under these circumstances! Yet when coaches tell players to ?relax? or ?not be nervous,? in a similar way, they may be asking for something that the players simply do not know how to execute. An additional approach which certainly can help with composure, but is often seen as the only solution to composure, is physical skills practice. Some coaches mistakenly believe that if you practice something enough, then it will become automatic under game conditions. If this were the case, then clutch free throw shooting percentages would always be as good as practice free throw percentages. As we all know, this is not always the case. Shooting 800 jump shots a day will certainly improve shooting composure in games, because being more proficient at any skill creates greater confidence levels which in turn can have a positive affect on composure levels. However, shooting 800 shots a day in a practice environment has a much greater effect on the proficiency and execution of that skill in that practice environment than it will do compared to execution in a competitive situation or harder still, a high pressure competitive situation (such as a free throw to ice the game). The key to performing consistently in high pressure conditions, is to specifically develop composure as an actual skill.

When I travel the country to work with teams on mental skills and toughness training who may be performing well, but want to increase their conference or national ranking, or work with teams that are underperforming or in a slump, one of the questions I ask as I examine the critical mental skills and toughness trait issues affecting the team is, is this issue a ?won't do? or a ?can't do? issue or a combination of both of these issues? If it is a ?won't do? issue, then there is an attitude adjustment or a very strong sense of commitment that I will install. If it is a ?can't do? issue, then there is a critical skills gap, which requires a different type of training ? mental skills development in a specific area. I share this because in my experience, a lack of composure or consistent loss of composure, be it during critical on court decision making or on the free throw line, is a ?can't do? issue requiring skills training. A team I worked with in the past four weeks was a strong underachieving division one program that was not nationally ranked, yet probably should have been were it not for a number of defeats by just 1-3 points, almost all of which had occurred as a result of an inability to execute in the clutch. For this particular team, their clutch performance was often a can't do issue. The workshop on composure immediately led to a win over a top 20 ranked program.

Developing the composure skill

Contrary to popular belief, composure can be taught as well as a baseline jump hook, bounce pass, or pick and roll. After understanding what composure is and how to practice composure, the key quickly becomes composure practice consistency.

Step 1 ? understanding how the mind creates stress

People are often concerned and sometimes fearful about things that they do not understand. For this reason, pressure and nervousness in sports is often a huge area of pre-game, in-game and post-game anxiety for many athletes. Worse still, discussing these thoughts and feelings is a ?place where few athletes enjoy going? for fear of being perceived as mentally weak, foolish, giving away a mental edge or advantage to teammates who may be competing for their playing time, or having their playing time affected by a coaching decision due to their public admission of nervousness. For these reasons, game time anxiety and nervousness remains an almost silent, unspoken pain. Smart coaches find smart ways to talk about this vs. sweeping it under the proverbial game time rug, and these smart coaches find innovative ways to broach the subject without athletes fearing they have lost face or will be seen as weak. There is a tremendous sense of bonding and togetherness among a group of athletes who begin to realize that ?its ok,? ?everyone is pretty much experiencing the same things,? ?and we'll get through it together.? In itself, these types of informal team meetings (some may be player lead, other meetings coach led) can be of some help to maintaining composure levels, but it is just a first step. As we will discover, the next step is to develop a team practice routine to develop the composure skills that will have a huge impact on game time performance.

Before we get to step 2 however, we must first outline the type of conversation that needs to occur in step 1. The first thing to discuss is the fact that this feeling of nervousness has been common to all athletes, from Michael Jordan to Diana Taurasi. The feeling is normal and not necessarily a negative. The key is what becomes of this feeling of nervousness. Is it transferred to excited energy, or does it become uncomfortable and debilitating muscular tension? We should next discuss, the process by which nervousness is created. On a very basic level, any area of the brain called the hypothalamus recognizes stress and activates two different response systems. Picture this like a rainstorm at the top of a mountain that results in two different rivers that flow down this mountain. The first river is the ?sympathetic river? which activates many of our primary organs directly (causing changes in our heart rate, perspiration, muscular tension etc), and the second river is the ?pituitary? river that flows through the pituitary gland (a small pea sized gland in the brain), that in turn stimulates our stress hormones, often resulting in the same traits as river #1 ? increased heart rate with altered breathing patterns, the shutdown of the digestive system, an uncomfortable knotting sensation in the stomach and throat, and increased muscular tension. Collectively, these rivers are caused the ?fight or flight? reaction. The interesting thing about this phenomenon is that when this energy is used to positively focus and sustain intensity, it can produce lifetime best performances, but when this energy turns into an uncomfortable level of muscular tension and nervousness, fine motor skills and intricate firing patterns of the muscles (responsible for things like free throw shooting) are altered, and smooth practice mechanics quickly become ?brick city? in games. In time, we will learn how to solve this. However, I cannot emphasize the following point enough?clenching our teeth and fists and wanting to win a game the most is NOT the path to a combination of great composure and intensity. There is nothing wrong with intensity and ?wanting it the most.? In fact it is an important trait of any championship team. However, this mindset does not guarantee clutch composure. Any accomplished coach will tell you that only Hollywood gives the win each and every time to the team that ?wants it the most.? In real life, the team that executes their offense and defense the best will win the game ? period. And skills execution in high pressure/clutch situations takes composure. Again, even a simple, basic working knowledge of this process is somewhat comforting for athletes, especially as they arrive at the realization of how much control they truly have over a process that is set in motion by their own perceptions of the game or game specific situation.

Part 1 of this discussion has so far examined the need for greater composure training, explored some of the myths connected to clutch composure, and provided an overview of the mind-body connection of composure, important for each coach and athlete to at least have a basic understanding of. The next issue of the WBCA journal will include Part 2 of ?Poise under Pressure,? and will examine more of the skills training necessary to achieve a consistent level of clutch composure. Part 2 will discuss:

1. Reducing muscular tension
2. Mistake management to increase composure
3. Finding a player's optimal emotional arousal
4. Reducing the stress response under pressure
5. Having a championship mindset for clutch situations