This story is part of Peak, The Athletic’s desk covering the mental side of sports. Sign up for Peak’s newsletter here.
Jeff Troesch is a mental performance coach who has worked across college sports, with individual athletes and MLB teams. He is the author of the book “One Day Better.”
When I first started as a consultant in sport psychology almost 40 years ago, the world of mental performance training was in a nascent state. I encountered a great deal of skepticism from athletes:
“I don’t need your help — I’m not crazy.”
“That’s all voodoo and snake oil.”
“What does this have to do with catching a football?”
These days, the general attitude is vastly different. The field of professionals has grown dramatically, and athletes and coaches are openly accepting, seeking and embracing mental skills. But in the last 10 years or so, the effect of social media and smartphones on mental performance has emerged as the most disruptive change I’ve witnessed over my four decades in sports.
In my work, I have the opportunity to get the truth from athletes’ experiences. Today I spend an inordinate amount of time in my sessions helping athletes manage the fallout from online trolling, the sense that they have “got to post” regularly to “stay relevant,” and the habits of staying hypervigilant about what their competition might look like, train like or generally experience.
A great number of these athletes then translate this information into narratives they find anxiety-inducing:
“She looks fitter than me.”
“He’s getting the endorsements that I feel I should be getting.”
“Maybe I need to change to the equipment she’s using.”
“I thought I had done well yesterday, but given what I now see that she did, maybe what I did wasn’t so good.”
“So many people were making comments about my body.”
All of that stuff used to be behind closed doors; players didn’t have access to it so easily. Now it’s everywhere.
As a result, the things we’re trying to do to help players simplify their craft have become exponentially more complex, if not more complicated.
It translates into what’s happening when a player is in the batter’s box, on the mound or when they’re playing defense in the field. We get players who are traveling to the future in their heads: What’s this going to mean relative to my next contract? Are they going to send me down and bring the next guy up?
That was somewhat normal back in the day. But now it’s on blast 24/7. Athletes are breeding a lot of anxiety and social consciousness around comparison, but also from people going at them online — the trolls and the gamblers.
It has real, real implications.
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An ATP tennis player told me, “Every time I go out there now, I have to battle thoughts about what people gambling on my match are going to say after the match.”
An LPGA golfer said, “When I see other players posting social experiences they had with other players, I sometimes step on the course feeling like it’s me against a group of people rather than just me playing a round of golf.”
The tendency to look outside oneself can, to some extent, help athletes contextualize their performance. However, the degree to which many athletes ruminate about “others” directs their thoughts toward things they cannot control.
For many, this leads to a significant increase in competitive anxiety, internal distractibility and a lost sense of agency to be able to accomplish their goals.
The more the athlete focuses on “them,” the less likely they are to have their attention in the optimal place for resting, training or competing. This takes a toll and can have a cumulative effect. Athletes are often unnecessarily burning energy worrying about what “they” will say — whether that be competitors, media, bloggers, podcasters or commentators.
Consequently, there are times when athletes become so fixated on “proving them wrong” or “trying not to give them something to talk about” that they lose sight of doing their job in the pursuit of mastery at their craft.
I’ll give an example.
An Olympic champion with whom I consult recently removed her social media apps from her phone for a few weeks at my suggestion. She found herself fixated on her competitors’ posts and said it was creating “too much traffic in my head.”
She solicited help from her friends and family to post items required by her sponsors during this period.
She reported back to me that, before this experiment, she had no real idea how much stress social media caused for her. This period of a few weeks proved to be the most stress-free stretch of time she could remember, and she felt it improved her sleep quality.
Suffice it to say, we have formulated a plan to make this social media disengagement more permanent.
I am not advocating for the elimination of smartphones or social media. Clearly, this technology is woven into the fabric of our society.
My pressing concern is that athletes become more acutely aware of the overt and subtle effects of being tethered to smartphones and apps. Some of the mental health impacts of our use of technology have become increasingly documented. But I’ve also found it is often detrimental to mental performance.
It can create internal distractions around avoiding other people’s opinions. It can set the athlete up for unreasonable comparisons with others, which can sidetrack an athlete’s development or competitive readiness. It can make bonding as a team more difficult.
This is true at the highest levels of sport and has trickled down to youth and high school-level sports as well.
An honest self-assessment and increased self-awareness around these issues could inspire coaches, teams and athletes to make some lifestyle adjustments that could prove exceedingly fruitful.
