Picture you're standing in front of an audience. Everyone's looking at you. Your hands are sweaty, your knees are shaking, your mouth is dry. The noise is overwhelming because everybody is silent, and you can hear your heart beating and thumping inside your own head.
Hello, and welcome back to Brain in the Game. Brain in the Game is a podcast that's been specifically designed for athletes, coaches, and parents who are looking to do their sport just that little bit smarter. And I'm your host, Dave Diggle.
In this episode, we're going to look at extreme pressure, not the pressure I've just described, but the next level pressure.
Dave's a high-performance sports mind coach, helping athletes, coaches, parents, and crew do it smarter in their sport. Any sport, any continent, if you want to learn what it takes to turn athletes into champions, then buckle up your boots, strap on your helmet, and take a deep breath. As we dive into another episode of Brain in the Game as we unpack the mental strategies to perform smarter in and out of the arena.
Hi, and welcome back. In this episode, we're going to look at extreme pressure. And what we've just described is incredibly normal and human. This is how most of us feel standing in front of our peers as we're supposed to be giving a keynote speech; or you're about to do that all-important performance, the one that you've been training for for months, maybe even years; an Olympic Games; or it's down to you to kick the winning goal to take your team through to the finals. That pressure is accumulative and human, and we all feel it at different levels, in different scenarios, in different places all the time. Standing in front of people brings out the absolute worst in most of us. Our fear, fight, flight, and freeze mechanism kicks in as we worry about messing up and making people see a side of us that we just don't want them to know.
When we talk about pressure – I did a podcast back in February of 2024 where I talked about changing our relationship with pressure. See, human survival mechanism dictates that we fear more things than probably we need to. We're not the biggest, we're not the strongest, we're not the fastest, we don't have big fangs or big claws.
What humans have that other animals don't necessarily have is the ability to plan and think about what could go wrong. Because of that, our survival mechanism is highly tuned to scare us. It's worked for hundreds of thousands of years to keep us alive. However, what it does is it makes us highly attuned to pressure, fear, what could go wrong. And so because of that, high performers can and sometimes be triggered before they need to be. So changing our relationship with pressure, seeing it as an opportunity to grow and learn and see things slightly different is the base level of understanding how to deal with extreme situations.
I'll put a link below and you can go back and you can watch and listen to that podcast where it talks about changing our relationship and dynamic with pressure. But let's get into extreme pressure. I've had a couple of different careers as time has gone on, from the high-performance athlete into the high-performance coaching arena. Then there was a period in the middle there where I actually worked for a private military and security company in risk management. And part of that job was we were taken into high-risk situations, and our role was to get politicians, diplomats out of hot zones and get them back to safety.
There was a group of us that were put together in order to do this job. Some of them were military and had lifelong military careers. Some were in law enforcement, and then there was us. And we had a different eclectic group of skillsets that they brought together. And so mine was probably more your street version of education, whereas others had been through systems and institutions before. In order for us to do our job, we had a lot of different training, from firearms training to extraction off of aeroplanes, from building extractions. And it was an amazing job. I loved the job. It was really stimulating, and every day was a different day, and you never really knew and understood what was coming until it happened. But we also did a lot of psychological training, and that's probably where I got a lot of my strategies in how to manage extreme pressure. And I want to talk about two of these lessons that I learned in today's podcast.
We were taken to a farm, and there was 15 of us on this course, and we were being trained by some really high-level military educators. We were sitting around the night before the course started, and everybody was having a few drinks and getting to know each other. Some of us did know each other. Others were new to the group. We were building relationships. We were all talking about our past experiences and why we were in this really eclectic group. The next morning, the training started. They woke us up very early. They walked us out into this field, and in the middle of this field was a concrete bunker. They opened the door, really creaky old metal door, and inside it was cold, it was damp, it really smelt of mould. There was no windows, just a row of lights down the centre, a bunch of old school desks. You remember the ones that had the wooden tops with the little inkwells? Clearly, they'd got them cheap off of an old school and some old school chairs. We walked into the room and there was these two very intimidating-looking guys standing in front of us and they said, 'Right, we're going to do some psychological planning exercises. Some of you may have done strategy training like this before. Some of you wouldn't have.'
They handed each of us an envelope and they said, 'In the envelope is a scenario. What we want you to do is read the scenario, understand that scenario, come up with a strategy, then go to one of the assessors and describe that strategy in detail. If you've understood the scenario, you've come up with a good enough strategy, and you've been able to articulate that well enough, you'll pass.'
I thought, This is easy. This is something we can all do. We went and grabbed our envelopes, we sat at the tables, and we went to work. We had 10 minutes to come up with this strategy. After about six minutes, I'd read through with great detail. I think I had a really good understanding of what the scenario was. I came up with a plan. I went and I tapped the shoulder of the assessor in the corner, and I said to him, I'm ready. He said, 'Okay, explain to me your strategy.' I did, and I explained it as detailed as I possibly could with as much emphasis on the process as I possibly could. He said, 'Mr Diggle, off you go. Out that door, you've passed.'
I walked out the door. There was a bunch of people who had finished before me, and we waited for the rest to join us. During that time, we were all standing there going, That was easy. That was quite an easy process for us to go through. Did anybody have any challenges? Everyone was going, No, that was really easy. After about 5, 10 minutes, the two lead instructors came out and said, 'Okay, we're going to have a cup of tea, and then we're going to come back and do some different training.' When we were having a cup of tea, the instructor said to us, 'Right, what we're going to do is we're going to debrief. I want to understand how you did that exercise.' Each of us, individually, we went around the room and we described what we did. Interestingly, almost all of us followed the same protocol. We read it in detail. We thought about every scenario we possibly could. We looked for the little flaws or the little tricks inside the description. Was there anything that was highlighted, anything that was missing? We were looking for areas that they were trying to trick us. Then we made as detailed process as we possibly could, calling upon any other training we had done in the past and looking for a way to better understand that single scenario.
Once we'd done that and we'd gone through as much detail, we'd drawn on as many of our experiences as possible. When we got the opportunity to articulate it to the instructor, we made sure we followed it slowly and with very specific detail around the actions taken, the accountability process, and what our assumed outcomes would be. That process is how we do any decision-making and strategy-execution process. If you're an athlete or you're a business person, you would look at that and go, Yeah, that's exactly what we do. We take all the data in, we look at all the scenarios, we look for things that we might have missed, we come up with a plan, and then we allocate that plan to individuals, and then we communicate that. So nothing unusual in that. The instructors said, 'Okay, what you've all just done is a typical strategy analysis, execution process. However, we're not here for typical. What we're here to do is to train you to operate in highly pressurised situations. In order to do that, we've got to teach you a couple of new strategies.'
The first of those strategies was simplification, and that sounds simple. How do I simplify the process? But when we're put under pressure, we tend to make the process way more than it needs to be. We overthink it. We don't deep-think, we over-think. Because of that, we're looking for as many different strategies and processes and fears and threats as we possibly can. All of this comes from our survival mechanism. If you're an athlete or a coach, you'll see this in your athletes. You'll train a certain way, you'll prepare for the competition, you'll get there, then all of a sudden, everything becomes overwhelming. Base skills that you knew that you could do and have done a squillion times have disappeared. If you're in the business world and you've done all your analysis, you're ready to go, you've got the presentation or the merger to go and you get there and all of a sudden someone asks a question that you weren't expecting, everything goes. We have what we call performance amnesia, where you can't remember what you already know, and that's typical. So simplification is, what do I actually need? If we look at most systems and processes, around one-third of what we create is actually needed. Around two-thirds is designed to make us feel comfortable, feel better, feel more familiar.
So again, as an athlete, when you're training, probably one-third of your preparation is necessary. Two-thirds is there just to make you feel good. If we can better understand what the needs are versus what the wants are, then we are more likely to be able to operate in extreme conditions.
How does that work in realistic terms? These two instructors stood in front of us and they said, 'Right, when you described your process to us, your debrief on what you just went through in that 10 minutes, very nice, very comfortable, not really pressurised situation. The only pressure you really had was a timeline of 10 minutes. Much of what you went through is an idealistic perspective. If you've got all the time in the world, if you've got no pressure, if you've got no expectations, the optimal outcome and process and strategy makes sense.'
The more thought you can give it, the better, right? This is a difference between overthinking and deep thinking. If you can deep think something to the point of, really understand that, then you can execute that. If we overthink, that's a broad, shallow version of, Yeah, but what ifs. What if this happens? What if that happens? What if that goes wrong? What if this goes wrong? What if I can't do this? What if that's not happened? I haven't got this equipment. I haven't got that execution. All of these things are designed to fulfil an emotional want rather than a physical need.
These two instructors talked about simplification and the ability to dissect your process and say, What is it I actually need? What are the key things in this process that are non-negotiable for me? In order for me to be able to execute the most minimalistic process possible, what are the needs? And what the rest part of this is just fluff. And so better understanding your strategy, the way that you prepare, the things that you need, what's necessary in your process.
In the sporting context, I teach that as a funnel system. And those of you who've been through my training know that that funnel system is designed for you to get ready for a competition and go, Yeah, but this is all I need to do. I know I've done what I need to do. I'm ready.
Another example of simplification is during World War II, the American fighter pilots were flying some of the most technologically advanced fighter aircraft in the skies.
Yet under dogfighting scenarios, they were finding themselves getting shot out of the sky. What they realised is they had too many options under pressure. So what they did was they reduced the amount of knobs and dials and things that they could do in the moment down to the most important things under pressure. And they found that they improved their performance to the point where they then again started to dominate the skies.
The second part of the lessons these two instructors wanted to teach us came from a previous military experience. And there was a sniper called Carlos Hathcock. He was an American Marine during the Vietnam War, and he's most famous for one of his kills. He had 93 confirmed kills, but one of them stood out that he got recognised for. Him and his unit had been pinned down by the Vietnamese for some period of time. He could see their sniper through his sight, and he could see that the Vietnamese sniper could see him through their sight. These two were looking at each other, playing dare with each other over a period of time. Both sides were waiting to see what the other side were going to do.
The Americans were going about doing what they do in camp, and you've got Carlos laying there, partially protected by the environment, the shrubbery, but just glaring through his scope at his adversary, the other side, waiting for who's going to make the first move. All of a sudden, the Vietnamese sent up rockets and started shooting at them, and Carlos came under fire, machine gun fire, mortar fire, bombs were going off around him, but Carlos didn't move. He stayed fixated at looking through his sight at his adversary, the other end, at the most distance that probably most snipers could actually achieve. During all of this mayhem that's going on around him, he was doing what snipers do. He was focusing on his breathing. He was assessing the situation. He was assessing the wind velocity over that distance. He was assessing the temperature because all of these things impact your ability, if you're a sniper, to execute your shot. Carlos took the shot and shot through the sight of his opponent, the other side, and killed them, which took out their advantage. The Americans went on to claim that battle, and Carlos was recognised for his bravery under fire.
When he was interviewed by a psychologist, they said, 'How did you stay so calm to be able to execute when clearly your life was on the line? Mortar bombs going off around you. There were people screaming and shouting. There were bullets ricocheting off of rocks near your head, yet you didn't deviate from your process.' He said what he used was a bubble process. He placed himself inside an imaginary bubble and chose what was in the bubble with him. For him, it was his process, his breathing, his focus, his data that he was collecting. All of those were relevant things that he needed in that moment. Everything else didn't need to be there. In his mind, great, if it doesn't need to be there, I don't need to use my thought process and waste it on things that I don't need. Now, I'm sure he's human. His heart rate would have been racing. There would have been part of him that was thinking, When do I get out of here? When do I retreat? Yet he chose to focus only on what was inside his bubble.
So we've got two very clear processes here, simplification and bubbling. Both of those are skillsets that help us under pressure. We all finished our cup of tea and we headed back to the training area and the bunker. However, this time, as we approach the bunker, we could see things were slightly different. The two instructors were standing on the outside with hearing protection on and glasses on. All the tables and chairs were now stacked outside. We thought, Okay, so they've moved us outside. We no longer have to go into that smelly, damp, mouldy bunker. Whatever we're going to do now is going to be external. As we walked up, they said, 'Right, pick up an envelope.' There was a table full of the envelopes. Each one of us just picked up an envelope. We had no idea what was inside it. And they said, 'What we're going to do this time, we're going to go back inside the bunker. This time, you have three minutes.' I thought, Okay. They've given us a little bit of extended pressure here of time. And they said, 'Right, when you go inside, I want you to walk up to one of the walls and stand next to the wall.' And we filed in, all 15 of us, and we're still laughing and joking and talking to each other and not really paying too much attention to what's going on around us. Hey, we'd been through this process, right? We knew what we needed to do. We thought we were quite good at what we were doing. We all walked in and we found a place around the outside on the walls, and we all just lent there and we were still chitty-chatting. Then the big door on the outside, closed. The two instructors were in there and they said, You're going to have three minutes and you'll know when to start. So one of the instructors threw what's called a percussion bomb into the centre of the room. Now, for those of you who don't know what percussion bomb is, it sends out a verberation, kaboom, that is designed to disorientate people. It makes you vomit. It makes everything inside your head rattle around like a verberation. You can't think, you can't hear, you can't really see there's such an overwhelm of senses are going on. You start to shake. Your nervous system has been impacted. Now, the military uses this to disorientate their adversaries when they're going into enclosed environments. It doesn't feel good. It doesn't make you feel like you've got everything together. We took that as, Okay, this means we start.
I've lent back against the wall just to try and get some stability. I've opened my envelope. I couldn't I didn't really read it. My eyes felt like they were still vibrating side to side from that percussion bomb. I certainly felt sick. I felt like I was going to throw up. I could feel my knees were shaking, and I was consumed with that survival mechanism of, I don't really want to be in here. I want to get out. This doesn't feel good. But then I remembered the two exercises we'd gone through during our debrief, the simplification and the bubble. I thought, Right, if I'm going to do this exercise, what are the specific things that I need? I scanned through the scenario and I picked what I thought were the key components to that that were important for me to understand in order to be able to deliver the scenario that I came up with.
I then chose to lean against the wall and put myself in a bubble and think, What is it that I can control in this scenario here? There's a lot of noise going on in here, people screaming and shouting. All of those things didn't help me. They weren't going to serve me in that moment. I chose to put myself in that bubble and I felt like things on the outside of that bubble started to fade or at least dissipate a little bit. I could still hear them, of course, but they were no longer part of my thought process. All I was focusing on was trying to focus on the writing on the page and think, Okay, what is it I specifically need to see in this scenario? As I was going through that process, I decided to talk my way through the process. Right, this means this, this means that. Is that relevant to me? No. I'm going to put that on the outside of my bubble. Is this relevant? Yes. Now, is this first, second, or third priority to me? I had a strategy that was very pragmatic. The more pragmatic I could be, the less emotional I was about how I was feeling. I came up with a strategy. I decided, Right, that is in this scenario, within this amount of allotted time, the best scenario I can come up with. I walked up and I tapped the assessor on his shoulder and said, I'm ready.
He said, Mr Diggle, what is your process? Instead of giving them a really detailed, specific response like I had done in the first exercise, I said, Right, these are the key points, A, B, C, D, and E. This is where we are looking to get the biggest outcome here. This person here, that's what I need them to do. This person here, that's what I need them to do. The outcome is X. I simplified the delivery to being really, really specific too. He said, Mr Diggle, you've passed. You may exit out that door. When I got outside, I dropped to my hands and knees and heaved several times thinking I was going to throw up. The smell, the sensory overwhelm and overload that I'd been through made me feel incredibly unwell. I looked up and it was one other person out there. Out of the 15 of us that went into that room that had all passed when we had all the time in the world, well, 10 minutes, only three of us passed under this extreme pressure.
When we did the a debrief post this time, the instructor said, Right, what did you three do? I walked them through what I'd done. I put myself against the wall. I limited the amount of things that my brain had to process, including standing up, not vomiting and falling over. And then I said, Right, what are the key things that I need out of this document? I then trusted my process. I looked for, Have I done these things before? Have I got a working blueprint from something that I've executed in the past that's been successful? And I did. So I took that, I used that as a working template. I tweaked it and trusted it. I executed and I passed.
So what can we learn from this? If we're going to focus on extreme pressure, not your normal everyday, run-of-the-mill competition pressure. But what if we get to an Olympic Games, a World Championship, or we get there and our coach is sick, or we're running late because the bus didn't turn up from the village to the competition venue, which happens way more than you would realise. What do we do? What do we do in those scenarios? What do we do in those situations? How do we manage those overwhelming emotional situations?
We simplify. We look at what is going to be a necessary need in this moment. And we have to look, do we have a working blueprint? Have we been here before? If we haven't, then how do I execute under this pressure with the most minimal moves possible? Like everything, the more moving parts, the more opportunity for something to go wrong.
These two strategies that I learned during this period in my life, I use today, be that in the high-performance sports world or in the corporate negotiation world. Both of those strategies have served me so well. It's allowed me to execute what I do under pressure. It's allowed me to teach other key components of that strategy to key people in the organisation, be that an athlete, be that a coach. Whatever those people involved in that organisation are who need to make strategic decisions under extreme pressure, you have to have a process. You have to have a framework. If you rely on your brain to make it up as you go along in that moment in time, you are so likely to make a big catastrophic decision based on emotion.
Humans are emotional creatures. We're designed to react under pressure. Like I said, we don't have the big claws. We can't run faster. We're not stronger than most of the things that try to eat us. What we've got is our ability to strategically think and critically process.
When you think about your case scenario, when you're put in extreme pressure situations, how do you normally react? Do you have a robust, simplified process that will get you out of that one moment in time and back into a place where you can more strategically think, give yourself space and time and opportunity to come up with a better plan? Or do you capitulate? Do you find yourself getting overwhelmed, not being able to make decisions, feeling that all your senses have been heightened, turned up to 12 out of 10? Learning how to deal with extreme pressure, having a go-to framework that you go, Yeah, in this scenario, it's not ideal. Let me execute the break glass strategy. What do I do in those emergency moments? What do I say? How do I remove the emotion that isn't serving me? How do I then communicate that to people who are relying on me?
If you're a coach and your athlete is freaking out, what you say in that moment will either make or break their performance. If it's an Olympics, it might be their one and only shot. Learning to manage under pressure isn't a have or have not. It's not how tough are you. It's do you have an executionable strategy and framework that you can rely on and you trust? Hope you've got a lot from this podcast, Understanding Extreme Pressure. Until the next episode of Brain in the Game, train smart and enjoy the ride. My name's Dave Diggle.
