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Omnia Vincit Amor

“Mental Training” by Michael J. Keyes, M.D.

I’ve written a lot about the effects of the “fight or flight” reaction to stress, and there is a good reason for doing so. The most common question asked of any sports psychologist (which, strictly speaking, I am not, since I am a psychiatrist) is how to deal with the effects of match stress/performance anxiety/fight or flight. The reason for the predominance of this question is clear — everyone suffers from match stress and everyone wants to get rid of it.

The sad fact is match stress is not going to go away. It can be countermanded by good mental training, but it will affect every shooter at some level. That’s just the way humans are built.

Match stress is a variation of the fight or flight response to danger. While there is no real danger — in the sense of a carnivore about to eat you — in a shooting match, that part of the brain triggered by the potential threat of shooting in a match doesn’t know how to make the distinction. So, whether or not there is a physical danger out there makes no difference. Of course, other parts of the brain can intervene in this response. That is the way most mental training techniques modify the response, but the basic response starts automatically when a match starts.

How can you not love a face like that?

Fight or flight probably starts in the midbrain and brain stem, those brain bits we share with lizards and squirrels, animals whose brains consist mostly of midbrain. When they are confronted with danger, they tend to run or, in some cases, freeze. This means the automatic triggering of adrenaline causes a cascade of events that culminate in less thought, more muscle twitching and a lot of flexion of limbs and body in an attempt to either be faster or better protected (think fetal position). While some of the effects are helpful in competition, the more advanced stages of the response are detrimental to shooting well.

Shooting is an extension sport. It requires a relaxed body, precise placement of arms, legs and head in relation to the weapon and total concentration on the task, preferably on one thing such as the target. Neurological studies have shown these tasks are best done when the cortex — that big ball of nerves above the midbrain — is in charge. Fight or flight responses initially alert the cortex, but when there is a specific task that has to take place, a tug of war ensues between the midbrain and cortex that the midbrain often wins.

Those who go into harm’s way on a regular basis — soldiers, policemen, firemen, etc. — have learned to deal with such stressors over the course of many years. They are trained to deal with the intense environments that can occur on the job and, over the years, a number of principles have become evident. Constant training in varied environments, standard techniques practiced until they are automatic, after–action reports and analysis of each event and unit cohesion have all proved to be powerful and successful ways to help individuals avoid the ravages of the stress response. These ideas go back to the Spartans and probably thousands of years before that. Well–trained, well–conditioned soldiers deal with battle stress better than those who are neither of those things.

For competition shooters, the same principles hold true. A well–trained, well–conditioned shooter will deal with match stress better than someone who is not. The whole coaching/training axis exists to develop the kind of shooter who can deal with any problem that occurs and will meet the goals developed. But I am not going to talk about that in this column.

While focusing on the effects of match pressure and how to deal with it takes up most of the body of knowledge that is mental training (and rightfully so), it leads to a narrow view of how the mind/body relationship works. People are not just responders to danger; in fact, most of the time even the pseudo–danger of performance anxiety is rare. Most of us spend our time doing and enjoying routine things and our days tend to be predictable. Even soldiers in war spend the vast amount of time waiting or doing routine tasks. These “routine” aspects of life are usually marked by one thing — they occur in a social context. This means almost everything you do is in the company of others.

These others may be family, loved ones, colleagues or complete strangers. No matter who they are, we have a social interaction that is tempered by relationships and societal expectations. These interactions are usually controlled by the cortex of the brain, not the midbrain, and that makes most relationships predictable. Of course we don’t just have logical relationships with people. Other things happen, too. We form associations based on mutual likes, we develop group ideas and ideals, we go to church, and we fall in love.

It’s that last one I want to talk about.

I’m not going to define love. That has been the task of others far smarter than I over many centuries and you know how that has been going. Rather, I am going to refer to a paper recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (June 27, 2011) with the very non–romantic title of “Attachment Figures Activate A Safety Signal–Related Neural Region And Reduce Pain Experience” by Naomi Eisenberger, et al, from UCLA. In it, she shows the effects of love.

Dr. Eisenberger wanted to see if there was any validity to the common thought that strong romantic attachments helped a person deal more effectively with stress situations. We all know of athletes who cite their love of family, their God or their country as sources for their successes. For the most part, these athletes seem sincere and devoted, and while many observers take their thoughts with a grain of salt, no one would deny their sincerity. Dr. Eisenberger set out to see if she could show scientific evidence of these “attachments” having an effect on stress.

She took a group of women who were in long–term devoted relationships (seven out of ten on a scale of partner support) and subjected them to pain stimuli. Pain is often used as a surrogate for stress in all sorts of experiments. She showed the women random pictures of strangers and their loved ones while “stimulating” them (a nice term for zapping) and asked them to rate the pain on a scale. The stimulus was the same throughout the experiment for each subject. When the women were shown pictures of strangers, the pain was experienced at a significantly higher level than when shown pictures of their long–time partners.

Up to this point, this is just another college–level psychology experiment, but the UCLA team also used functional MRI (FMRI) to view neural activity in various parts of the brain, including the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC), which is associated with “safety signaling.” They saw reductions in those areas of the brain that report pain and stress and an increase in the VMPFC when the loved ones’ pictures were being shown. The effect was stronger the longer the relationship and the more devoted the partners. It was this use of FMRI that gave us strong, objective evidence of the role of strong relationships (I call it love) and the ability to withstand stress and pain.

One final conclusion of the study was “…an implication of these findings is that, in the same way that stimuli that historically have threatened survival (e.g., snakes, spiders) are considered to be prepared fear stimuli, attachment figures, who have historically benefited survival, may serve as prepared safety stimuli, reducing threat or distress–related responding in their presence.” In other words, love conquers all.

Of course, it doesn’t have to be romantic love. Relationships of any kind that draw people towards each other and engender loyalty, protective feelings or other caring emotions will probably do the same thing. My experience with soldiers in combat has been that they are afraid, but they also want to make sure their comrades are safe and they are willing to sacrifice to do that. The small–unit cohesion makes the horrors of war bearable during the worst times. Senator John McCain reported his faith in God sustained him throughout his imprisonment, and studies of other prisoners bear this out.

Love of sport probably has the same, if not as intense, effect. Just look at Brett Favre.

We tend to focus on the fight or flight response when we shoot in a match. We should, of course, because it is a very strong force and is triggered by our involvement in match shooting. But we tend to forget there are other strong emotional neurophysiological forces out there we can use to our benefit. Love, however you define it, is the strongest of those.

I never thought I would say this in a serious paper on mental training, but if you do find love in your heart, remember it can be protective in stress situations, and you can learn to use that feeling to help temper match stress. How you do it is up to you, but self–talk, pictures of our children or maybe just a smile from your loved one may help. By knowing this will help, you can use it to your advantage, especially if you bring up the image before match stress is triggered. When faced with stress, just remember: Love conquers all.

Dr. Keyes has written over 200 articles on mental training for Shotgun Sports and is author of the book Mental Training For The Shotgun Sports. He is a former physician for the U.S. Shooting Team, retired Colonel from the Army Reserve and a veteran of Viet Nam and Desert Storm. A Tennessee state pistol champion and coach of several national championship teams, he currently practices in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. You can e-mail him at mikeyes@charter.net.