Staying Sharp: Getting and Staying in the Zone

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At the root of most slumps is a perceived decline in performance. Athletes tend to define themselves by their results, and any dip in their stats can make them start to think they are not as good as they used to be or as good as they thought they were. In some cases, they may not be slipping at all; their opponents may just be getting better. Or the decline may be a matter of perspective; after all, no one can perform at peak levels 100% of the time. Over-training and bringing the muscles to the brink of fatigue can lead to a physical plateau, after which the body just can't run any faster or swing any harder.

What elevates any of those scenarios from an ordinary off day to a prolonged slump is the way the athlete interprets the dip. "It has less to do with what is contributing to the decrease in performance and more to do with how you react and adjust to the decline," says Jonathan Katz, a psychologist at Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons.

Much of the action takes place without the athlete's even being aware that it's occurring. After years of practice, hitting a baseball or shooting a basket becomes almost second nature to a professional athlete. So it's easy to think the skill resides in muscle memory. But even those rote actions involve a tremendous amount of mental processing; they are just happening too fast for the athlete to realize they are going on. "It's not the conscious kind of processing, the kind where you're thinking about how to control your body," says Jeff Simons, a sports psychologist at California State University, East Bay. "Our conscious brain cannot keep up with the speed of information processing necessary to perform a high-level skill."

Any learned sports skill begins in the thinking part of the brain, with nerves in the prefrontal cortex. As those neurons get excited, they activate nerve cells connected to the limbic system just under the cerebrum of the brain, the area associated with emotions such as fear, anxiety, elation and satisfaction. That area is tied in turn to the motor cortex, which controls the muscles.

If the feedback loop is dominated by fear—fear of failure, fear of disappointing teammates, fear of being unworthy—the circuit starts to resemble the classic fight-or-flight response. In the perform-or-perish version, anxious thoughts trigger the release of adrenaline, the hormone that sets the heart racing, primes the muscles to run and puts all the senses on alert. The eyes slip into tunnel vision—the last thing a quarter-back needs when he's relying on peripheral perception to spot a waiting receiver.