miedo en el deporte
Ene 29 2020
Overcoming fear in sports using behavioral modification

In sports there are many situations that can produce fear in the athlete and this emotional response can be elicited by diverse factors (personal, social, etc.). Consequently, we face an immense variety – as it so happens with anything that moves on a psychological plane – and this represents a great challenge if we seek to manage this fear in our athletes.

This fear can become an obstacle for our athlete’s learning process, rehabilitation program or overall athletic performance. That’s why we must find the most effective method to modulate the affective response. To do so, we’ll turn our attention to behavioral modification techniques, more specifically: systematic desensitization and prolonged exposure.

Systematic desensitization and prolonged exposure

During the 70s, cognitive-behavioral techniques experienced an exponential growth in psychotherapy. Therefore they were applied to different contexts, including sports. The goal was to enhance an optimal mental state in the athletes to improve their performance levels. Anxiety management techniques quickly became relevant to help overcome fear in sports.

In this sense, techniques such as the systematic desensitization (Wolpe, 1968) and prolonged exposure proved their worth. They’re both heavily influenced by Mowrer’s two-factor theory (1947) which explains the process of avoidance learning: fear is acquired by classic conditioning and maintained by means of avoidance and escape behaviors (Foa, 2011).

Main difference between both techniques is that SD includes a personalized hierarchy of feared situations and the individual faces each situation progressively using visualization and imagination. During prolonged exposures, on the other hand, individuals face the feared stimulus in real life.

Both techniques rely on two premises: extinction of the fear response (the initial response of the individual will tend to disappear after prolonged and repeated exposure to the stimulus), impeding escape or avoidance behaviors to facilitate extinction learning.

How does this apply to real-life situations

Summarizing these behavioral modification techniques in a few paragraphs might lead you to believe this is easy to perform in real-life settings… but you couldn’t be further from the truth. The reality is that this is quite complex and requires supervision from a specialized professional. The best way to help in the most extreme cases is to derive your athlete to a clinical psychologist.

However, there are some common guidelines that can be useful for everyday situations that may arise with our athletes (at any level of expertise). So I’ll detail those that may help overcome fear in sports.

Hierarchy of feared situations

The best way to understand this is using a real-life example: my mom! As many other women, she’s developed an irrational fear of doing box jumps. She’s physically capable of doing it but right when she’s about to lift her feet off the ground she stops in her tracks.

After several failed attempts, it was quite obvious that it wasn’t happening. So I askd myself: is there something else she might be willing to jump? Maybe 40 cm are too many and a 5-kg bumper plate seems more achievable. We progressively started piling up bumpers until we ran into that fear-avoidance pattern again.

So I shifted my focus and wondered if she’d be able to step up to the box or perform a jump alternating her feet. She wasn’t confident about jumping but she did manage to step up to the box (I stood there beside her just in case but she didn’t need me).

She started practicing 10-15 minutes after every session (repeated exposure) until one day she finally jumped. She alternated her feet but it was still an amazing achievement. Not only because it meant she was progressing in her athletic development but also because it boosted her self-confidence.

Impeding escape/avoidance

On paper, theory works wonders. However, there’s something we should be taking into consideration: who enjoys deliberately experiencing fear? As humans, we’re bound to two general principles that guide our behavior: approach pleasure and avoid pain. Therefore, we tend to escape from aversive situations. And this is exactly what we mustn’t allow.

Let’s see how this «avoidance learning» works with another example. Here’s a soccer player who tore her ACL performing a change of direction and has been inactive for the last 8 months. When she’s allowed to begin her training again, she experiences fear when faced with drills that involve change of direction and she actively avoids them.

This is how it works (figure 1): when she must perform a dribbling exercise, she starts to experience anxious symptomatology because she tore her ACL changing direction and she’s scared of relapsing. Anxiety is so intense that she’s unable to complete the drill and skips it. Escaping the situation brings her anxiety levels down, acting as negative reinforcement (to learn more about this concept, read this post).

fear in sports
Figure 1: example of how we process fear in avoidance learning

We’re trying to break this contingency through which changes of direction indicate the presence of danger (relapsing).

Our job is to «force» her to complete the exercise and re-evaluate the situation in a safe setting. Once she performs enough changes of direction without suffering any injuries, she’ll realize there was nothing to fear.

Recap

Fear in sports is a given so we must dedicate our efforts to finding the best way to manage this emotional response. In this article, I consider the possibility of using behavioral modification techniques which can be broken down into three key aspects:

  1. Listing fear situations according to their similarity to the original situation. This is especially helpful when anxiety levels are too high to expose the athlete from the get-go.
  2. Impeding escape/avoidance behaviors to break the contingency. They must learn that feared stimulus doesn’t predict danger or pain.
  3. Prolonged and repeated exposure to ensure full extinction of the conditioned response.













- Chirivella, Enrique Cantón. "La Psicología del Deporte como profesión especializada." Papeles del Psicólogo 31.3 (2010): 237-245.
- Ezquerro, M. (2008). Intervención psicológica en el deporte: revisión crítica y nuevas perspectivas. In V Congreso de la Asociación Española de Ciencias del Deporte. León. 
- Foa, E. B. (2011). Prolonged exposure therapy: past, present, and future. Depression and anxiety.
- Mowrer, O. (1947). On the dual nature of learning—a re-interpretation of" conditioning" and" problem-solving.". Harvard educational review.
- Wolpe, J. (1968) Psychotherapy by reciprocal inhibition. Conditional Reflex 3,234–240
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teaching crossfit
Ene 22 2020
Teaching CrossFit by using behavioral techniques

Human beings are born with a repertoire of innate behaviors as a result of millions of years of evolution. They’ve been hardwired into our brains to ensure our survival throughout the years. However, once we actually start interacting on planet Earth, we begin to learn a whole bunch of different skills.

This learning process is quite basic and it doesn’t really change as we fully develop into adults (yes, this means old dogs can learn new tricks). Understanding how human beings learn and acquire new behaviors can be quite useful for those of us who’ve decided to make a living out of teaching CrossFit.

In this article we’ll be talking about two behavioral techniques – reinforcement and punishment system and the shaping method – both of which can help us teach our athletes how to sharpen their tools and broaden their fitness in the process.

1 – Reinforcement vs. punishment

As active agents in our environment we can manipulate certain stimuli to elicit a desired effect, which can be to increase or reduce the chances of an individual repeating certain behaviors. This is how reinforcement and punishment can be used as teaching methods. It’s actually very common when teaching CrossFit but it should be noted that there’s a right way to do it.

First of all, when we say «positive» or «negative» we’re referring to either «providing a stimulus» or «withdrawing a stimulus», respectively. On the other hand, if we say «reinforcement» or «punishment», we wish to increase or decrease the chances of an individual repeating their behavior.

  • Positive reinforcement: this is the good ‘ol «here’s something you like cause you did something good». We provide the athlete with an appetitive stimulus to try and get them to repeat their behavior. Any form of positive feedback after an athlete executed a training session at the desired level is an example of positive reinforcement.
  • Negative reinforcement: this means we withdraw an unenjoyable stimulus to reward a certain behavior. For example, imagine you programmed 8 intervals on the assault bike but your athlete is crushing the paces you wrote out and you decide to give them the opportunity to skip the 8th interval if they manage to stay consistent on the 7th.
  • Positive punishment: this one is pretty much a given in any CrossFit affiliate around the world… or haven’t you ever been hit with penalty burpees? Leaving unattended barbells rolling around the floor or being late to class are things we don’t want our athletes doing so we gladly provide them with something as aversive as the burpee (although I must confess I love burpees and don’t think of them as punishment).
  • Negative punishment: this means that you withdraw something the athlete enjoys as punishment for unwanted behavior. For example, if the athlete’s late for class and misses the warm-up, the coach may decide to leave him out for that session because he’d mess up the class flow for the rest of the members.

2 – The shaping method

The shaping method is based on gradual reinforcement of successive approximations to a pre-established goal behavior. When teaching CrossFit, this behavioral technique can be applied for any and every progression drill we would normally use to learn how to snatch, do a muscle-up or an air squat.

Executing movements in CrossFit hitting all points of performance can only rest on a solid foundation. We look for exquisite movement patterns in our athletes before we move to the coveted «high-intensity» variable.

teaching crossfit
Figure 1: Minimizing risk and maximizing efficiency. Source: CrossFit L1 Training Guide.

Shaping programs are ideal when it comes to translating one of CrossFit’s greatest teachings to real-life situations (see figure 1) by using this method to guarantee excellent mechanics.

First, we choose a goal movement (clean & jerk, handstand walk, pull-up, etc.) and then we program a series of successive approximations to pave the road towards the end goal. Every time the athlete hits a milestone, we reinforce.

As the athlete progresses, we withdraw previous reinforcement. Ergo, the athlete will have to complete more difficult movement sequences in order to receive reinforcement as time goes on.

In order for the shaping method to be truly effective, the coach must be knowledgeable enough to identify execution errors and provide corrective cues for each case. These aspects will determine the affective valence of our feedback – positive, negative or corrective – (Carmona et. al, 2015).

Imagine one of the athletes at your affiliate doesn’t have a strict pull-up yet. The end goal is that non-kipping pull-up so we take a look at our progression drills and decide to have the athlete navigate through isometric bar holds, scapular pull-ups, ring rows with elevated feet, eccentric pull-ups, so on and so forth.

Once the athlete is able to hold onto the bar for more than 30″, you reinforce; once the athlete manages to perform scapular pull-ups with proper technique, you reinforce; and you continue in that fashion while simultaneously withdrawing reinforcement from previous steps. Throughout the process you provide negative or corrective feedback to avoid inadequate movement patterns because our focus must always be on enforcement of proper pull-up mechanics (scapular retraction, activated lats and core, etc.)

teaching crossfit
Nat Díez (@nat10p) at a CrossFit seminar. Source: ikopbphotographer.com

«If, as a coach, you don’t seek continuing education, don’t be a coach.»

Nat Diez

In the end, one of the most satisfying consequences of teaching CrossFit is that it often transcends the physical aspect. Not only do we aim to improve quality of life, we also teach values – which ultimately casts a larger shadow than we acknowledge -.

We must own up to that responsibility and avoid settling in on our present know-how. As representatives of a scientific-based training methodology we’re subject to constant renewal of our skill-set as coaches. That’s why we’re asked to re-up our coaching credentials every now and again.

This doesn’t mean you should start using reinforcements and punishments like there’s no tomorrow cause you read it on some blog or that you should drastically change your teaching style. It’s a lot easier than all that: drink from every fountain of knowledge you can find and thrive to offer your best version to those who enter your affiliate looking for their own. 













Carmona, D., Guzmán, J. F., & Olmedilla, A. (2015). Efectos de un programa de formulación de objetivos y moldeamiento del pase en jóvenes jugadores de fútbol. Revista de psicología del deporte, 24(1), 81-88.
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estilo atribucional
Ene 14 2020
Recovery from failure: rebound or crash and burn?

In the «Sport of Fitness» we’ve been lucky enough to witness epic comeback stories. Rich Froning owes his success in CrossFit and in life to that rope climb in 2010. Tia-Clair Toomey bounced back from losing in 2016 and became the most dominant female athlete with three consecutive titles of «Fittest Woman on Earth» (2017, 2018 and 2019).

But although some athletes have increased their performance levels after a major setback, others haven’t been able to replicate those success stories. So, the question remains: which underlying psychological mechanisms explain recovery from failure?

The attributional style theory

The attributional style theory (Abramson, Seligman, & Teasdale, 1984) reflects the process through which an individual determines the causality of events. It entails three components – cognitive, motivational and emotional – and considers three dimensions: stability, specificity and internality.

  • Stable-unstable: a stable attribution means the outcome (whether positive or negative) is chronic. Meanwhile, an unstable attribution applies only to the situation at hand.
  • Specific-global: «A global attribution implies that helplessness will occur across situations, whereas a specific attribution implies helplessness only in the original situation» (Abramson, Seligman & Teasdale, 1984).
  • Internal-external: this determines whether or not the individual considers the outcome as dependent on their own abilities or they attribute cause to external factors (luck, external evaluators, task difficulty, etc.)

These three dimensions interact with each other and result in a great variety of possibilities. However, there is a natural tendency we seem to follow and it has to do with optimism and pessimism. As we saw in another article, both have their own consequences and in relation to the attributional theory, we can distinguish between two completely opposite explanatory styles:

  • Pessimistic explanatory style: these individuals explain bad events as stable, global and internal, meaning («they’ll go on forever, affect everything and are all my fault»). Good events, on the other hand, are considered unstable, specific and external («I got lucky this one time and it won’t happen again»).
  • Optimistic explanatory style: bad events are deemed unstable, specific and external («My judge in that event was no-repping the life out of me») while good events are considered stable, global and internal («My training is solid and my performance has been consistent throughout the competition»).

Explanatory style is considered by some authors as an active mediator in recovery from failure (Seligman, Nolen-Hoeksema & Thornton, 1990; Martin-Krumm et. al, 2003). Athletes with a pessimistic profile tend to perform even worse after experiencing failure than those who are deemed more optimistic. It would appear that maintaining higher expectations of success kind of act as «protection» for performances in the future.

How can these attributions affect athletes?

attributional style
Josh Bridges has dealt with a fair share of setbacks; and he hasn’t backed down once.
  • Sport-related injuries: in terms of rehabilitation, both attributional styles can have negative consequences. The pessimistic athlete may have trouble adhering to their rehab treatment while the optimistic athlete may do too much in efforts to recover faster.
  • Acquisition of new skills: mastery of a sport-specific skill set is a primary goal for any athlete. Expecting a negative outcome can enlengthen the learning process way more than needed; on the other hand, being optimistic may lead an athlete to go too fast and skip the basics (which in CrossFit can penalize you in the long run).
  • Performance in competition: in this context, win-lose situations are a given. An athlete’s attributional style will determine how they cope with their results and will heavily influence their performance throughout the present competition and in the future.

What can we do to manage an attributional style?

As coaches

attributional style
Max El-Hag (@maxelhag) – founder of Training Think Tank – coaches top-level athletes dedicates a great deal of work to training their mindset.

Coaches play an interesting role in the management of explanatory styles because it so happens that these are usually unknown for the individual – unknown until someone points it out, that is -. As coaches we must first learn how our athletes attribute causality to the events surrounding them and then use that information.

The easiest way to identify an attributional style is to occasionally monitor the expectation of success prior to any given task and then have them explain their failure or success in said task. Then we can proceed to put their attributional styles to the test in different situations:

  • Manipulating the variables of a training cycle to generate deliberate success or failure. If we’re dealing with an athlete who internalizes failure on a general basis, we’ll try to set them up for success and have them acknowledge it as such. Also, we can give them negative feedback even if their performance is top-notch. Why? So they realize that although they did everything right, things can still go wrong.
  • Having the athlete analyze another athlete’s performance. You’d be surprised how easily one identifies faults and virtues in others and this is a great tool to show an athlete how to detect attributional errors. You can even «disguise» the athlete’s own experience as a hypothetical case and once they analyze it, you reveal the true athlete’s identity.
  • Teaching the athlete to generate alternative attributions. After a training session or an important competition, have the athlete explain in as many ways as possible the causality for their success or failure. After that, they must find evidence to support each theory (i.e., if you suck so much at CrossFit, how did you win that event at the Games?; was the judge really gunning for you or where you not getting deep enough in the squat?).

As athletes

Remember that our brains are dynamic and although they come with some heavy hardwire, they’re very reactive to our interactions with the environment. Embrace your explanatory styles for what they’re worth because they both have their advantages; but don’t for a second believe they’re set in stone.

Just the other day I witnessed something incredible. One of the most pessimistic individuals I know is on the brink of receiving a diagnosis for a recent knee injury. She already went through a torn ACL on her right knee which trashed her psychologically, so obviously her past experiences don’t help. I was waiting for her to detail the grimmest of expectations and she surprised me by saying: «you know what? I’m not going to be pessimistic this time. I’ll hope for the best and if I’m wrong, well, then I’ll see what to do then».

Long story short: you’re an ACTIVE agent in this hell of a life. Make the best of it.

















- Abramson, L.Y., Seligman, M.E., & Teasdale, J.D. (1978). Learned helplessness in humans: critique and reformulation. Journal of abnormal psychology, 87(1), 49.
- Martin-Krumm, C.P., Sarrazin, P.G., Peterson, C., & Famose, J. P. (2003). Explanatory style and resilience after sports failure. Personality and individual differences, 35(7), 1685-1695.
- Seligman, M.E., Abramson, L.Y., Semmel, A., & von Baeyer, C. (1979). Depressive attributional style. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 88(3), 242–247.
- Seligman, M.E., Nolen-Hoeksema, S., Thornton, K.M., & Thornton, N. (1990). Explanatory style as a mechanism of disappointing athletic performance. Psychological Science, 1, 143-146.
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