Why a Junior or Developing Athlete’s Attention Narrows Under Pressure
In training, an athlete notices much more than they may notice in competition. They hear the coach, feel their rhythm, see the conditions, evaluate the movement, and usually respond quite quickly when something changes. In competition, the coach may suddenly see a different athlete. They are looking where they should, trying hard, and not getting distracted, yet they stop noticing things they would normally pick up in training without any instruction. They perform several attempts with a changed rhythm. They respond late to conditions. They continue controlling one technical detail even though the problem has already moved elsewhere. The coach may think, “You know how to do this. Why can’t you see it now?”
Under pressure, attention in junior and developing athletes can become less flexible. Research on attention and anxiety suggests that anxiety can reduce the efficiency of goal-directed attentional control and increase the influence of information that has gained priority at that moment. At the same time, some parts of performance still require conscious control in a young athlete or an athlete whose skill is still developing. What an elite athlete may already regulate almost automatically, they may still need to check consciously: position, rhythm, a technical element, or the sequence of actions. In competition, conditions, time, results, opponents, and the demands of performing under pressure are added to this. Attention has more to deal with.
After a mistake, an athlete may start monitoring one technical element so closely that they stop noticing a change in rhythm. After hearing a technical instruction, they may spend the next several attempts performing the instruction rather than the action as a whole. A shooter watches the sight position and does not notice that the shot is taking longer. An archer controls one element of the release and responds later to changing conditions. A fencer waits for a familiar action from an opponent and does not adapt quickly enough when the distance changes. From the outside, this can look like poor concentration. But the athlete may actually be concentrating very hard. Almost all of their attention has simply ended up in one place. In more pronounced cases, this type of narrowing is described as attentional tunneling.
This creates a difficult situation for the coach. You see more and naturally want to give the athlete back everything they are no longer noticing. “Don’t rush.” “Watch your rhythm.” “Don’t forget your feet.” “Check the conditions.” “Finish the movement.” Each instruction may be correct on its own. But together they require the athlete to consciously control even more. The less automated the skill and the greater the pressure, the easier it is for a useful coaching correction to become an additional demand on attention.
Before intervening, it can therefore help to separate two situations. Does the athlete genuinely not know what to do, or do they know but under pressure have stopped using the information that normally helps them do it? In the first case, a correction may be needed. In the second, another instruction may not solve the problem. Sometimes it is more useful to remove unnecessary information and return the athlete to one familiar performance cue. Not five technical details, but something already established in training that helps them put the action back together.
With junior athletes, there is another task. It is not enough for the coach to redirect their attention every time. If the coach is always the first to notice a change and immediately tells the athlete what to look at, the athlete may become very good at following instructions but slower at learning to regulate attention independently. Part of this work therefore belongs in training. Athletes need opportunities to notice where their attention has gone, what they stopped seeing after a mistake, when technical control became excessive, and which signal they actually need for the next action.
The coach’s task is not to teach a young athlete to control everything that is happening. That is impossible. The task is to gradually teach them to identify relevant information, switch between signals, and return to their working focus without needing an external instruction every time.
Sometimes a junior athlete who begins to lose their performance under pressure does not need to hear, “Concentrate.”
They are already concentrating.
The more useful question for the coach is how narrow that concentration has become and what the athlete still needs to learn to notice for themselves.