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Sport and Competition
Emotional Clinging and Its Detrimental Impact on Athletes
Preventing joyful emotion from disrupting optimal athletic performance
Updated April 1, 2024 Reviewed by Devon Frye
Key points
- Obsessive clinging to enjoyable emotion can interfere with athletic performance.
- Coaches inadvertently contribute to emotional clinging by doing things that distract from the present moment.
- The key to preventing emotional clinging is through five-senses awareness, plus a focus on proprioception.
- Moving on to the next play, or game, is required for optimal play.
“I celebrate a victory when I start walking off the field. By the time I get to the locker room, I’m done.”
Wise advice for athletic coaches and athletes, at any level, from retired and celebrated University of Nebraska head football coach Tom Osborne. Osborne amassed an amazing 255-49-3 career record during his 25-year head coaching stint with the Cornhuskers, including NCAA Division I national championships in 1994, 1995, and 1997. He knows a little something about winning.
What’s the point? Coaches and athletes need to do everything in their power to move forward from completed games and place total focus on the next contest. That can be a daunting challenge after a win, loss, or tie, and whatever else happens, but critical for the kind of ultimate success such as that achieved by Osborne.
What’s the Most Important Game of the Season?
A question that should be posed to, and discussed, with athletes of all ages.
The correct answer: The game you’re playing in or the one you're getting ready for. There’s not a thing you can do to change the outcome of past contests. Ruminating on the past is like rolling around in the ashes of a fire. Doing that distracts from the task at hand. Dwelling on future competitions, beyond the current contest or the one being prepared for, is another pointless distraction from the present moment.
Typically, we think of losses and poor performance as the biggest mental distractions in competition. The frustration, annoyance, head hanging, and self-pity, that obscures focus on current performance or preparation for the next game.
Something else that can be a mental distraction, especially for young athletes, is the dwelling on joy and excitement of winning and successful performance. It’s called “emotional clinging” in psychological terminology.
"Emotional Clinging" Examples
Youth coaches frequently deal with this daunting distraction, exhibited by their young athletes, and often inadvertently add fuel to the fire by failing to model moving-on behavior to their athletes, as advised by Tom Osborne.
The high school football team that wins the big rivalry game, heads into the post-game locker room whooping it up, and continues the celebration long after they head home. The clinging to excitement can distract and bleed into the following week, leading to half-hearted, ineffective practice, resulting in subpar performance the next game.
Coaches often contribute to emotional clinging by giving long, celebratory speeches after games and going overboard in delivering complimentary superlatives to their athletes.
Another example is the baseball player who belts a home run and gets so excited that he starts swinging for the fences, rushing proper mechanics and ending up in a massive, hitting slump. I witnessed a 14-year-old who slammed a home run over the centerfielder in his team’s very first at-bat of the season. He danced around the bases as if he'd just hit a game-winning homer in the seventh game of the World Series. The boy couldn’t contain his excitement, swinging out of his shoes, and failed to register a hit for the remainder of the game. He went into an emotional crash that resulted in the failure to register a hit for the rest of the week, month, and season.
Explaining “Emotional Clinging”
Getting caught up with excitement and happiness can distract from proper focus and lead to mental and emotional crashing, like the baseball player described above.
“Happy-happy, joy-joy is just not a human journey,” explained psychologist Steven C. Hayes in a recent presentation. “Winning is awesome, and achieving your goals is awesome, but don’t let that be a millstone around your neck, and let it be the faulty guide to the bittersweet quality of real life that has an ebb and flow of good and bad.”
“We are basically asking ourselves to live in an unreal world (when clinging to positive emotions), and sooner or later you’re going to crash out of that,” warned Hayes. “Your ‘clinging’ is distracting from the present and your ability to play.”
Hayes is one of the most influential psychologists of the 21st century, the inventor of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (or Training) and commonly referred to as ACT, the prevailing and growing mental performance approach currently utilized by professional and Olympic athletes.
“’Clinging’ in your mind is trying to deny that emotions have an ebb and a flow,” said Hayes. “They (some people) need to in order to function in a way that’s useful to them (they believe). Lock it down (positive emotion), fix it in place, and it’s lost its value to you. Who would do that? 'Joy junkies,' that’s what they’re doing. They even call it a fix. It doesn’t just mean fix what’s broken. It’s meant to fix it in place, hold on to it. Yeah, well, that will ruin your life.”
Emotional clinging is the basis of addictions, be it drugs, alcohol, or gambling, or other compulsive behaviors like excessive video gaming, screen fixations, the constant need for social attention, etc. It’s the desperate attempt to permanently cling to, and “lock into place,” an emotional buzz. It’s a path to life destruction.
Back to sports and athletes.
The ebb and flow of emotion is normal. Allowing for that flow enables us to adjust to perform effectively. Clinging to enjoyable emotions prevents athletes from making those adjustments. Sports has its ups and downs, and you better be able to effectively respond to that. Not allowing for the ebb and flow of emotion by clinging to feeling good will erode the ability to effectively adjust and optimally perform.
Professional Athletes’ Approach
The Baltimore Ravens’ locker room scene was unexpectedly subdued after a Justin Tucker 32-yard field goal—with no time remaining—delivered a thrilling 23-20 come-from-behind road victory over Cleveland in September 2014.
Surprised by the calm upon entering the Baltimore locker room after the game, I asked Ravens’ veteran defensive end Chris Canty to explain the lack of excitement.
“Well, if you had been here right when we came off the field, you’d have seen excitement," replied the 6'-7", 317-pound Canty. "But these guys aren’t a bunch of high school kids. High school kids don’t stop jumping around and whooping it up after a win.”
“These guys are professionals,” continued Canty, gesturing his massive arm towards his teammates. “They’re already getting ready for the next game.”
No emotional clinging there. I’ve been in professional team locker rooms in the aftermath of victories, losses, ties, brawls, etc. Rarely is there a display of emotionality, positive or negative.
A Final Word: Preventing Emotional Clinging
It starts with awareness.
Enjoy the victories and rewarding performances but notice when the pleasure is interfering with current competition or preparation for the next contest. Curb the excitement and get into the present moment. Emotional clinging is about the past and can distract from the focus on the actions needed at the current moment.
Set your senses (especially your eyes) on what’s happening right now. It’s what acceptance and commitment training calls "five-senses awareness." That’s the key to getting out of our heads and into the game. Proprioception—the sense of bodily movement—is another focus necessary for successful performance; it's what I call the sixth sense.
Let your senses be the guide to the present moment, optimal performance, not your emotional state, pleasant or unpleasant.
A special note to coaches and parents. Assist your athletes in staying in the now. No long post-game speeches after good or poor performance. That distracts athletes from focus on readying for the next competition. (Also, athletes hate those long-winded, boring lectures. They’re tired, wanting to go home, and not attentive.)
During competitions, coaches need to notice when athletes are overjoyed over success, or in despair after a failed performance, and refocus them on what’s happening, now.
In short? Move on!
