Cool under pressure: What athletes can teach us about test-day stress

After months of studying on weekends, walking around with vocabulary flashcards, learning strategies for SAT questions, memorizing the prime numbers from 1 – 53, test day has finally arrived. The pressure of college and admissions and competing with your peers is enough to make any level-headed high schooler freak out.

Stress can undo even the most dedicated, hard-working students. But it is not just students. The pressure of a big game makes professional soccer players miss easy shots, and the stress of the Olympics makes gymnasts fall and miss their landing. But the best of the best, the MVPs and the gold medalists, know how to manage the stress and still perform at their highest level. They know that stress can’t be eliminated, that it will always be there. They succeed because they are ready. They develop strategies for dealing with stress. And we can apply some of their techniques to taking the SAT.

Before you can deal with stress, you need to identify it. Stress is stimulation. It is a programed response to certain situations. Your body releases adrenaline, noradrenaline, and cortisol, and as a result your muscles tense and your heart rate increases. None of this is unusual. All the same stuff that happens from nervous excitement or from talking to a boy you like. It is how you respond that makes all the difference.

When people confront complex and difficult situations, stress kicks in. Whether it is an especially difficult probability problem or a 3rd and 14 at the end of the game, stress can cause people to not act at all — the one thing we need to avoid. As such, we need to build mental habits that enable us to push through these stressful moments. Dr. Eric Duchmann is a sports psychologist at LSU, and he knows what happens without a strong mental framework for game day. “There are complicated schemes in football and other sports so what happens is they freeze,” says Duchmann. “They don’t want to run the play wrong, so they don’t run it at all.”

Consider your mental approach to the test. If you think you are going to do poorly or get a question wrong, your stress will build and key off of these negative thoughts. You will fulfill your own prophecy. The same is true in football. “Duchmann said if a person is thinking more about making a mistake than making the right play, their focus can become obscured. Keeping focus can be supplemented by developing an in-game routine.” We can guard against this with strong mental habits.

“Performing a routine keys your memory into focusing. Routine behaviors block out negative distractions which helps you focus in,” says Duchmann. That is why you should complete a bunch of practice problems and take practice tests timed. This will create an environment similar to the test that allows you to build a routine and habit that you can fall back on when the real test day arrives. Your in-game routine develops as a habit from answering SAT questions and dealing with time. Similar to walking a path that you have walked down many times — you know all the turns and divots.

Jamie Nieto is a U.S.A. Olympic high jumper who knows what it takes to deal with stress. It is all a matter of perspective. Ask yourself, “How does my stress about an Olympic event or a test compare to other types of stress?” Nieto talks about what he did with his sports psychologist in a recent interview: “We’d think about all the hardships humans have endured, like being out in the wild and surviving and that would make [me] think, ‘If they can do that, I can do this.’” Is the SAT as stressful as being pursued by a bear in the mountains or having to spend weeks tracking a deer so that your family can have a meal? Probably not. And simply reflecting on this fact can help to deflate stressful emotions when they arise. The point, though, is to take the power away from the stress. Let the stress fall away as you direct your mind toward other thoughts.

Stress becomes a problem when people overthink or over-try. So when you are heading to take the test, keep a couple of things in mind. Reflect on your preparation. All the work you did prepared you for this moment. You studied strategies. You learned the most common SAT words. You memorized math formulas and quite a few of those head-scratch inducing SAT essay prompts. All of this will serve you on the test. The mere fact that you are organized and prepare will ease the stress. Lastly, the most underrated way to relieve stress — breathing. Don’t forget to breathe long, deep breaths on test day. With a good night’s rest, lots of practice, and deep breaths, you can be confident that you will perform at your highest level on test day just like an Olympian.

This post was written by Kevin Rocci, resident SAT expert at Magoosh, a leader in SAT prep. For more advice on taking the SAT, check out Magoosh’s SAT blog.

Photo by Tsutomu Takasu (Japan Athletics Championships) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons