Pacman and Kobe ‘in the zone’

They said it couldn’t be done anymore, not in the NBA. Not even Michael Jordan could do it, and he could always fill it up. But score 81 points, in this day and age? And yet, Kobe Bryant, perhaps the biggest big-game ballhog in the league today, did it. What was most impressive was not only the abundance of points, but the shooting percentage he tallied in doing. The only downside was that, the last 15 of his 55 second-half points came at garbage time.

Meanwhile, many were impressed at the intensity of focus shown by WBC champion Manny Pacquiao in overcoming Erik Morales. In a nutshell, he was completely there, even when Morales started to fade.

Bryant’s case — like Pacquiao’s — simply illustrates what athletes knowingly call being "in the zone", and it is a scientific phenomenon that has been increasingly documented over the last few years, and not only in sports. Persons in other professions experience the same sensations in crucial, high-tension situations.

"The zone really refers to when you’re performing automatically," says Aynsley Smith, Ph.D., a sports psychology consultant at the Mayo Clinic Sports Medicine Center, Rochester, Minnesota. "It’s when you’re absolutely free of worries, free of inhibitions and so confident and relaxed that your best performance just kind of comes out automatically."

In some scientific circles, being in the zone is also known as Flow State.

"Flow State is an optimal psychological experience. It’s when you’re functioning on auto-pilot, when everything clicks into place and goes right," said Dr Costas Karageorghis, lecturer in sports psychology at Brunel University in the UK. "It’s a deeply pleasurable experience and it’s something that’s not very often experienced by people; rather it’s something that often represents people’s peak experiences in a particular area."

Karageorghis compared the experiences of athletes with videogame players, and noticed some similarities in their mental state after engaging in each of their favorite activities.

"If we can learn to manipulate these factors, to engage athletes in their activity to an extent at which they are feeling optimal, it’s more likely that they will attain superior performance."

In his Book "Into the Kill Zone", University of Missouri criminologist David Klinger cites strange stories of police officers in shooting situations telling of events slowing down, being totally focused, and not even hearing the sounds of seeing the sights around them. That is the same feeling experienced — and recounted — by great players like Larry Bird, Magic Johnson and many others.

"This is how the human body reacts to extreme stress, and it makes sense," says the New Yorker’s Malcolm Gladwell in his book "Blink", which mentions Klinger’s research. "Sound and memory and broader social understanding are sacrificed in favor of heightened awareness of the threat directly in front of us."

Former army lieutenant Dave Grossman researched the physical conditions of extreme stress, and how people perform well under them in his book "On Killing". He says that in the optimum state of "arousal" — technically, the state in which stress improves performance, our heart rate is somewhere between 115 to 145 beats per minute. This is the range in which many elite athletes perform at their best.

"After 145, bad things begin to happen," Grossman explains. "Complex motor skills start to break down. At 175, we begin to see an absolute breakdown of cognitive processing. The forebrain shuts down, and the mid-brain — the part of your brain that’s the same as your dogs — reaches up and hijacks the forebrain. Have you ever tried to have a discussion with an angry or frightened human being? You can’t do it."

Los Angeles-based security expert Gavin de Becker provides protection for public figures. When training his personnel, he puts them through what he calls "stress inoculation."

"In our test, the principal (the person being guarded) says, ‘Come here, I hear a noise,’ and as you come around the corner — boom! — you get shot. It’s not with a real gun. The round is a plastic marking capsule, but you feel it. And then you have to continue to function. In the beginning, their heart rate is 175. They can’t see straight. Then the second or third time, it’s 120, and then it’s 110 and they can function. By the fourth or fifth time you get shot in simulation, you’re okay."

"When you’re first learning a skill, the brain determines what muscles are needed and when. Through practicing the skill, a mental blueprint is created," Dr. Smith concurs.

There are other physiological responses to high-stress situations, and we see it all the time. People behave in an inappropriately aggressive manner. Some people actually soil or wet themselves, and there is a reason for it. At that heightened level of threat, the body considers that kind of control unnecessary and non-essential. Blood is withdrawn from our outer muscle layer, and poured into our core muscle mass. It’s as if the body makes itself denser, armor-plating itself and limiting the chance of bleeding.

This is where practice comes into play, and why great coaches practice offensive plays with very little time on the clock. If they don’t, players get too tense, and teamwork breaks down in the most crucial situations. Now we understand why Phil Jackson would try anything to make his players manifest inner calm.

In 2004, Roland A. Carlstedt, PhD, a clinical sports psychologist with Capella University in New York City, published the results of a study which involved 250 athletes in basketball, baseball, softball, soccer, tennis, and golf and compared their brain activity coping abilities with 40 non-athletes. Carlstedt presented his findings at theAmerican Psychological Association meeting held in Hawaii. He discovered that athletes who have a lot of internal "self-talk", those little voices that chatter away especially in the heat of competition, cannot perform at their peak when under pressure. This results in an athlete’s "thinking, instead of doing," says Carlstedt.

Athletes who were high in hypnotic ability, had the capacity to shut down their internal chatter - and who had higher self-esteem - were able to stay focused and do well, in spite of what others consider pressure-packed situations.

So being in the zone is not a myth perpetuated by athletes who can’t explain how they can do what they do. It’s real.