Katie Follett

✝️ & 🏃‍♀️| Mental Skills Coach | LPCC 🇺🇸 World 3k Finalist, USA Road Mile & Club XC Champ | Elevate Your Mindset | Elevated Performance

[Steve Magness @stevemagness]

Ilia Malinin hadn't lost in 2 years.

Two time world champ. The only human to land all of the quad jumps.

Then...his brain betrayed him.

"All the traumatic moments of my life really just started flooding my head, and there were just so many negative thoughts that just flooded into there. And I just did not handle it."

Choking is a threat disorder. Your brain is a prediction machine. Before any big moment, it calculates:

Past experience + current environment + the story you're telling yourself = predicted state.

When that prediction is threat, your brain protects. It latches on to confirming evidence. Ignores the rest. Fear feeds the prediction. The prediction feeds the fear.

Malinin experienced this in real time. He stumbled in the team event days before. His brain coded "Olympics = danger." It had evidence to support the spiral. By the free skate, the loop was cemented.

"All the traumatic moments of my life really just started flooding my head."

His brain was no longer in the present. It was prosecuting the past. Replaying every negative voice or experience to try to convince him to run away, to escape the situation.

His protective brain was on overdrive, and his brain was convinced the situation was life or death.

When an expert chokes, they regress. The brain shifts from autopilot to micromanagement. Our smooth, automated movements become segmented, like a six-year-old learning to throw a ball. This is partly because with the heightened threat state, the link between perception and action gets severed.

Nothing "feels" right. And we compensate by over-controlling. So we're thinking about every step along the way. And the end result is disaster.

Malinin's quad axel requires mass amounts of trust in thousands of hours of training.

Under threat, his conscious mind tried to control what should have been automatic. It's like pulling back a slingshot and instead of letting it go, trying to push it forward.

What drives our brain to move from slight underperformance to "choking" disaster?

1. Identity Cementation

This threat gets turned up to 11 if our sense of self is deeply intertwined with the outcome.

Malinin arrived as the Quad God. It's his Instagram handle, on his warm-up gear, it's his identity.

When your identity IS the performance, your brain treats failure as existential.

The brain doesn't register "I might lose." It registers "I might lose myself."

When Rick Ankiel got the yips, he explained it in similar terms, "I made the mistake of thinking, being good at baseball is what made me who I was. When that glass is shattered, there was nothing left. Going from baseball's prodigy and poster boy. All of the sudden you are blindsided. You're the most vulnerable you've ever been, and everybody can see right through you."

The harsh irony of performing well is you have to care a lot, and try hard...But caring and trying can be your downfall. Your brain registers caring as a signal that this is sefl-defining, you prime the fear/threat centers, and before you know it, your brain's stress response is freezing, fleeing, dissociating to protect itself.

The key is to care a lot...but having just enough space between you and the thing...

2. Mistake Spiral

The second item that causes us to move from underperformance to choking is the compounding of our mistakes.

Research shows that after a mistake, we get a distinct error signal, an involuntary attention shift, and what amounts to an internal handbrake: motor commands temporarily get suppressed.

If we linger there, the pause becomes rumination. The rumination transforms into catastrophizing.

It's why processing mistakes and failures, taking away their sting is so important.

3. Judgement --> Self-Protection

We don’t choke in practice.

We do so when we are being evaluated or judged, and in front of others. When something meaningful is at stake and we have an audience.

We have a social self-preservation system that is on the lookout for anything that might threaten our social status.

If our self-preservation system is inundated with constant signs and signals that our social status is going in the wrong direction, our system becomes hyperresponsive.
---
So how do we get out of protection mode?

1. Acknowledge the moment is big. Don't fight it.

2. Build an identity broader than any single performance.

3. Be the defense attorney. Give yourself evidence.

4. Find something you can control. The smallest thing you can impact that moves you forward

5. Surround yourself with people who love and care for you no matter what. Good vibes are contagious

6. Simulate the worse. Michael Phelps called it playing the tape. And you have to visualize the disaster, to make sure your brain doesn't freak out.

Before the Olympics, Malinin told ESPN he was treating it "like any other competition."

Afterward: "I honestly definitely underestimated it."

This is one of the most common pieces of advice in sport. Your brain isn't dumb. It sees the Olympic rings, the cameras, and the weight of expectation.

When you tell yourself "just another day" and your brain knows it isn't, the mismatch doesn't calm the system. It alarms it further. It's a prediction error that alerts the brain that our previous stress response isn't good enough. This is NOT just another day, so sound the alarm. And...we overshoot the response, moving to full dread.

It's not too different than what runners experience during preliminary races. They think, this is going to be easy, I should qualify with ease and be able to run slower. But...that mindset primes the brain to overreact to the first sign of discomfort.

The day before he set the world record in the mile (3:51), Jim Ryun wrote in his log "That was hard!" for a 4:07 prelim mile. He ran 16 seconds faster in the final, reporting it "felt easy." The only difference was the expectations going in.

Don't pretend the moment is small. Acknowledge reality. And remind yourself that you are prepared to meet it.

The best of the best feel the same nerves you do.

The same doom loop fires when you freeze during a presentation, go blank in a job interview, or can't find the words in a hard conversation.

It's a human problem. A stress response designed to protect us from lions, tigers, and where being separated from the tribe went death.

We can't fight biology. But we can learn to work with it better.

[David Mitchell @trackademics]

As indoor Track & Field season gets underway, coaches are guiding athletes to compete at their best each race or field event attempt. Mental skills coach and former 13 year professional runner, Katie Follett @follettkb, provides clear, doable guidance on how to help athletes be in the moment in order to think less and do more by developing a healthy competition mindset.
Listen here:
https://t.co/KILoim3i6k

[David Mitchell @trackademics]

US Road Mile Champ, now a licensed counselor and mental skills coach, Katie Follett @follettkb, takes the neuroscience and makes it easy to apply and practice for coaches and athletes as they seek to develop a Championship Mindset--the final episode in her mental resilience series. These practices start long before the championship meets, so listen and get started so you can be at your best when it matters most!

https://t.co/oNk47pImfI

[Elevated Performance @eprunningco]

Still time to sign up!

Join us live as we answer questions for coaches and athletes about getting ready for championship racing season!

Live this Sunday, 5pm Central

RSVP at:
[email protected]

[David Mitchell @trackademics]

Here's the free Purpose Driven Mindset resource from @follettkb:
https://t.co/01yqKJWI11...

[Katie Follett @follettkb]

@MikeCunningham Thanks for having me!!

[I ❤️ T&F Coaches! @MikeCunningham]

The great Katie Follett makes a return to the Gill1918 Project podcast Powered by Coach O on today's episode. She gives us great insight into the Power of a Purpose Driven Mindset.

ENJOY!

(Don't you think this is worth a share to your network?)

https://t.co/ghO6u30tQT

[Elevated Performance @eprunningco]

For many athletes and coaches, October and November is championship or "key race" season. Join us live as we answer your questions about getting ready for a major race.

RSVP at: [email protected]

[Elevated Performance @eprunningco]

Quick update, we’ve grown!

https://t.co/xMEdBDB9ib

[Elevated Performance @eprunningco]

We aim to be a comprehensive resource for your running and racing performance needs.

Whether you are an athlete, coach or parent we have useful services and resources for you or an athlete you know!

https://t.co/pmziTGXLHd

[I ❤️ T&F Coaches! @MikeCunningham]

I'm enjoying our Tuesday Gill1918 Project podcast episodes Powered by Coach O. Are you?

Here we have the great Katie Follett talking about "Silencing Self-Doubt."

Good one to listen to and share with others.

https://t.co/0InTN1BTgR

[Katie Follett @follettkb]

@MikeCunningham Thanks for having me! I love the heart behind the mission of this podcast series!

[I ❤️ T&F Coaches! @MikeCunningham]

We continue our Tuesday's Gill1918 Project Podcasts Powered by Coach O with Katie Follett's important topic on "Understanding Mental Resilience."

https://t.co/06SQmqHGC5

[Corey Annan @coreyannan360]

NATALIE DUMAS BREAKS SYDNEY MCLAUGHLIN’S NEW JERSEY STATE RECORD 🤯🤯🤯.

The Eastern junior wins the 400 dash title at New Balance Nationals with a time of 51.14 — and she does it in one of the craziest endings ever.

Sydney McLaughlin, a four time Olympic gold medalist, previously owned the record with a 51.87. Dumas tied the record at sectionals.

Unforgettable moment in New Jersey track and field. @eastern_g_track @HSSportsNJ

[Katie Follett @follettkb]

@paulmerca70601 @UWTrack Huge congrats to Sophie!!! So proud to see all the @UWTrack ladies continuing the tradition of excellence 💜💛💜💛 I knew after indoors that record wouldn’t be around for long 😉

[Washington Track & Field and Cross Country @UWTrack]

We also got to salute two more UW Hall of Famers in Regina Joyce, the 1981 AIAW 🥇 at 3,000m who held every women's distance track record for 3⃣0⃣ years.

And @follettkb 2⃣✖️ Pac-12 🥇 and the 1500m record-holder, a new Mom, and still killing it on the track!

#GoHuskies

[Katie Follett @follettkb]

@ALTISEdu @PfaffSC @StuartMcMillan1 @thornehealth @ALTIS Speaking from personal experience, I can confirm one: “Yeah, but that’s what I did when I ran fast in college/the year I ran my PR/the year I made the world team…” 🤭

[Timothy Keller (1950-2023) @timkellernyc]

Grateful for the encouraging conversation around this article. There's no hope for a society without some understanding of forgiveness. Christianity's resources for this are wonderful. https://t.co/oilvKjeClp

[Laura Thweatt @thweatt11]

Just reason 1,001 why I love Des.
Such is life. Such is the marathon.
But you keep sticking your nose in it. And you keep showing up.

[Timothy Keller (1950-2023) @timkellernyc]

“God will either give us what we ask or give us what we would have asked if we knew everything he knows.”