How an Athletic Mindset Can Help Artists With Performance Anxiety
Dr. Noa Kageyama, PhD takes a look at research into how athletes deal with performance anxiety to extract a framework for musicians struggling with stage fright.
Is There Hope for the Most Anxious Performers?
By Dr. Noa Kageyama, PhD of The Bulletproof Musician
Performance anxiety is pretty universally experienced at all levels, no matter how talented, how experienced, how skilled a musician might be. But it’s not an especially enjoyable feeling, and it can kind of wreck our experience on stage too.
So over time, it can be easy to start losing hope, and feel a bit like Charlie Brown trying to kick that football.
Like, will things ever change?
There’s been a ton of research on psychological skills training for athletes over the years, of course. But not as much so far on musicians.
And a fundamental issue with the research in the musical arena, is that participants generally haven’t been screened for performance anxiety in advance. Which is kind of problematic, because not all musicians experience anxiety the same way. Some find it completely debilitating, others find that it’s more uncomfortable and distracting than debilitating, and then there are those who find it even helpful at times.
So the question remains, can the sort of mental skills that athletes have been using (and which many musicians are also now utilizing), be helpful to those of us who experience the most anxiety, who are most sensitive to negative evaluation, and least confident in our ability to perform effectively? In other words, folks who are the most prone to choking under pressure?
And if so, are there certain specific techniques and strategies that we should be looking at?
A study!
A team of researchers (Lubert et al., 2023) recruited musicians, dancers, actors from a top performing arts university in Austria.
Nine were ultimately selected from among those who responded to the invitation – 6 musicians, 2 dancers, and one actor. All were between 20-26 years old, had an average of 15.2 years of experience in their performance domain, and practiced or engaged in training for an average of 26.1 hours per week.
And why was it just these specific performers that were selected?
Well, to ensure that the study could focus on just those artists who might be most prone to choking under pressure, everyone completed assessments on trait anxiety, fear of negative evaluation, and self-efficacy. And the final group of nine were those who had scores at the furthest end of each scale.
A baseline performance test
Everyone started off with a short ~4-minute performance of audition excerpts, recorded, in front of a jury. During this performance, their heart rate was monitored, and they also reported their anxiety and confidence levels on a super-quick 3-question assessment shortly before performing.
Following their performance, they were interviewed about their performance experience to get a clearer sense of what it was like for them. Like how they felt, what their focus was like, what mental strategies they may have used, and how they felt about their performance.
10 weeks of mental skills practice
And then, for the next 10 weeks, the participants received bi-weekly coachings on various mental skills. Like pre-performance routines, goal-setting, acclimatization training, left-hand contractions, deep breathing, and more.
They also submitted video recordings of themselves testing these out in either practice performances or actual performances every week.
A final performance test
And at the end of the 10 weeks, they performed the same repertoire for the jury once again, while having their heart rate monitored, anxiety and confidence assessed, and a final interview to get more insight into their performance experience.
So… would these skills have any impact on either the quality of their performance, or their internal experience of performing, even for these more highly-anxious performers?
Results – anxiety
Well, in terms of performance anxiety, there was a significant decrease amongst the participants. Most even had a lower heart rate during the post-test performance, with one participant saying:
“I didn’t have so many palpitations, so I mean with me it is often like that, mainly due to excitement or stress, that I really, yeah, that it immediately manifests itself physically, but this time it did not.”
Although, to be clear, an elevated heart rate in and of itself isn’t necessarily a bad thing for performance, as another participant noted:
“I arrived quite tired because it was a hard week. And I was actually rather glad that a bit of nervousness came, as one becomes more awake then.”
Results – confidence
Confidence also increased, with many describing more trust in their ability to perform effectively in the moment. One participant said:
“and so generally I simply have a bit more confidence now that I do indeed play well in any case, but can also learn how to deal with my, yeah, nervousness”
This confidence also seemed to be associated with a willingness to play out more and take more risks, with fewer concerns about negative evaluation. Illustrated by one participant who even said:
“I’m actually not afraid of other musicians anymore”
Results – performance quality
Performance quality also improved over the course of the 10 weeks, with the panel of nine judges (comprised of renowned professionals, faculty, or competition and audition adjudicators) giving the pre-test recordings an average score of 6.64 for the baseline test and 8.11 for the post-test (1=bad; 10=excellent).
And sure, you could say that this was to be expected, as you’d imagine there to be some continued improvement with an additional 10 weeks of practice anyhow.
But participants were asked to come to the pre-test with their repertoire already performance or audition-ready. And you can get a sense from the participants’ description of their final performance experience, that something more had changed.
A change in performance experience
For instance, several participants described feeling quite empowered by their newfound performance skills, with one saying:
“I was really proud and I felt like ‘yes’ I was born to do this, like this is me, this is what I should do”
Others described having meaningful peak performances at various points during the 10-week training period. Like:
“whoa, I found it fantastic today (laughs)…and I was completely inside the character”
Or having the experience of playing up to their expectations for once. Such as:
“so this was just pretty close to that ideal, what I just have there, or it was exactly that, how I actually wish it to be”
Some expressed being more resilient in the face of difficult circumstances. Like:
“it was really crazy. But somehow it went well, like it’s just, I didn’t expect to”
And others were no longer quite as consumed with technical elements, or trying to over-control everything. For instance:
“I could listen relatively well to what I wanted to do and could divert a bit from this technical aspect…it is mainly that I now really had the feeling…that I can just make music”
And some described even enjoying performing and experiencing a bit of fun on stage. Such as:
“At the first one I was like kind of ‘okay let’s sing it and let it be over. Let this moment to be over.’ And today I was kind of more enjoying it. Like I could sing more, like I hold the last note.”
Change wasn’t overnight
This isn’t to say that it was rainbows and unicorns all the time of course, where every performance was suddenly the best day ever.
There were still some ups and downs over the 10 weeks – but the meaningful highlights seemed to take some of the sting out of the less stellar days, and participants had more success managing their nerves, which gave them more confidence, and the courage to take risks on stage.
So what can we take away from all of this?
Takeaways
Well, the authors note that it is admittedly a small sample, but I think it’s encouraging to see that there is hope for the most anxious or choking-prone among us. And that it’s possible for us to learn how to have more consistently positive experiences in performance, even if that hasn’t been our experience in the past.
But how? What specific techniques or exercises should we be experimenting with in our own practice and performance preparation?
Well, different techniques resonated with different participants. So it was less a one-size-fits-all situation, and more of a see-what-works-for-you sort of deal.
Take action
To that end, you can find in-depth articles on many of the interventions that the researchers used in this study linked below. But in the meantime, here’s the tl;dr version of a few of the major interventions used in the study:
- Pre-performance routines (more details here): You may already be doing some version of this without realizing it, but the idea is to get into a more optimal mental and physical state by taking some centering breaths, releasing unnecessary tension, quieting your mind, and focusing on the sound, tempo, character, etc. of what you are about to play.
- Acclimatization training (more details here): This involves practicing with a little bit of anxiety in advance of auditions or performances to “inoculate” yourself to stress in tiny doses. Kind of like the flu shot in advance of flu season.
- Recording (more details here): Admittedly, this wasn’t an intervention per se, but remember how the participants continued performing throughout the 10-week training period and they submitted recorded performances each week, in which they were testing out these mental skills? That’s not nothing. And I suspect this could very well have been a meaningful part of the experience for participants as well.
References
Lubert, V. J., Nordin-Bates, S. M., & Gröpel, P. (2023). Effects of tailored interventions for anxiety management in choking-susceptible performing artists: a mixed-methods collective case study. Frontiers in Psychology, 14. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1164273
Performance psychologist and Juilliard alumnus & faculty member Noa Kageyama teaches musicians how to beat performance anxiety and play their best under pressure through live classes, coachings, and an online home-study course. Based in NYC, he is married to a terrific pianist, has two hilarious kids, and is a wee bit obsessed with technology and all things Apple.
