louboutin03

The things we do best are the things we do without thinking.

Watching an NFL quarterback move through his progressions or a race-car driver work a high-speed turn is daunting because we amateurs see their actions as a series of discrete choices. Plant your feet here, move your hands there, turn your eyes in this direction and then the next.

Top athletes don’t perceive these choices. They perform a pattern that’s been burned into their lizard brains — or, more precisely, their basal ganglia — by years of practice. When the pattern requires a tweak, instinct and muscle memory take over. The conscious brain has nothing to do with it.

This is where the sports choke begins — in the moment when an athlete suddenly begins to think about what he or she is doing.

In the language of psychology, they move from implicit actions (those done mindlessly through habit) to explicit actions (those in which each step requires a conscious thought). As children, we learn everything explicitly until we can do it implicitly — from walking to riding a bike.

Try to think about riding a bike while you’re doing it. Make sure you’re wearing a helmet first.

In terms of sports clichés, a choke is cast as a failure of character. A man “panics” or “buckles” or “unravels.” The image brought to mind is someone huddling in a corner while the building around them burns.

By comparison, an athlete who comes from behind has “dug deep” or “stepped up” or “found an extra gear” — as if you could ascend to the top of any sport without already having a pretty good handle on exactly how many gears you have access to.

Again, it’s character that’s being alluded to — champions will themselves to win while losers lack that fire. In fact, the very act of willing is likely to undo your efforts.

Research has in fact shown that a mild distraction — whistling, for instance — tends to improve a golfer’s putting. Nobody wills themselves to victory, unless by that they mean becoming less and less mindful of what they’re trying to win.

“Unravel” was Rory McIlroy’s own choice of words to describe his historic collapse on Sunday at Augusta National.

It began with a drive hooked outrageously from the 10th tee into the neighbouring county. In that instant, he was still in the lead after suffering from one failure to perform and already doomed. The gears had begun to spin. All the flubbed shots and missed putts that came afterward were down to his own focus operating on destructive overdrive.

This is what makes golf so terrible, and nearly synonymous with the idea of the choke.

Unlike a team athlete, you’re alone. When things begin going wrong, there must be no more terrible place on Earth than deep in the rough.