BLPersistence | MySportingSpace

Persistence

Competitive sport can be a volatile, unpredictable, and a mentally tough environment. Things don't always go the way you plan, expect, or desire. On occasion, it can get too tough for some. Consequently, an athlete may ‘give up’ mid-performance, as they struggle to deal with the disappointment of losing and/or failing to reach their desired standard.

This behaviour is far from ideal as it virtually ensures defeat and prevents the athlete from learning how best to recover from inevitable performance fluctuations. Therefore, having the ability to persist with tasks within a competition or practice environment is of great benefit to performance.

Upright posture makes you more persistence

Research conducted by Riskind and Gotay (1982) found that you are more likely to persist with a difficult task if you display positive body language. Participants were assigned to an upright or slumped seated posture for a period of approximately 3 minutes, before being asked to complete 4 puzzles (2 were impossible to solve).

The researchers gauged a participant's persistence by measuring the amount of time/attempts they spent trying to solve the impossible puzzles. They found that the participants who had sat in an upright position were more likely to persist in their attempt to solve the impossible puzzles, compared to the participants who had adopted a slumped posture.

An athlete who is displaying slumped body language could be a signal that they have effectively 'given up'.

Folding your arms makes you more persistence

A similar study by Friedman and Elliot (2008) demonstrated that crossing your arms can lead to persistence in a task. They suggested that folding your arms was a common behavioural response for people working hard to solve a problem. Folding your arms can be viewed as defensiveness within certain contexts, but they proposed it is associated with vigilance and an unyielding attitude within an achievement setting.

In the first experiment, participants were given 3 anagrams. 2 were easy an 1 was impossible to solve. Participants were told they had as much time as they needed to solve the problems. The researchers were interested in how long the participants spent trying to complete the impossible anagram.

One group were instructed to fold their arms, whereas the other group were told to place their hands on their thighs. Participants sat in these positions throughout the exercise, and only moved their hands when needing to write an answer. The results showed that the 'arms-folded' group persisted for nearly as twice as long before giving up on the impossible anagram.

In the second experiment, participants were given 10 solvable anagrams (with more than one right answer), and the task was to achieve as many possible answers as possible for each, with no time limit. The results showed that the group with their arms folded persisted for longer in the task and they also performed better (i.e. they generated more words for each anagram).

People who folded persisted for longer in the task and performed better

The moral of the story

These finding suggests that it is important for athletes to display appropriate body language throughout their performance to increase persistence, especially in the face of adversity. It appears a display of negative body language is more likely to lead to you 'throwing in the towel' when faced with a challenge - and you will be faced with plenty of those in your sporting career!

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