Imagine this. You've trained your whole life for one moment. Thousands of hours spent repeating the same movements, refining your conditioning, hand-eye coordination, and mental focus.
Then, come game time, you step up to take your shot, hit the ball, or throw the dart - and suddenly, you can't go through with it. You freeze. You've hit a mental, and what feels like a very physical, barrier.
That's the yips - or in the case of darts, dartitis. A sudden and often inexplicable loss of motor control brought on by psychological pressure.
Dr Arne Nieuwenhuys is a senior lecturer in Sport, Exercise and Performance Psychology at the University of Auckland. He specialises in the effects of sleep, anxiety, and fatigue on human motor control and performance, and joins Emile Donovan to explain what's going on in the brain and body of someone with dartitis.
Photo: 123rf
