When UFC president Dana White accused Kenny Florian of being “a choker” he wasn't alluding to the Massachusetts native's second-degree black belt submission skills in Brazilian jiu-jitsu. "I hate to say this, but I think Kenny is just one of those guys who chokes in big fights," said White, shortly after Florian’s UFC 118 lightweight title eliminator loss to Gray Maynard.

Dana explained: “I'm not bad-mouthing him or trying to disrespect him; I'm just being honest. Every time it's a big fight and there's a lot of things on the line, Kenny just... Kenny's hands are unbelievable. Kenny's ground is unbelievable. Kenny usually kicks guys to the body and legs so hard that he busts guys up. You didn't see any of that tonight."

The concept of choking under pressure is certainly not unique to mixed martial arts. Superstar soccer players regularly mishit simple penalty kicks in cup finals, millionaire NBA stars fluff free throws all the time, and PGA Tour golfers regularly fail to sink easy two-foot putts when the majors swing around. In MMA, though, it's more than just prize money and prestige on the line: fail to perform to your potential in the cage and you could be getting a ride home in an ambulance.

In psychology terms, choking is defined as 'sub-optimal performance.' That means losing because you couldn't access your own skills, not because your opponent has better skills.

Almost everyone's familiar with the feeling; if you've ever garbled your words when asked to speak in public or felt your mind go blank when searching your memory for an easy answer in an important exam, you've choked. 

Until recently, not much was known about the causes of choking under pressure, or why some people seem to be more susceptible to it than others. Now, however, new technology is helping researchers to unlock the secrets behind the science of slip-ups and provide advice on how to avoid them.

PROCEDURAL MEMORY

A key component in understanding choking is functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Essentially a brain scanner, fMRI detects blood flow in the brain and can determine which sections of it are engaged during different types of activity. It has allowed us to literally see inside the heads of sports people when they are under stress.

This brain imaging has shown that different parts of the brain are used for different types of memory.

Athletic skills are guided by procedural memory, housed in the motor cortex, basal ganglia and parietal lobe. Procedural memory is implicit – subconscious – and beyond your conscious control. As the name suggests, it contains procedures that, if executed correctly, will result in you walking, slipping a punch or catching your balance after a trip. 

It is much faster than the explicit working memory of the prefrontal cortex that you call upon when you consciously think or reason about something. Operating under guidance from procedural memory is associated with being "in flow" or "in the zone."

When we first learn a new skill, it is largely the slower, explicit memory that we use. As we improve, the movement patterns become ingrained in another part of the brain, in our procedural memory. At the same time, our conscious memory of how we do it becomes worse – which is one of the reasons why great fighters often don't make great coaches and why fighters frequently fail to offer significant technical insights to Joe Rogan in post-fight UFC interviews.

PREFRONTAL CORTEX

During this improvement process, our brains become 'quieter' and show less activity. This increased efficiency is the reason for the improved performance. fMRI scans show that experts use fewer areas of their brains than beginners, whose active prefrontal cortexes consume large amounts of energy as they think about the correct course of action. The fewer brain areas in use, the less confusion. The extra areas of the brain used by the less skilled include those associated with worry and stress – precursors of the choke.

Stress, such as that experienced during a high-stakes MMA fight, can radically affect how different parts of the brain communicate. The prefrontal cortex, home of our 'conscious' memory, is particularly prone to 'decoupling' under pressure and essentially stops talking to other areas. This is what happens when you're unable to think of a snappy comeback in an argument but remember a perfect retort hours later when you've calmed down. In the cage, this can lead to slow decision making and disastrous consequences.

SO WHY THE CHOKE?

But why do practiced experts choke? Usually they operate almost entirely automatically when performing familiar skills. If you've ever seen Chuck Liddell twitchily shadow-boxing in the audience while watching UFC events, you've seen an example of mental 'mirror networks' in action. Even when just observing, an expert's brain is predicting and anticipating movements and automatically sending nerve impulses to muscles much faster than conscious thought would allow.

This high-speed system is sometimes short circuited by the fighter. It's 'paralysis by analysis.' A big occasion can make a fighter try even harder to win. This leads him to over-think and exert himself to control his actions.

Research shows that the more sports people think about their actions, the less fluid their actions become. This is a result of 'brain decoupling,' leading to something called 'joint coupling,' a reduction in independent control of skeletal joints that accounts for the relative stiffness of movement in beginners.

This, combined with slower decision-making, means the fighter can no longer do in the cage what he did all those times on auto-pilot in sparring. 

He's just choked.