There are many lessons a trader can draw from sports psychology to improve their performance in the market. One such tip is to understand how the level of our heart rate can greatly improve, or severely hinder, our performance. According to Dave Grossman, the former army lieutenant colonel and the author of On Killing, “the optimal state of arousal—the range in which stress improves performance—is when our heart rate is between 115 and 145 beats per minute.” Grossman interviewed basketball superstar Larry Bird who said that at critical moments in the game, the court would go quiet and the players would seem to be moving in slow motion. He clearly played basketball in that same optimal range of arousal.

In trading, as in sport, this level of arousal is commonly known as being in the zone. Unfortunately for most traders and athletes alike, performance for the majority of the day takes place with a heart rate either below or above this level leading to substandard performance. A heart rate below this level does not give our brain the stimulus required to function with this heightened sense which can lead to us missing important signals in the market or to even misread a situation. More importantly, with a heart rate above this level, our bodies start to shut down to many sources of information and we become useless. “After 145,” Grossman says, “bad things begin to happen. Complex motor skills start to break down. Doing something with one hand and not the other becomes very difficult. . . . At 175, we begin to see an absolute breakdown of cognitive processing. The forebrain shuts down, and the mid-brain—the part of your brain that is the same as your dog’s (all mammals have that part of the brain)—reaches up and hijacks the forebrain. Have you ever tried to have a discussion with an angry or frightened human being? You can’t do it. . . . You might as well try to argue with your dog.” Sound familiar? This is the precise reason why losing your temper in the market can be so dangerous. As the anger and emotion explodes in an individual, the heart rate spikes and their cognitive processing disappears leading to overtrading and/or revenge trading.

Moral of the story: trading is one of the toughest money-making pursuits, even when you have your wits about you. So next time you feel yourself entering one of these unwanted heightened states of anxiety and stress, use your brain while you still can to turn off the screens and take a breather!

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*Information for this article was gathered from Blink by Malcolm Gladwell.