In the slow zone: Time Expansion in sport

Have you ever experienced time expansion? When a moment expands by many orders of magnitude, maybe 10 to 40 times? In other words, a period of three seconds may seem to stretch for half a minute, or even up to two minutes. Such Time Expansion Experiences (or TEEs) happen most frequently in accidents, such as car crashes and falls. In my research – documented in my new book Time Expansion Experiences – 54 per cent of the reports of TEEs I have collected and analysed occurred in this context. 

The second most prevalent context was spiritual/psychedelic experiences. The third was sport, accounting for 10 per cent of the reports I collected. It's those experiences I'm going to focus on here, because I believe that the characteristics of TEEs could be a key to sporting success.

As I study them, TEEs are distinct from moments of much milder time dilation, such as when we travel to unfamiliar environments or when we are bored. These are common experiences, whereas TEEs happen infrequently.

Emergency TEEs (or ETEEs, as I refer to them) have several core characteristics, along with their fundamental feature of time-expansion. For example, they usually involve a sense of wellbeing. Even though their lives might be in danger, people feel strangely calm and relaxed. They may even describe their experience in 'spiritual' terms, with characteristics of serenity, transcendence and oneness. They also usually involve a sense of alertness or heightened awareness. Perception becomes much more vivid and intense than normal, so that people notice more detail and beauty. 

ETEEs also often feature very rapid thought and action. In accident situations, people are often surprised by the amount of time they seem to have to think and act. Another characteristic, particularly in life-threatening situations, is a sense of detachment, as if the person is watching from above or from a distance. Less frequently, there is a sense of external sounds becoming muffled or wider surroundings being blurred (Taylor, 2022). 

In ETEEs, many people told me they were certain that time expansion enabled them to take preventative action that would be impossible in normal time. Many also described detailed and complex thought processes that appeared to transcend normal time perception. As a result, almost all my research participants were certain that they were experiencing time expansion in the moment rather than in retrospect. For example, a participant who reported a TEE in which he avoided a metal barrier falling on to his car told me, 'It was an event that happened in the present. It's not a recollection of memories or events. For me the slowing down of the moment made me escape and decide how to escape the falling metal on us' (Taylor, 2024, pp.51-52).

So, I argue, TEEs are real experiences that happen in the moment. They are not – as has been suggested by some researchers, such as Stetson et al. (2007) – an illusion of recollection, caused by an increased number of memories created in unusual situations. This has important implications for sporting TEEs.

Sporting TEEs

One participant described a TEE to me that occurred while playing ice hockey, in which 'The play which seemed to last for about 10 minutes all occurred in the space of about 8 seconds [of measured time]' (Taylor, 2024, p.64). Similarly, a man described a game of table tennis that suddenly 'turned into slow motion … I could see the ball and its flight and spin perfectly, anticipating its precise bounce, and position my body, arm, hands and wrist to hit perfect returns and sometimes from seemingly impossible positions where the ball was falling below table height and still hit a winner' (Taylor, 2024, p.64).

There are also many reports of TEEs from successful professional athletes. One sport where TEEs are particularly common is motor racing. For example, the Finnish driver Mika Häkkinen reported that, when driving at his best, 'Everything becomes like slow motion – even though you're going at unbelievable speed around the Monaco track' (Brolin, 2017, p.20). The British driver called Mark Hughes – now a well-known motor racing journalist – described 'one of the greatest days in his life' when he began a race in 26^th position but finished third. According to his testimony, Hughes achieved this remarkable feat by driving in an altered state of consciousness in which time disappeared. As sometimes occurs in falls, he experienced a strange sense of detachment, as if he was watching from outside his body. As he described it, 'It probably didn't last long but it felt like a long time. It's funny and it sounds weird but it felt unconnected to time … It's not really time …You felt you could go back, analyse and have a look … I felt like I could do anything and there was nothing stopping me from doing whatever I pleased' (Brolin, 2017, pp.141–2).

TEEs can also occur during short duration events, such as sprints. The American sprinter Steve Williams – who equalled the men's 100- and 200-metre world records in the 1970s – described how, when he was running well, '10 seconds seems like 60. Time switches to slow motion' (Murphy & Whyte, 1995, p.42).  

Easy Access to Time Expansion

What if an athlete regularly – or even continually – experienced time expansion, with all the advantages this confers? 

In my view, a tiny proportion of extraordinary athletes have had easy access to time expansion experiences. One example is the baseball player Ted Williams, whose career ran from 1939 to 1960. Williams is usually regarded as one of the greatest hitters (if not the best) ever, with the highest on-base percentage in baseball history (.482) – meaning that he reached base more frequently in games than any other player. (To put this in perspective, the average on-base percentage in major league baseball is around .300.) In fact, Williams is sometimes credited for coining the term 'in the Zone', which he used to describe his own experiences. He claimed to be able to see the stitches on the seam of the ball as it flew toward him at 100 mph. He described how the ball sometimes appeared to grow, so that it seemed like a beach ball floating toward him in slow motion. Outside sport, Williams claimed he could read the labels on records spinning at 78rpm. 

This may also be true of the contemporary footballer Lionel Messi, usually described as the best player of modern times. The Argentinian has won the Ballon D'Or – the global award for the footballer who performs best over a calendar year – a record seven times. He is renowned for his 'impossible' goals that seem to defy the laws of physics. He threads through tiny spaces between groups of opponents, curls the ball more acutely than any other player, accelerates and decelerates with impossible rapidity, all while keeping the ball fixed at high speed. As the ex-footballer Rio Ferdinand commented insightfully of Messi, 'I just feel that in his own eyes and his own vision, the game just slows down for him. He plays in slow-motion because it comes to him so easy and so naturally' (Bristow, 2024).

Altered States of Consciousness

As I suggested in a previous article in The Psychologist (Taylor, 2021), the key to understanding TEEs is altered states of consciousness. Our normal time perception is linked to our normal state of consciousness. When we shift into altered states of consciousness, our experience of time may change radically. In intensely altered states, time is most likely to expand dramatically, or to apparently disappear altogether. This is why radical time expansion (or even time cessation) is a common feature of psychedelic drugs, and of intense awakening (or spiritual) experiences. The same is true of accidents and emergencies. The sudden shock of an accident may disrupt our normal psychological processes and functions, causing an abrupt shift in consciousness.       

In sport, a shift into an altered state of consciousness occurs in a different way. In my view, it is the result a state of very intense absorption (which I refer to as 'super-absorption'). Absorption normally makes time pass faster (for example, a speeding up of time is a common feature of the 'flow' state, as researched by Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi). However, when absorption becomes especially intense, over a long period of sustained concentration, a more drastic change occurs. 

In some cases, an athlete builds up concentration gradually over the course of a game or contest. A racing driver or a golfer may concentrate hard for hours, eventually attaining a state of intense absorption. Here the game is akin to a meditation, in which a person gradually focuses their mind, attaining deeper states of stillness and wellbeing. In other cases, an athlete shifts quickly into super-absorption during a critical period of a game – for example, when they (or their team) are losing and making a concerted effort to catch up or in the final minutes of a game when scores are tied or close. The intensity of the situation has a powerful focusing effect, rapidly intensifying.

It's as if, at a certain pitch of concentration, we are like a ship passing through an estuary into the wide ocean. And in this different domain, along with major changes to our perceptions and our performance, time expands dramatically.  

The main key?

Many factors contribute to sporting ability – for example, physical fitness, strength, technical skill, tactical knowledge. But perhaps the main key to extraordinary sporting ability is the capacity to enter an altered state of consciousness, through intense absorption. And the most important feature of this altered state – in terms of contributing to a higher level of performance – is time expansion.  

• Dr Steve Taylor is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at Leeds Beckett University, and a past Chair of the British Psychological Society's Transpersonal Psychology Section. [email protected]

Time Expansion Experiences: The Psychology of Time Perception and the Illusion of Linear Time is out in November.