The yips are a sudden disruption of learned skill under pressure, where a person loses reliable access to an ability they still physically possess. This short essay is from my book Going Beyond the Yips. I submit it here just to get some feedback about the yips as I continue to write and do deeper research. This essay is based on my interview with John Walz, master cellist and teacher in the Los Angeles area. I am thinking this section can work as a standalone essay but for right now, it likely reads as a section from a book rather than a complete experience for a reader. Anyway, I like it so here it is.
John Walz: Adrenaline, Proportion, and the Return to the Rococo
John Walz is an internationally acclaimed cello soloist and chamber musician based in the Los Angeles area, and in speaking with him, what emerges is not an abstract theory of performance, but a deeply lived understanding of how easily control can fracture—and how it can be rebuilt.
At the center of his insight is something deceptively simple: adrenaline.
Adrenaline does not disrupt the large movements. It targets the small ones. The fine motor control that playing depends on—the subtle placement of the fingers, the precision of pitch, the timing of contact—these begin to destabilize. What replaces them is effort, often too much of it. The body starts trying to control what once happened on its own.
In that state, the instinct is to push through. But Walz points in another direction: not more effort, but a return to proportion.
Breathing is central to this. Not just calming down, but a deliberate, complete exhalation—almost as if releasing the phrase through the breath itself. That exhale allows the system to reset. Without it, tension accumulates, and time begins to compress.
And time is where everything begins to go wrong.
For Walz, the metronome is not simply a timing device—it is a way of restoring reality. It places events back into proportion. When something starts to falter, the natural impulse is to rush, to escape the moment. But rushing only deepens the loss of control.
Instead, he advocates something rigorous and counterintuitive: working at extremes.
Very slow—where every movement is conscious, deliberate, and fully perceived.
Very fast—where the body must organize itself efficiently, without interference.
Between these two poles, something recalibrates.
The middle tempo—the one we tend to rely on—often contains hidden instability. But when the extremes are fully experienced, the middle becomes grounded. It is no longer guessed at; it is understood. Proportion returns.
This principle extends beyond individual practice into ensemble playing. When a colleague begins to struggle, the instinct might be to follow the instability or rush ahead. But Walz describes a different response: you steady the time right now. You hold it. You give the music a structure strong enough to absorb disruption.
The physical experience of the instrument reflects this same movement between stability and exposure. In lower positions, the hand remains close to the body—grounded, secure. But as the player moves higher up the neck, everything extends outward. The thumb begins to function almost like a capo, anchoring the hand, while the fingers operate in a more exposed space. The margin for error narrows. The strings feel closer, yet less forgiving.
This shift—from grounded to exposed—mirrors the internal experience of performance under pressure.
We see similar patterns across disciplines. Tennis players often struggle not during rallies, but on the serve. The toss—once automatic—becomes inconsistent. And once that inconsistency appears, trust begins to erode. The body no longer feels reliable.
Walz recalls a striking moment from the concert stage that reveals both the fragility of performance and the possibility of immediate recovery. A pianist began a concerto under the direction of Mehli Mehta. Early in the performance, something broke. It wasn’t gradual—it was sudden. The pianist stopped.
What followed could have ended the performance.
Instead, the conductor came off the podium and addressed him directly—firmly, but with clarity and purpose. It was not simply a reprimand; it was a recalibration. In front of a full audience, he created a space for the soloist to re-enter.
The pianist began again.
And this time, he succeeded.
What might have been a collapse became a turning point. The moment transformed into something rare: a public demonstration that breakdown is not final. It was, in effect, a powerful teaching moment—showing that with the right intervention, proportion can be restored even in real time.
There is very little space, culturally, for this kind of recovery.
Walz’s own experience with the Variations on a Rococo Theme brings this into even sharper focus.
As a young cellist, he encountered a critical octave passage that became overwhelming. Not just technically difficult, but destabilizing. Something in that moment did not resolve—it embedded itself. The passage became more than a passage; it became a memory the body carried forward.
He withdrew from the piece.
Not for a short time, but for twenty years.
During that time, his musicianship deepened and his career advanced. But his relationship to that piece remained fixed at the point of breakdown. This is the nature of the yips: the body remembers what the conscious mind cannot easily release.
Years later, as principal cellist of the Long Beach Symphony, he was asked to perform the Rococo Variations again. He was not enthusiastic. He suggested other repertoire. But the program was set—an all-Tchaikovsky evening—and the piece remained.
So he agreed.
And something shifted.
The performance went well.
Not because the past had been erased, but because he returned differently. The relationship to time, to breath, to control—these had changed. The piece was no longer something to overcome, but something to re-enter.
A twenty-year withdrawal resolved in a single performance.
What Walz’s experience reveals is that the yips are not a loss of skill. They are a loss of proportion—of breath, of timing, of trust in the body’s own intelligence.
And recovery does not come from forcing control back into place.
It comes from restoring proportion:
through breath,
through time,
through disciplined work at extremes,
and through the willingness—eventually—to return.