If you were hoping that this was going to be a dating advice post, my apologies. You’re probably better off leaving matters of the heart to the New York Post’s newest columnist (badaboom!). Today, I’m here to help you improve your game – and, no, I still don’t mean the Dating Game.

A team of  sport and health sciences researchers at the University of Exeter recently published a study in the Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology about how anxiety affects soccer players attempting penalty kicks. Testing 14 experienced kickers in low- and high-stress scenarios, the researchers concluded that anxiety causes them to look at the goalkeeper too long prior to the penalty kick, thus botching the attempt. By training soccer players to maintain their gaze at the intended target (preferably the upper corners of the net), the Exeter researchers think that they can improve the penalty kick success rate in high-stress situations.

Sports psychology has firmly established the connection between anxiety and eye gaze control, and evidently, it’s that critical gaze – not necessarily physical prowess – that makes the difference between triumph and defeat. Dr. Joan Vickers at the University of Calgary has made a robust career from studying this connection between vision and body movements for around 25 years. Working with volleyball, basketball, golf players and others, Vickers has carefully examined what the athletes look at in high-pressure moments, when they fix their sights and how long they stare at those particular spots.

By drawing correlations between eye movement and performance, Vickers developed the quiet eye technique. In a nutshell, the quiet eye is an intentional, momentary gaze focused on a critical spot that enhances the outcome of an athletic performance, such as shooting a free throw, putting a golf ball or kicking a penalty kick. As Vickers explains in an interview with PBS:

“The basic idea behind quiet eye (QE) is that your brain needs a window of time to receive the right information in order to organize the movement and then control it while it is occurring. Focus and concentration through QE needs to be directed to the locations or objects that matter, while all else can be ignored.”

Naturally, the quiet eye spot will change depending on the sport. According to a CNN article on quiet eye technique, basketball players should focus on the front of the hoop, while golfers should look at the back of the ball. From the University of Exeter study, it seems that soccer plays should forget about the goalkeeper and fixate on the net.

While quiet eye might sound like a simple fix, practice just might make perfect. After two seasons of working with it, the University of Calgary’s women’s basketball team improved its free throw proficiency by 22 percent.