Sport anxiety - Part 2

In the last article I discussed that being nervous for competition can be a good thing as it helps prepare the body and mind. It should ultimately ‘sharpen’ us to perform at our maximal capacity. However, athletes that are under or over anxious for competition will ‘struggle’ to perform to their potential. So how can we increase our sport anxiety to the desired amount?

 

If I knew the answer to this question I would have written a best-seller, though that being said I can offer some advice. Competition evokes an automatic nervous response; this nervousness is typically in the form of fear - of our opponents, of failure, of the unknown… If this fear becomes too strong our bodies and minds tend to ‘shut-down’ and performance suffers, athletes stop focusing on the competition-relevant stimuli and focus on fear instead. On the flip side if our anxiety levels are too low, we are not fearful enough, our mind and body are in a state that is too relaxed and we are unable to react to the competition-relevant stimuli in an efficient manner = poor performance.

 

Hopefully you have preformed a self-analysis and determined whether you are typically under or over stressed for competition. If you over-anxious and find it hard to concentrate during competition and the fear overrides your mind and body, then you need to lower your stress. Lowering stress is not impossible, though requires training. You need to understand why you become stressed, what are you fearful of? Why do you fear this? Ultimately you need to change your perception of this fear and channel it to a more positive emotion – motivation.

 

I suffered from being over-anxious as a youth soccer player, I feared failure. Not team failure, but fear that I would not perform well, not do my job for the team. Initially what helped me overcome my fear was expressing my concern to the coach. My coach asked me to start focusing on simple tasks, he asked me to focus on working hard by keeping my feet moving both offensively and defensively. By focusing on simple tasks that I could perform well and did not require a high level of fine motor skill, I started to perform the more complex tasks automatically. With time, practice, and experience, I was able to turn my fear into motivation and became a much more consistent performer.

 

Ultimately this is my story, but the moral here is that you need to change they way you perceive or think during competition, those athletes who excel describe being in the ‘zone’ where there mind is so clear that complex tasks are completed effortlessly. I focused on simple tasks during competition that allowed a clear mind when performing complex tasks, though you need to find your own solution. In the next article I discuss being under-stressed, or too relaxed.

Craig Dalrymple

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