How to deal with nervousness in competition

How to deal with nervousness in competition

Stress, anxiety, nervousness… these are different words to describe the mental and emotional tension that arises when approaching and during a competition, and to a smaller extent, in training.

This is one of the most common challenges athletes face and the goal of this article is to give some directions on how to best deal with these emotions.

So, let’s dive into the different things you can do.

1 – Observe and Explore

Try to take a step back and observe your nervousness, and investigate, like Sherlock Holmes. See if you can answer the following questions:

• What exactly triggers your nervousness/anxiety? Is it your expectations? Is it your coach, your parents, your friends? Is it something else?
• Do you see any nuance (practice vs competing, low stake vs high stake, a distance vs another distance, a figure vs another figure, a team vs another team, etc…)
• What do you feel and where do you feel it in your body? Is it like butterflies in the stomach, heart rhythm increase, excessive sweating, a difficulty to think clearly?
• What do you say to yourself?
• What underlying emotions are present? Could you name them?

There is some good arousal, which comes from enthusiasm and feeling ready for anything and there is some bad arousal, generated by fear and extreme nervousness. Only you can determine what causes your arousal and how high or low your level of energy needs to be for optimal performance.

You may also journal over the weeks, in practice and competition, in a stress response log, the intensity of your stress level from 1 (not stressed at all) to 10 (hyper-super stressed), how it occurred (butterflies in the stomach, heart rate increase, etc…) and then your performance during these practice or competitions. On the long term, you may notice a correlation between your stress level and your level of performance.

The goal with the stress response log is to be curious, explore and know your range of stress intensity for a best performance.

We are all different and although there are some common patterns, we all have different reasons and different ways of being nervous. Putting yourself in an observer mode will remove you from the victim seat and naturally calm the nervousness. And the more you can understand your reaction, the more you will be able to act upon it.

2 – Understand

Here are a few things to consider when it comes to stress:

• Worry often occurs when there is a difference between what is expected and what may happen.

For instance, a rugby player may be more nervous before kicking an easy, centered and close penalty kick, where he is expected to put it in, than a difficult, far from the center and far away one, where the expectation that he puts it in is lower. In the latter case, he has nothing to lose, he can either be the hero for putting I in or be pardoned to have missed it.  In the former case, on the other hand, he has everything to lose: if he puts it in, it will be considered just normal, if he misses, he will be blamed. This is also why there is more pressure for home games, where the team is more expected to win than in an away game.

• Worry and anxiety also come from being overly concerned about the outcome. The more you can keep focusing on the process and not the outcome, the less nervous you will be.

• Perfectionists (a lot of top athletes are perfectionists) tend to be more nervous than others so it is worth saying a few words:
  • Perfectionism can be good (it usually leads to excellent results) until it’s not anymore (it then gets in the way of an even higher performance because it prevents from being physically and mentally relaxed)
  • There is one problem with the “good is never good enough” mindset: Performance is either perfect or failure… And since perfection is impossible, the athletes always feel like they failed.
  • Perfectionism undermines the athlete’s confidence because he/she might not accept credit for the things you he/she does well. The bad always outweighs the good parts of performance.
  • It’s helpful for perfectionists to remember that:
    • Doing one’s best is better than being perfect
    • One is winning or one is learning

3 – Reframe

 It’s maybe the most important part of this article and that might completely change your experience in competition.

The main factor is not how much anxiety you have but how you perceive your own personal signals of anxiety and how they are channeled.

It’s OK to be nervous. It’s even necessary to some extent because that’s when your body is preparing to give its best: the heart pumps blood to your muscle, your mind gets focused, etc…

 So, you need to shift your perception of nervousness by accepting nervousness as your friend as opposed to being a victim of it. Nervousness is needed to perform at your best. Here are a few things you can do to reframe nervousness as positive:

• You may:
  • Replace “I’m nervous” by “I’m excited”
  • Tell yourself “OK, I’m nervous and this is the way I feel when I race/play my very best. These feelings are associated with great performance.”
• Turn nervousness into positive energy / fuel
• Really feel that shift of perception in your body (feel the excitement, you may even smile, etc…)

I have seen some athletes I coach get a totally different experience of their sport events by simply shifting their perspective from nervousness to excitement, and this enabled them to unleash their potential.

Other tips to manage anxiety

When the nervousness is there and too important, here are a few suggestions to lower it:

• Do some deep, slow breathing

The first reflex to have when the nervousness is rising is to focus on your breathing:

• Focus your attention in the area of the heart, imagine the air is flowing in and out, and breathe a little slower and deeper than usual (you can count to 5 on the inhale, stop for 1 or 2s, and count 5s on the exhale).
• Inhale and repeat internally: I am breathing in strength (or ease, calm, or whatever word you need to hear)
• Exhale and repeat internally: I am breathing out tensions (or stress, or fear, or any word you need to let go of)

This will have your body tap into the parasympathetic system which will calm you down.

You may do this when you feel the nervousness rise. And you can also do it regularly, when getting up in the morning, before practice, when going to bed at night, as a way to build the habit to breath consciously and to regularly “reset” your breathing and with that your stress level.

• Rehearse the event, for instance using mental imagery so that you feel more prepared and less in the unknown. See yourself do well and focus on the positive. Generally speaking, rehearsing a competition will help but it may happens that in some cases, what’s needed is to let go and not think too much of the competition. This is why individualized support is important.

• Trust yourself and your preparation (You may repeat to yourself “I am well-trained, rested and ready to do my best”)

• Focus on the process, not the outcome

• Put things into perspectives: What’s the worst that can happen? How important is it in the bigger picture of life? Usually not a lot…You can imagine to expand your perspective:
  • in space: watching yourself at the competition from above and then going higher and higher in the sky, seeing yourself becoming a small dot in the city, the country, the earth, the solar system, the universe, etc… That will remind you that what you are doing in this competition is not so significant in the bigger picture, even though it takes most of your mental space in the moment.
  • in time: think of what you have achieved so far in the past and what’s still ahead of you in the future. Think of this competition in a year, in 3 years, in 10 years: it will be a dot in the bigger picture of your sport experience/career.
  • In significance: on a scale from 1 to 10 in terms of stressful events that may happen in life, 1 being for instance to be late at an appointment or to lose one’s keys, 9 or 10 being losing a close relative or being seriously sick, 7-8 losing one’s job, etc…), a sport event would probably be around 3-4, and yet, most of us react to it as if it was a 7 or 8 or even more. Realizing this will help calm down your nerves.

• Have Fun

Most athletes forget that the reason they do their sport in the first place is to have fun. They (and their environment) put so much pressure, focus so much on the results, are afraid to make mistakes and be judged, that they don’t have any more fun racing, playing, competing. Just reminding yourself to have fun, intentionally, will help you release the tensions and help you have a much better experience. You can even make it your number one goal (“if I have some fun, this will be a win”).

As a summary, in order to better deal with stress and nervousness in competition:

• Be curious, explore and understand your nervousness
• Shift your perception from being a victim to accepting nervousness as your friend, and turn it into positive energy
• Practice breathing slower and deeper than usual on a regular basis and as soon as the stress comes.
• Focus on the process, not the outcome
• Put things into perspective
• Have fun

There is a lot more to be said and done around this topic. Everyone is different and unique, and if your stress and anxiety are significant and negatively impacting your performance, I am inviting you to contact us through our contact form to explore what sort of deeper work we could do to remove these roadblocks and have you perform to your full potential. And if you think this article may be helpful to someone else, please share it.

If you would like the support of a mental coach to help you find your unique way of preparing for competitions and fully exploiting your potential, contact us via the contact form.