Sports Performance Anxiety: 7 Tips to Prepare Your Child for Optimal Play

Performance anxiety is a common challenge for many athletes. Some athletes may thrive under pressure, while others can let negative thoughts affect their game. Signs of performance anxiety include feelings of weakness, “butterflies” in the stomach, elevated heart rate, fast breathing, muscle tension, frustration, paralyzing terror, cold sweat, clammy hands and negative self-talk.

Managing performance anxiety can help athletes perform at their best and enjoy their sport. Here are 7 tips to help athletes cope with game-day nerves and optimize their performance:

1. Be Prepared: Athletes may want to arrive early to the event to become familiar with their surroundings, go through pre-event routines and warm up properly. This reduces stress and prevents feelings of being rushed before the event begins.
2. Visualize Success: Before a competition, athletes can visualize themselves being successful. For example, a volleyball athlete who always misses their serve, may want to close their eyes and see themselves in that exact situation, making their serve over the net.
   • During visualization, focusing on breathing and staying calm is a helpful technique; thinking of game-like situations that cause them the most stress and seeing themselves being successful in that moment. Commonly, this could be the feeling of everyone watching them, distractions from the crowd roaring or the normal pressure from what the real atmosphere will feel like.
3. Meditation and Breathing: Meditation is a mindfulness practice that can increase self-awareness, enhance attention and emotional regulation. It has been proven to increase focus and decision-making skills, as well as lessen feelings of fear and stress. There are many ways to meditate. Meditation phone apps may be useful for athletes, as they can guide them through a session and help them focus on their thoughts, feelings and breathing.
4. Smile and Laugh: Break the cycle of negative thought by forcing a smile, as it can help improve your mood with acute stressors or in the moment of pressure.
5. Practice Mindfulness: One of the most important and possibly difficult things for an athlete to do is to be mindful. It’s okay for athletes to recognize and process their thoughts of apprehension and tension. When they are aware of these feelings, they can utilize the above tools to help process them.
6. Address Performance Anxiety Post-Injury: If an athlete is going through sport-related rehab from an injury, they may also suffer from performance anxiety. It is common for an athlete to lack the confidence to play the way they used to pre-injury. They may be hesitant to give 100 percent due to worry and fear of re-injury. Researchers also argue that there is risk for re-injury or a secondary injury for athletes who have anxiety returning to sport after an injury.
7. Maintain Overall Well-Being: As always, getting plenty of sleep, eating a healthy diet and staying hydrated is important. If self-help strategies do not improve anxiety symptoms, be sure to seek advice from a physician or a medical professional to discuss your concerns.