Sports mental training to overcome performance anxiety on game day

1. Sports mental training to overcome performance anxiety on game day As an athlete, do you feel like you perform really good while training or practice but choke during the competition? It’s normal to feel nervous and anxious. However, it is not okay if all these feelings turn into fear and start interfering with your sports performance. A few tips or a simple sports mental training can help you to get your anxiety under control and reduce game-day nervousness. What is performance anxiety? Too much perceived stress is referred to as choking or performance anxiety in sports. The feeling of choking decreases athletic performance during a competition. But why do athletes have this increased perceived stress on the game day? There could be two main reasons for it: 1.They have a huge crowd or audience watching them. 2.Everyone including themselves have extremely high expectations of success. Dealing with anxiety becomes important for the athlete if they’re aiming to perform their best on the game day. What can help them to overcome performance anxiety?

2. Apart from your parents, guardians and yourself, sports psychologists, coaches, and trainers who offer mental training for athletes can help you to overcome anxiety. No matter what sports you’re into whether golf, soccer, etc. these experts understand why those conscious thoughts arise in an athlete's mind and how they can develop a feeling to change or modify the process. Here are a few things that they usually teach you in a sports mental training. Pre-Game Solutions Some pre-event solutions to reduce performance anxiety are: •Accept that feeling nervous is normal: don’t think anxiety as fear. The adrenaline rush you feel is completely normal. Try not to misinterpret it or focus too •Be prepared mentally and physically: if you’ve plenty of time before you start, utilize it and get through a warm-up. •Practice visualization: during a visual practice, mentally rehearse your strategies, plans or moves. Close your eyes and breathe easily to imagine yourself performing well. This is called positive self-talk. Game Day Solutions Below are some game day strategies taught during mental training for athletes to help calm performance anxiety. •Focus on the task, not results: avoiding thinking of the outcome too much. Be present at the moment •See it as a practice day: think of your game or competition as a normal practice day. At times the idea of competition increases your anxiety while diminishing •Do your best, without thinking of the outcome: if you get caught up in negative thoughts, try to let go of the thought of what the outcome will be. Perform your best with a feeling that you don’t care about the results. Post- Game Day Solutions •Review your game day: reviewing and focusing on your actions, behaviour and thoughts that helped you perform well increases the chances of a better performance much on it. and focus on your breathing. your performance. next time.

3. •Acknowledge, but avoid obstacles: acknowledge the obstacles that keep you from performing or make you anxious, but quickly dismiss them. The mental training for athletes will teach you how to focus on the times when you did the right thing and not the other way round. Want to overcome Sports Performance Anxiety? If you’re an athlete looking for ways and solutions to mitigate sports performance anxiety, then Hensey Sports coaches are here to save your game day. Jon Hensey, our cognitive coach, offers personalized mental training for athletes by blending in a variety of strategies like emotion regulation, goal setting, mental skill-building, task strategies, guided discovery, and so on. Hensey Sports’ evidence-based solutions are effective in helping you to overcome the sports performance anxiety by guiding you about how to tackle it and perform as the best version of yourself. Book an appointment now to get started. Source URL: https://henseysports.com/mental-skills-training-sport/