Performance Anxiety in Athletes
By Talia Roti
Spring 2023
The study of sports psychology is intended to explore the athlete's mind. In the vast topic of sports psychology, we will focus on the performance anxiety athletes experience. Performance anxiety is about the stress and pressure athletes feel when competing. Stress and pressure are not necessarily bad outcomes in the heat of competition, but it is when it becomes anxiety.
What is it?
It is important to understand what performance anxiety is as an athlete, coach, and or teammate. The more you educate yourself on the topic the easier it is to identify performance anxiety in yourself and others.
Stress in a competitive environment is natural, but too much can lead to performance anxiety in athletes. When interviewing both Sarah Greene-Falk (Performance Psychology Coach & Licensed Counselor) and Mallie Hall (Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor), about the competitive stress an athlete experiences, they both referred to Yerkes-Dodson law. Yerkes-Dodson law can be visualized as a bell curve and the performance outcome is due to the level of arousal. An athlete wants to compete at optimal arousal, which is enough stress to be motivating. This is what I like to call good stress because without it an athlete will have low arousal which ultimately leads to poor performance. The flip side to good stress is bad stress. Bad stress occurs when the arousal level is too high, which turns stress into anxiety (bad stress). When anxiety occurs, it decreases the athlete’s level of performance. Performance anxiety in an athlete is an outcome of a too-high arousal level. Causing bad stress to occur overall impacting the Athletes’ performance. For Athletes performance anxiety is a struggle, and many have a hard time identifying it.
You’re Not Alone
This is Amanda Obrist. She is a senior at North Central College, and she was an NCAA collegiate athlete on the women’s soccer teams at both Carroll and North Central College. Right now, she is not competing because she needed time to apply to Physical Therapy schools. Although she is not competing right now she has competed at the college level for three years, and during those three years, she struggled with performance anxiety.
Amanda shares that she has had an anxiety disorder since she was young and performance in general was a big stressor for her growing up. She started to play soccer at four and by the age of nine her negative cognition about her performance made it hard to sometimes step onto the field. Some thoughts she had on this time were:
“Dad, do I suck, do I suck at soccer.”
“Am I Good Enough”
-Amamda Obrist
These negative feelings during practice made her heart and mind race. She began to worry more about the outcome of the competition than the game itself. She was also very hard on herself and constantly chased after a better version of herself because she did not think she was good enough as she was (this would increase her pre-existing anxiety). Amanda eventually realizes that her anxiety would intensify when playing and competing. This is what prompted her to seek help.
Once when recognized the parallel between competing and her anxiety she was able to develop strategies to help calm her anxiety. One strategy she mentioned was mindfulness. This involved using the five senses to visualize what the competition would feel like. She does this to remove negative worries about the game by replacing them with something she will experience during a game.
While she has a better handle on her performance anxiety that doesn’t mean it is not there. She handles the flair-ups by being transparent about her mental health struggles with her teammates and coach. She does this so that when that anxiety does peek its ugly head, she has the support from her team to help push it away.
If you can relate to Amanda, look at the red flag section listed below and see if any of those symptoms of anxiety are related to you.
Red Flags of Performance Anxiety?
Millie Hall states there are two kinds of red flags to look out for in an athlete experiencing performance anxiety: physical signs and mental signs. Physical signs are ones you can identify in yourself and others (so if you see these in a teammate check in with them). Mental signs are hard to see in others but with self-reflection, you can see them in yourself.
Physical Signs
Tremors
Racing heart rate
Hyperventilation
Muscle tension
Bathroom troubles
Mental Signs
Fear of Failure
Disrupted Focus.
Overthinking
Reduced Self Confidence
Millie Hall also talked about some severe signs of performance anxiety and if you are experiencing these often and intensely you should think of seeking some professional help. That is nothing to be ashamed of because you are important and you deserve to be confident and happy, especially when playing your sport of choice:
Severe Signs
Panic attacks (may include muscle weakness & or chest pain)
High heart rate (when it should be at rest)
Frequent mood swings
Wishing yourself to get injured or sick (so you do not have to play)
The NCAA also has a list of red flags that athletes should be aware of (most of which are listed above, but it is important to note that, “When an emotional experience is too frequent, too intense, lasts too long, or is too disruptive, it can become transformed into a disorder,” Scott Goldman.
Tips to Handle Performance Anxiety
If you are ever experiencing any of the red flags mentioned there are some tips to dial down your anxiety:
Breath:
Focused breathing is one of the best tools to combat your anxiety. The reason for this is that the root cause of anxiety is how fast your heart is racing. One of the best methods for this is box breathing. Box breathing is when you inhale through the nose for four seconds, holds your breath for four seconds, exhale for four seconds, and hold no breath for four seconds. This process is repeated until your heart rate is under control.
Make Unknowns’ Knowns:
Making the unknowns known is also a good preventive measure to combat anxiety as an athlete. Dr. Jarrod Spencer recommends that athletes focus on the known factors of their sport and if possible face the unknown factors before the competition. He believes this can calm an athlete’s performance anxiety before a competition.
Practice:
Sometimes practice is the best way to calm your anxiety. Working and improving your skills is a way to reinsure yourself. Practice makes improvement and if you are improving during practice that can help you build an armour of confidence.
Develop Routines:
Have you heard of superstitious athletes? The kind that doesn’t wash their socks or drink red Gatorade before they compete? Well, it is not the superstition that is true, but that the superstition gives the athletes a calming effect. Having a routine in place before you compete gives a comforting familiar feeling that can ease an athlete’s anxiety.
Reframe Anxiety:
Reframe Anxiety is mainly just adjusting your thoughts. Every action starts with a thought and if you are thinking negatively that can impact your performance and lead to increased levels of anxiety.
Mimic Energy:
Mimic energy is embodying what you want to act like when competing. If you want to be the energetic one who is always yelling on the field and high-fiving their teammates, do that. While it might feel odd at first it will slowly become a part of who you are. Becoming who you want to be will make you feel more confident, and it can decrease levels of anxiety.
What Can Impact Athlete’s Performance?
Environment and injury are two impacts that affect an athlete’s performance, which will be mentation. The environment will be focusing on the external influences that impact your mental when competing. The injury will focus on the mental blocks developed when trying to come back to your sport after injury.
The first one we will look at is an environment which a scholarly article, published by Hindawi Publishing Corporation, refers to it as two kinds of goal orientations:
Masterly:
Errors are seen as areas the athlete can grow.
Drive is to self-improve.
Success is not dependent on others.
Ego:
Errors are punished.
Drive is to win.
Success is dependent on others.
Depending on what kind of goal orientation an athlete has (ego or mastery) will impact how they perform. The goal orientation an athlete has is largely impacted by the environment they are in.
Ego orientation is viewed as the least appealing choice. The reason? Ego orientation does not make an athlete get the drive to improve in their sport. Instead, it leads to them only wanting to win because they fear failing. That does not mean mastery athletes do not want to win, but rather that they derive their success more from personal improvement than winning. While an ego athlete only derives success from winning leading to outcomes of inconsistent effort, withdrawal, and willingness to cheat. The orientation an athlete has is entirely dependent on the environment of their sport. It can be because of opponents, teammates, coaches, and or parents. That bad coach is too tough on his players. That time an opponent’s trash-talking got inside your head. Clicks form on the team and you end up feeling excluded. How about getting choked up when your parents come, because you want to perform well for them? One or all of these can lead to you having an ego orientation which will result in you having a negative view of your sport. This unhealthy drive to only care about winning can be a gateway to having performance anxiety as an athlete.
The other gateway to performance anxiety is injury. Sport-related anxiety: Current Insights, an article published in The National Library of Medicine, talks about how the thought or occurrence of injury can prevent an athlete from performing at their optimal level. The thought of injury can cause mental blocks leading an athlete to feel:
Loss of their Athletic Identity
Isolated
Resistance to Return to their Sport.
This mental block causes an athlete to be unable to give 100% to their sport because it causes them to be hesitant. This lack of confidence prevents an athlete from performing at their full ability and is performance anxiety.
OVERCOME
Now that we have covered how environment and injury can impact an athlete’s performance the next thing to cover is how to overcome it. A common theme in both scenarios is:
RECOGNITION
Identifying the situation is the only way to one day move past it. This is not just for yourself but identifying other athletes as well.
If you are struggling with your ego orientation there are two steps that need to take place and they are not going to be easy, but they will be worthwhile:
Recognize the Negative Mind Set
Change Your Mind Set
Again, recognizing the negative mindset you have developed for your sport is key. Recognizing that the way you think about your sport is negative is a major first sp to overcoming it. The next thing to do is change it. I know it sounds easy, but it is not. The phycological torment you have been put through with thoughts of:
My Best is Not Good Enough
I Need to Win
They Need to Do Bad
Thoughts along these lines have a negative connotation, which begins you digging your own hole leading you to have an ego orientation. The deeper the hole gets the worse your performance can become. The best way to combat an ego orientation is to reframe your mindset, and to do that is by re-structuring those previous thoughts:
I am going to be 1% better than I was yesterday.
I want to do my best for my own enjoyment.
The tougher the competition gives me the chance to improve.
Just flipping your thoughts around in a way that will motivate you (to improve and enjoy your athletic experience) is how you change your mindset. If you start to notice the ego mindset creeping in reframe those thoughts into a positive self-improvement one. As long as you strive for improvement to equivalate to success that is how you develop a mastery mindset. Having a mastery orientation can lessen performance anxiety because it takes the pressure off the “I must win” mindset.
“Finishing a competition both satisfied and proud of the process rather than the outcome”
For the mental block, caused by injury, there are three stages an athlete must go through:
Injury Prevention / Occurrence
Rehabilitation
Return to Sport
The first thing to know about the fear of injury an athlete experiences is that an athlete does not need to be and or have been injured to fear injury. They could have just seen a teammate get injured to fear injury themselves. So, how do you prevent this fearing an injury mindset from impacting your performance? Again, it is about recognizing it is there because once you know it is there you can take the first step to overcome it. When you get injured, or when you start to have a fear mindset, you need to start your rehabilitation of body and mind. Going to the Athletic Trainer and just fixing your body is not going to be enough, you must also overcome the mental block that can form because of the injury. You have to get to the point of accepting the injury and moving past it. This is the only way you can safely return to your sport to your full potential.
When to Seek Help?
“If the individual is finding the anxiety is more in control than they are, that's when I would recommend someone seeking professional help; When anxiety is interfering with day-to-day life.” - Sarah C Greene-Falk (Performance Psychology Coach & Licensed Counselor)
If your anxiety is taking the wheel in your life, Sarah Greene-Falk recommends you seek professional help one great resource she recommends is Psychology Club. Another great resource is Psychology Today here you can put in exactly what you’re looking for and find a therapist near you. Yet, if you are wary of going to see a counselor, maybe first seek out someone you can trust: a parent, teammate, or coach. The first step to getting help is on you. You need to reach out so help can find you.
Remember…
Do your best and strive to improve, that is all anyone can ask of you and all you can ask of yourself.
This is Talia Lynn Roti, a student-athlete at North Central College. Her sport of choice is bowling and her major is Marketing & English Literature. This topic is important to her because she faces performance anxiety as an Athlete. She hopes that this article will help other student-athletes facing the same struggles as her. While she is a student-athlete she thinks it is important for others to know that is not all she is. She is also a daughter, sister, friend, and (most importantly) dog owner. She knows how a sport can consume most of your time, but she finds that balance (between the hats you wear) is key to having a more healthy relationship with your sport.