Pressure and expectations run rampant throughout sports. The culture is embedded in the idea of competition. No matter the level, there are athletes who experience pressure to succeed, either placed on them by other people, themselves, or a combination of both.
Now don’t get me wrong, I love sports, competition, and all the pressure that comes along with it. I have spent years working my way through high school, college, and professional baseball.
There is little that has provided me with such joy, while simultaneously being the trigger of incredible pain. Sports give us the opportunity to challenge ourselves, learning how to deal with both success and failure.
My experience in sports has taken me on an incredible journey. I’ve met so many wonderful people, traveled to incredible places, and grown personally to heights I never knew imaginable.
But with all the positives that come along with participating in sports, there is also a dark side. An area that accompanies these joys and challenges, often lurking in the shadows until it’s become too large not to notice.
The dark side to sports I am referring to is anxiety, that troublesome state so many of us find ourselves in. Often left wondering, where did my anxiety come from and what caused it in the first place?
What Causes Anxiety in Sports?
Anxiety in sports is often referred to as performance anxiety. This is the intense worry and nervousness that shows up before, during, or after competition.
But instead of focusing on what anxiety is, the more important question is: why does it develop in the first place?
Because anxiety doesn’t just appear randomly. There is always a cause behind it.
In most cases, that cause comes down to one thing: where your focus is placed.
More specifically, anxiety in sports is driven by outcome-oriented thinking. When your mind starts focusing on what might happen instead of what is happening, anxiety begins to grow.
For myself, this was very true. I can remember lying in bed the night before a game, with my mind just racing uncontrollably.
What I didn’t understand at the time was that there was a clear reason behind those thoughts.
If you want a complete breakdown of how performance anxiety shows up and how to work through it, you can read more about performance anxiety in sports here.
Symptoms Of Anxiety In Sports
When anxiety shows up, it leads to several physical symptoms and behavioral responses. These are not the cause of anxiety, but the result of it.
Physical Symptoms Of Anxiety
- Rapid heartbeat
- Dry mouth
- Trembling hands and knees
- Shaky voice
- Sweating
- Dizziness
- Blurred vision
- Light-headedness
- Feeling of coldness
These symptoms are what athletes notice, but they are not what’s creating the anxiety in the first place.
If you’ve experienced these, you’re not alone; this is a common part of sports performance anxiety.
Whenever I feel really anxious, my body’s typical response is trembling (mostly shaky hands), dry mouth, and feeling cold. I do tend to develop a rapid heartbeat as well. Sometimes it seems my heart is trying to join a band with how hard it’s drumming.
Let’s say you’re about to start a game and you experience some of these symptoms. In that moment, it can feel like something is wrong with you. But what’s actually happening is your mind has already moved into the future, creating the anxiety that’s now showing up physically.
Experience these physical symptoms enough, and your mind will begin searching for a way out. Enter the behavioral responses that accompany anxiety:
Behavioral Responses To Anxiety
These behaviors don’t happen randomly, they are your mind’s attempt to escape anxiety.
- Avoidance
- Flight, meaning escaping the anxiety-producing situation.
- Engaging in alcohol or drug use to cope with anxiety.
- Quitting the activity that causes anxiety.
- Losing all ambition due to fear of performance anxiety.
Most of the time, especially with avoidance, the behavioral response will be subconscious. A major behavior I tend to adopt is self-sabotage. Sabotaging ourselves is a surefire way to avoid an anxious situation.
Plus, by taking part in self-sabotage, we don’t have to outright quit our sport, which is typically even harder for us to do. But self-sabotage does not result in pleasant feelings, and definitely curbs any hope you have of attaining success.
That is one of the most frustrating aspects of anxiety. We grow anxious due to hopes of success, yet the physical symptoms and behavioral responses do everything to keep such success out of our reach.
And just like the physical symptoms, these behaviors are not random. They are being driven by where your mind is focused.
Negative Impact Of Anxiety In Sports
The physical symptoms outlined above take a heavy toll on your ability to perform. But these symptoms are not the root problem; they are the result of what’s causing the anxiety in the first place.
I’ve had times where I grew so anxious that I performed in a way that was completely mind-blowing to me. The performance was so below my standard that I wasn’t thinking about reaching my potential after that; I simply wanted to play decently.
I used to have a coach who would say, “A relaxed hitter is a dangerous hitter.”
This saying pertains to every athlete or performer, no matter their sport. Being relaxed promotes confidence and places you in an optimal state to perform. What anxiety does is eliminate almost all possibility of getting yourself into such a relaxed frame of mind.
Not only does anxiety keep us from performing freely and naturally, but the way we seek to rid ourselves of these feelings also wreaks havoc on our performances.
The real issue isn’t just how anxiety affects performance; it’s what’s creating the anxiety to begin with.
And in most cases, that comes back to one thing: where your focus is placed.
Self-Sabotage To The Rescue
One of the most important ways anxiety develops and maintains itself is through self-sabotage.
Our minds desire peace and harmony, though the way that’s obtained can oftentimes seem confusing. Take the number one behavioral response to anxiety for example.
When we find ourselves chock-full of anxiety, our minds will work to free ourselves from situations that cause such feelings. Enter avoidance, since avoiding an anxious situation is the quickest and easiest way to rid yourself of anxious thoughts.
However, as an athlete, you are unlikely to quit your sport, which is a major factor in the development of your anxiety. So, what does your mind do? It begins to adopt self-sabotaging behavior.
The more you sabotage yourself and your performance, the greater chances you have of avoiding anxious situations. Your mind (however irritating and wrong it may be) believes that through self-sabotage, anxious environments can be avoided.
While this may turn out to be true, another situation is also avoided, the one you’re actually anxious about. There will be no hope of you finding yourself in a situation where you’re successful if you continually sabotage your performances.
That proves to be a major negative impact anxiety has on your level of play. The more anxiety you feel, the more your mind seeks ways to be free of these thoughts and feelings. If allowed, your mind will turn to the quickest way possible.
Sadly, this turns out to be self-sabotage. Usually leaving you still in the midst of anxiety, but now even more frustrated at the fact your performances have grown even worse!
And again, this all traces back to the same root: your mind trying to escape a future it’s become fixated on.
Number One Cause Of Anxiety In Sports
While many factors can contribute to anxiety, most of them trace back to one core pattern of thinking.
Outside of the immediate impact, over the long haul, anxiety leads to self-sabotaging behavior. As your mind searches for a reprieve from the terrible grasp of anxiety, avoidance becomes the best option, which seems to be easily accomplished through sabotaging your own performance.
But the question remains, where does anxiety come from in the first place?
I found myself asking this question over and over when I was younger. It’s one I find myself repeating even to this day whenever I feel the incessant worrying of anxiety grow within my mind.
However, when I was younger, I approached the question through helpless eyes. If the voice within my head could have been heard, it would have sounded very whiny. Feeling sorry for myself and confused as to why these thoughts were appearing in my life.
Though, I now take a different approach, the one I hope you adopt as well. Asking the question of where my anxiety comes from is now performed through the eyes of a practitioner. Seeking to locate the cause, in order to take steps towards change.
What I’ve come to realize is no matter what specific thought pattern I land on, or situation that is provoking my anxiety, one constant is always present. There is a constant that I truly believe is the number one leading factor of anxiety in sports…outcome-oriented thinking.
How Outcome Oriented Thinking Fuels Anxiety
If you had to guess, what do you think I mean by outcome-oriented thinking?
What I’m referring to is the habit many of us have (especially in athletics) to focus completely on the outcome. In sports, this is going to be the outcome of a season, a game, or even a specific moment within the game.
This is where anxiety actually begins.
It doesn’t begin with your body. It doesn’t begin with pressure. It begins with where your attention goes.
As a baseball player, my mind was often full of outcome-oriented thoughts. These would center around the outcome of a specific at-bat, but especially what my stats would look like at the end of the season.
If I got out or made a few errors in the field, immediately my head shot into the future, analyzing and calculating what my statistics would look like.
There’s a word I just used that truly highlights the problem with outcome-oriented thinking. Do you know what it is?
The word is future.
And the moment your mind moves into the future, anxiety has a place to grow.
This is one of the core patterns behind sports performance anxiety and why it feels so overwhelming in competition. If you want a deeper understanding of how this works, you can learn more about sports performance anxiety here.
Anxiety lives in the future. It grows when your mind starts focusing on what might happen instead of what is happening.
Accompanying this transition of focus is anxiety, leading to the devastatingly negative effects described earlier.
It’s difficult for athletes to free themselves from outcome oriented thinking. We often believe thinking in such a way is helpful, since we are placing our focus on what we wish to happen.
That would be good if it was truly the case. However, seldom is outcome oriented thinking centered around positive outcomes. For the majority of the time, worrying about the outcome is fueled by focusing on what you don’t want to have happen.
Out of this type of thinking, anxiety is born. Fueled by the worries you have regarding the future, it grows into full-blown performance anxiety. This leads to worse levels of performance, resulting in even further concerns about the future.
As you can see, outcome-oriented thinking places you in the midst of a vicious cycle. One that has the power to eat away at your confidence and strip the last bit of joy from the sport you once loved.
Final Thoughts
Anxiety in sports is no laughing matter. Experiencing extreme worry on a constant basis leads to weakened performance. That’s why understanding why anxiety forms in the first place is a crucial piece of information.
Understanding that anxiety is driven by outcome-oriented thinking gives you a clear place to begin. Instead of trying to fight anxiety itself, you can start by examining where your focus is—on the future, or on what you’re doing right now.
Once you understand what’s causing your anxiety, the next step is learning how to work through it and how to shift your focus out of the future. You can start with these 4 techniques to overcome performance anxiety in sports.
If you are interested in learning more about how you can build such a mindset, click here to learn how mental performance coaching can help you achieve such a result.
In addition to one-on-one coaching, I also have a self-paced course available called The Confident Competitor Academy.
The Confident Competitor Academy is a 6-week program that will help you overcome anxiety and fear and build the mental skills you need to play freely and confidently.
Click here to learn more about The Confident Competitor Program.
I hope you enjoyed this article, and if you did, please feel free to share it with your friends.
Thank you for reading and I wish you the best of success in all that you do.
