Search Results for: underperform

Quick Summary: Why You Get Shaky Before Games

• Shaking before games happens because your nervous system is responding to a high-pressure situation.
• Your thoughts about the game trigger a stress response, which leads to physical symptoms like shaking and increased heart rate.
• The shakiness itself is not the main problem, but how you respond to it determines your performance.
• Trying to fight or eliminate the feeling often makes it stronger and leads to tight, hesitant play.
• Accepting the feeling and shifting your focus to a simple, controllable objective helps you perform more freely.

Quick Summary:

• Nervousness before games is normal and can even boost performance, but it becomes harmful when it leads to anxiety or timid play
• “Playing nervous” happens when fear of mistakes, worry about others, or outcome-focused thinking changes your style of play.
• Accepting nervousness is the first step—fighting the feeling creates more anxiety and tighter, more fearful performances.
• Staying present is key to overcoming nervousness; focus on breathing, controllable objectives, visual cues, or simple self-talk.
• You can feel nervous and still play aggressive, confident, and free by accepting the feeling and redirecting your attention to the moment.

Quick Summary:

• Anxiety often comes from fear, doubt, and trying to control results, so preparation helps reduce it.
• Strong physical practice builds trust in your skills and lowers the need to stress about outcomes.
• Mental prep during the week—visualization and mindfulness—builds confidence and keeps you present.
• A pregame routine the night before and morning of competition helps you feel calm and ready.
• Having an in-game strategy (like the ABCs: Accept, Breathe, Change your thinking) allows you to manage anxiety when it appears.

Quick Summary:

• Stressing about playing time pulls your attention away from the present moment, causing you to play tense, timid, and scared instead of freely and confidently.
• When athletes focus on not making mistakes or not getting pulled, they often underperform and create the very outcome they fear.
• Playing time stress creates a cycle of fear → holding back → poor performance → less trust and fewer minutes.
• The most effective shift is focusing fully on the minutes you do get, rather than worrying about future playing time.
• Athletes earn more playing time by controlling effort, attitude, presence, and intensity—being proud of how they played regardless of minutes.

Quick Summary:

• Feeling nervous is a normal physical and emotional response before games, especially in high-pressure situations like trials or big competitions.
• Playing nervous happens when those nervous feelings control your actions, causing you to play scared, hesitant, or overly safe.
• Athletes often default to playing nervous because the nervous system’s instinct is to stay safe and avoid risk—but this actually leads to more mistakes and less confidence.
• You can separate feeling nervous from playing nervous by accepting the nerves instead of fighting them and then shifting focus to controllable actions.
• You don’t need to feel confident to play confident—acting with confidence through controllable behaviors often builds confidence and reduces nerves over time.

Should you quit your sport if it’s causing you anxiety? This is a question I receive a lot. I work with many athletes who are

Quick Summary: What Causes Anxiety in Sports

• Sports anxiety is caused by outcome-oriented thinking, when your mind focuses on what might happen instead of what is happening.
• Fear of failure drives the need to control results, which leads to worry and overthinking.
• Anxiety shows up most in games because the outcome feels more important than in practice.
• Pressure, perfectionism, and low confidence all increase anxiety by pulling your focus into the future.
• The more your mind tries to control the outcome, the more anxious and tense you become.

Do you get really nervous at the beginning of a season? Do you feel more expectations and notice that you typically don’t perform as well