Competition Anxiety......Don't ya hate it!

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Don't let competition anxiety get the better of you

Competition anxiety needn’t get you down

‘Meet with triumph and disaster and treat these two impostors just the same.’ Rudyard Kipling

Sport is littered with the broken dreams of those who wavered when they most needed to be in control of themselves and focused on the task at hand. Costas Karageorghis explores the nature of anxiety and its common symptoms, reviews the latest competition anxiety research, and provides you with five techniques that either control anxiety or channel it positively into your performance.

When a competitor ‘freezes’ in the big moment or commits an inexplicable error, anxiety, in one of its many guises, is very often the root cause. The precise impact of anxiety on sporting performance depends on how you interpret your world. Unfortunately, far too many athletes accept high levels of anxiety as an inevitable part of the total sporting experience and fail to reach their potential.

What precisely is anxiety?

Anxiety is a natural reaction to threats in the environment and part of the preparation for the ‘fight or flight’ response. This is our body’s primitive and automatic response that prepares it to ‘fight’ or ‘flee’ from perceived harm or attack. It is a ‘hardwired’ response that ensures survival of the human species. Sporting competition promotes similar psychological and bodily responses because there is often a threat posed towards the ego; your sense of self-esteem. Essentially, when the demands of training or competition exceed one’s perceived ability, anxiety is the inevitable outcome.

Sport places a wide variety of stressors upon participants; it can be physically exhausting, it pitches you against superior opponents, hostile fans might verbally abuse you, the elements may need to be overcome and your emotional frailties are constantly laid bare for all to see. Despite this, sport offers participants an opportunity for growth – a chance to push back personal boundaries, and a means by which to liberate the body and the mind.

Ostensibly, there is nothing damaging about the stress associated with a sporting contest, and in fact stress can be a very positive influence that leads us to tackle the challenges that make life far more rewarding. However, when we perceive stress to be negative, it causes anxiety and therefore, much depends upon how we view the demands placed upon us.

The main causes of anxiety

At the same time as providing challenge and stimulation, sport also provides considerable uncertainty. At the precise moment the Olympic archer releases an arrow, or the rugby fly-half kicks for goal, the outcome is unknown. The stress that sport provides therefore is inevitably linked with its inherent uncertainty. Sport is a cultural focal point because it is a theatre of unpredictability.

While stress and uncertainty may motivate some athletes, they induce anxiety in others. There are some distinct factors that can increase athletes’ level of anxiety. For example, the more important the contest the greater the stress, and the more likely it is that a competitor will be prone to anxiety(1).

Also, spectators can have a huge impact on how athletes feel. In fact, studies of the home advantage phenomenon show that teams playing at their home venue win on average, around 56-64% of the time(2,3), depending on the sport. The impressive medal count of host nations during Olympic Games is also notable, in particular the record-breaking haul of medals won by Australia in Sydney (2000) and by Greece in Athens (2004).

Participants in individual sports have been shown generally to suffer more anxiety before, during and after competition than participants in team sports(4). This is because the sense of isolation and exposure is much greater in sports such as triathlon, tennis and snooker than in the relative anonymity of field sports.

For athletes in high-contact sports such as boxing and martial arts, the possibility of getting hurt can also be a source of anxiety. Typically, this anxiety causes some critical changes in technique. For example, anxious boxers will often lean too far forward, be clumsy in their leg movements or fight defensively, any of which may result in them getting knocked out.

An additional factor that causes anxiety is the expectation of success. The expectations held by British tennis fans for Tim Henman and Greg Rusedski to win the men’s singles title at Wimbledon have hung over these players like a dark cloud. Some athletes rise to the challenge imposed by public expectation while others can choke.

The symptoms of anxiety

Anxiety can be recognised on three levels:

On the cognitive level – ie by particular thought processes;
On the somatic level (bodily) – ie by physical responses;
On the behavioural level – ie by certain patterns of behaviour.
Competition anxiety theory and research

British sport psychologist Graham Jones developed a model of competition anxiety that has been widely used in the last decade (5). Jones contends that it is the perception of our ability to control our environment and ourselves that determines the anxiety response. Hence, if you believe you can cope in a particular sporting situation, you will tend to strive to achieve your goals with positive expectations of success. Having positive expectations will invariably mean that you will be more confident and therefore more likely to perform close to your best.

The feeling that you can control a particular stressor such as a menacing rival or a niggling injury will mean that the symptoms of anxiety – butterflies in the stomach, elevated heart rate, sweat secretion, and so on – are interpreted as facilitative or helpful towards performance. If your judgement is that you do not have control over the situation – that your opponent is too strong or that a sore calf muscle will hold you back – then those same symptoms will be interpreted as debilitative, or likely to impair performance. The probable consequence is that this interpretation will become a self-fulfilling prophecy and your performance levels will plummet.

The extent to which we expect to control various competition stressors depends on factors that are specific to individuals, such as their personality, upbringing, experiences and trait anxiety – the degree to which individuals are predisposed to feel anxious. These are known as individual differences because they are the factors that serve to make each of us unique. In Jones’s model, individual differences mediate the relationship between a stressor and one’s perception of control.

The propositions of Jones’s model have generally been supported in the literature. One of the most recent studies examined the intensity and direction of anxiety as a function of goal attainment expectation and competition goal orientation(6). The intensity of anxiety is how much anxiety one feels, whereas direction has to do with whether they interpret the symptoms as being facilitative or debilitative to performance.

Team sport players who reported positive expectations of goal achievement and indicated some input into the goal generation process experienced the most facilitative interpretations of anxiety symptoms. The implications of this study are that athletes should set their own goals rather than have goals imposed upon them by a coach or team manager.

Research has shown that coaches and team managers may, however, have a key role to play in buffering the effects of anxiety(7). When researchers examined the influence of perceived coach support on anxiety among high school tennis players, their results indicated that for players who were predisposed to feeling anxious (trait anxious), the perceived support of their coach tempered their anxiety and helped them to cope far better with the psychological demands of competition.

Very recent work has examined the impact of motivational climate on young athletes’ anxiety(8). The results showed that coaches who promoted a mastery climate – one in which personal skill development was emphasised rather than superiority over peers (performance climate) – enabled their athletes to experience a significant decrease in anxiety from pre-season to late-season. This was in contrast to the anxiety of a control group of athletes, which increased over the season.

If you are interested in measuring competition anxiety, the instrument of choice for almost 15 years has been the Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2(9); however, this instrument has been severely criticised and its validity challenged(10). Researchers have recently attempted to address the limitations of the original 27-item CSAI-2(11) and the result is a new version – the 17-item CSAI-2 Revised (CSAI-2R), which is more valid and reliable than its predecessor. I strongly recommend use of the CSAI-2R should you wish to assess competition anxiety.

Five techniques to help you control competition anxiety

To reach an optimum psychological state, you need to understand your own natural responses to stress and be sensitive to your bodily signals. Learning to handle the demands of competition involves learning to read your thought patterns and physical responses, and to develop the skills necessary to find your ideal arousal level. Stress management requires excellent self-awareness because, if you know yourself well, you will better understand the roots of your anxiety.

I will begin by outlining a self-awareness technique that allows you to ‘capture in a bottle’ the feelings you associate with success – ‘the winning feeling’. I will then present the popular ‘centering’ exercise which relieves tension through focusing attention to the centre of your body. Following this, the ‘five breath technique’ will be described; an ideal prelude to competition for over-anxious athletes. The penultimate exercise is ‘thought-stopping’ which deals with the cognitive symptoms of anxiety such as negative thoughts and images. Finally, ‘letting go’ will be presented – the deepest relaxation exercise of the five and ideal for the night before competition.

1. Establishing your ‘winning feeling’

Think carefully about the last time you were performing at the top of your game then list every detail you might associate with your ‘winning feeling’. Pick out the eight most important aspects of this positive feeling and write them neatly into the boxes. You can use your winning feeling to help create an optimum competition mindset through consciously reproducing the desired elements.

2. Centering

The second technique is known as ‘centering’ because it involves focusing attention on the centre of your body, the area just behind your navel. This is a technique that is particularly effective during sports that have breaks in the action, such as in between sets in tennis, or prior to a penalty in soccer. Centering has a calming and controlling effect, providing a simple but effective way to counteract the negative effects of anxiety:

Stand with your feet flat on the ground, shoulder width apart, arms hanging loosely either side of your body;
Close your eyes and breathe evenly. Notice that when you breathe in, the tension in your upper body increases, but as you breathe out, there is a calmer, sinking feeling;
Inhale deeply from your abdomen and, as you do, be aware of the tension in your face, and your neck, and your shoulders, and your chest. As you exhale, let the tension fall away and focus on the feeling of heaviness in your stomach;
Continue to breathe evenly, focusing all your attention internally on the area immediately behind your navel;
Maintain your attention on that spot and breathe normally, feeling very controlled and heavy and calm;
On each out-breath use a word that encapsulates the physical feelings and mental focus that you want eg ‘loose’, ‘calm’, ‘focused’, ‘sharp’, ‘strong’ etc.
3. The five breath technique

This anxiety control exercise can be performed while you are standing up, lying down or sitting upright. It is ideally used just before competition, or whenever you feel particularly tense. You should inhale slowly, deeply and evenly through your nose, and exhale gently through your mouth as though flickering, but not extinguishing, the flame of a candle:

Take a deep breath. Allow your face and neck to relax as you breathe out;
Take a second deep breath. Allow your shoulders and arms to relax as you breathe out;
Take a third deep breath. Allow your chest, stomach and back to relax as you breathe out;
Take a fourth deep breath. Allow your legs and feet to relax as you breathe out;
Take a fifth deep breath. Allow your whole body to relax as you breathe out;
Continue to breathe deeply for as long as you need to, and each time you breathe out say the word ‘relax’ in your mind’s ear.
4. Thought-stopping

When you experience a negative or unwanted thought (cognitive anxiety) such as ‘I just don’t want to be here today’ or ‘She beat me by five metres last time out’, picture a large red stop sign in your mind’s eye. Hold this image for a few seconds then allow it to fade away along with the thought. If you wish, you can follow this with a positive self-statement such as ‘I am going to hit it hard right from the off!’ Thought-stopping can be used to block an unwanted thought before it escalates or disrupts performance. The technique can help to create a sharp refocus of attention keeping you engrossed in the task at hand.

5. Letting go

You will need to lie down somewhere comfortable where you are unlikely to be disturbed. If you wish, you can also use this exercise to aid a restful night’s sleep. Allow your eyes to close and let your attention wander slowly over each part of your body – starting from the tips of your toes and working up to the top of your head. As you focus on each part of the body, tense the associated muscles for a count of five and then ‘let go’. If this does not relieve the tension in a particular body part, repeat the process as many times as you need to. Once you have covered each body part, tense the entire body, hold for five and then ‘let go’. You will feel tranquil and deeply relaxed.

Summary

The major problem in competition is letting your mind work against you rather than for you. You must accept anxiety symptoms as part and parcel of the competition experience; only then will anxiety begin to facilitate your performance. The techniques I have presented herein are but a small selection from the pantheon of stress management interventions. You should adapt these techniques to suit your needs or those of your athletes. Remember that pressure is your ally and will invariably bring out the best in you, just as coal under pressure can produce a diamond!

Dr Costas Karageorghis is a reader in sport psychology at Brunel University, west London where he also manages the Athletics Club. He has published extensively in the field of sport and exercise psychology and has been a BASES accredited sport psychologist for 11 years

References
1. Percept Mot Skills 2000; 90:847-850
2. J Sports Sci 2006; 24:495-499
3. Sports Med 1999; 28:221-236
4. J Sport Beh 2002; 25:41-56
5. Br J Psychol 1995; 86:449-478
6. J Sci Med Sport 2005; 8:423-432
7. Current Psych: Developmental, Learning, Personal, Soc 1999; 18:381-393
8. J Sport Ex Psych 2007; 29:39-59
9. Competitive Anxiety in Sport, Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics 1990
10. J Sports Sci 1999; 17;505-512
11. J Sport Ex Psych 2003; 25:519-533

 

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Competition & Emotional Control


Here are some pre-performance strategies for taking control of your emotions before they take control of you. Competition can bring out the best or the worst in athletes, and the psychological demands are especially high when individuals or teams are striving to achieve the same goals. When physical skills are evenly matched, it is often the competitor with the stronger mental approach, who can control his or her mind before and during events, who wins. However, many athletes wrongly assume that mental aspects of performance are innate and unchangeable when, in reality, systematic mental training can have a similar impact on performance as physical workouts. Getting into the correct mind-set prior to competition is one of the most crucial aspects of top performance. In fact, a study of Olympic athletes by Orlick and Partington (1) showed that the combination of mental and physical readiness was a key factor that distinguished more successful athletes from their less successful counterparts in the Olympic Games. Perhaps even more impressive is the finding that, of the three states of readiness assessed (mental, physical and technical), only mental factors were statistically linked with final Olympic rankings. If you have ever observed performers during the lead-up to competition, you can’t have failed to notice that behaviour starts to change. As the anticipation builds, athletes and coaches cope with the demands of the situation in various ways, some becoming withdrawn and quiet and some more aggressive than usual, while others disappear frequently to the toilet. Emotional reactions to stressful situations can drain an athlete’s resources and impact negatively on performance if poorly-managed. That is why it is important to have in place a strategy to deal with pre-performance stress.

Triggers for emotions

Emotions can be defined as brief positive or negative feelings occurring in response to meaningful or important situations, which can influence mood states. Basic emotions such as fear, anger, joy and surprise are commonly experienced in sport, although complex mixes of emotions are often evident. Positive emotions can help sustain motivation and enable us to approach events with enthusiasm and energy. Negative emotions, by contrast, are linked to avoidance behaviours and withdrawal. Emotions in the sporting arena can be triggered by many things personal to an individual, including memories, conversations with other people, seeing the competition venue, weighing up the opposition etc. Researchers have studied emotions in order to determine why they occur and what impact they have on behaviour. At first it was thought that emotions were simply the result of physiological changes, since physiological symptoms, such as increased heart rate, were commonly observed in such reactions. To test this theory, scientists injected volunteers with the so-called ‘stress’ hormone epinephrine (adrenaline) to see if emotions could be generated in the laboratory. A small minority of participants reported feeling genuine emotions (usually sadness) while most reported physiological changes (to be expected after administration of adrenaline) and ‘as if’ emotions - feelings closely associated with being happy, sad or angry, but not the ‘real thing’. Subsequent research demonstrated that emotions could be induced by directing participants’ thoughts to emotional triggers, such as deceased relatives (sadness) or past achievements (pride). In summary, research in these areas has shown that both physiological arousal and the cognitive interpretation of that arousal are important in determining the emotional response.

During the lead-up to an important competition, the body starts to prepare for the demands to come by releasing hormones such as epinephrine into the bloodstream, setting in motion the physiological changes associated with increased arousal (sometimes referred to as the ‘fight or flight’ response). In addition, changes occur in the attentional system, as athletes become more focussed and alert, with increasingly active minds. This overall increase in arousal can be your best friend or your worst enemy: and the key to achieving an appropriate mind-set is to analyse the changes in a rational manner and channel your emotions in a positive direction. Many élite athletes associate increased arousal with excitement as the body readies itself for competition, and use it as a cue to focus on pre-planned routines. This positive interpretation of the arousal response usually leads to more positive emotions and optimistic outlooks. Conversely, some athletes interpret physiological changes like an increased heart rate as anxiety, worry and apprehension, with a negative impact on emotions that is not conducive to good performance.

The most important thing to remember is that your interpretation of physiological changes directs your emotional response. However, the relationship between thoughts and emotions works in both directions: although emotions are the result of cognitive interpretations, they can also impact on your thoughts, giving rise to a vicious circle of negative thoughts and emotions. The good news for athletes who experience unhelpful emotions before competition is that you can gain more control by altering your focus of attention. The next time you feel these unwanted changes occurring try going through the following psychological routine:

Tell yourself ‘this is my body preparing me to perform well’, and repeat the affirmation as necessary;
Try to recall an image of yourself either winning or performing well, and connect this with the feelings you experienced at the time.
You will need to practise this routine on a regular basis in order to establish it as a habitual response that will help you feel more composed and energised before competitions. If negative images jump into your mind during this time, try to visualise the most successful athlete in your sport and the way he or she runs, competes, enjoys performing - in short every positive thing about them; Then visualise yourself with similar positive attributes. Even experienced athletes get nervous and irritable before competing, and a little tension (as long as it is controlled) is often necessary to inspire maximal performance. The techniques outlined above will not remove all the tension, but they should help you to channel your emotions more positively, which is what top athletes have to learn to do. The difference between winners and losers often boils down to coping skills, in that some athletes have learned to cope with competitive situations better than others.

It is important to challenge the belief of some athletes that emotions and mood states are simply reactions to external events; in fact, the athlete has considerable capacity for control in this area. A recent study by Stevens and Lane identified a number of strategies employed by athletes to regulate their moods (2). Although unique strategies were employed for specific mood dimensions, results indicated that ‘changing location’ and ‘listening to music’ were among the most commonly used strategies. Various research studies have demonstrated the ability of music to impact on emotions and mood by either calming or stimulating the individual as required - although careful consideration is needed in the selection of appropriate music. Listening to music or engaging in a mentally active process, such as a crossword, can help to stop the mind wandering in the hours leading up to competition, although immediately beforehand athletes need to be completely focused on the task in hand.

Having worked with sportsmen and women who have experienced emotional disturbance prior to competing, it is clear to me that mental preparation needs are highly. The common approach that I have found successful is to develop with each athlete a coping response that becomes automated and can be consistently applied in changing circumstances. Such a coping response puts the athlete in control by creating a familiar psychological comfort zone regardless of whatever is going on in the external environment.

One of the biggest triggers for anxiety is uncertainty, which is, of course, inherent in all sporting events. The key principle for the athlete is to control the things you can control but not to waste energy on things you can’t control. Many top athletes have found, to their cost, that giving attention to how opponents might perform or how technically good others were in the warm-up has a negative impact on their focus. The one thing you can control is your own preparation, so that should have your full focus. By developing consistent routines and ways of coping with distractions, uncertainty can be reduced and you are less likely to be negatively affected by external factors.

Because athletes have varying requirements, it is impossible to standardise the pre-competition preparation. However, you may wish to adopt some of the ideas below in creating your own pre-performance strategy to achieve the desired emotional state. These ideas are all designed to be put into practice in the hour before competition, although the principles can be adapted for other times.

Physical preparation

The warm-up period can be an important psychological aid as well as preparing the body for the rigors of competition and helping to prevent injury. Remember the comfort zone? By developing a relatively stable warm-up routine, including mobility work, stretching and increasing deep muscle temperature, uncertainty can be reduced and the athlete’s attention directed to appropriate cues, such as quality technique and body awareness. The development of routines in sport has consistently been shown to be important in directing attentional focus to important cues, so aiding performance.

Although during last summer’s major athletic events it was impossible to observe what was going on inside the minds of the sprinters, you could clearly observe the regularity of the warm-up routines and the intense concentration written on athletes’ faces prior to taking their marks. These routines are not haphazard, but have been systematically designed to promote optimal functioning in the final few minutes before performance.

Golfers have routines that allow them to prepare in the same way for each shot, as do some rugby place kickers, and tennis players before serving. The key to any routine is that it provides the athlete with control and directs attention to the important cues. Coaches and athletes should work together in deciding the key attentional cues and the sequence in which these should occur. Such routines are the opposite of superstitious rituals that take control away from the performer, as with superstitions outcome is essentially believed to be controlled by sources other than the self.

Mental preparation

The mental aspects prior to performance should involve focussing on what you are going to do during the event. This can include specific strategies, and the establishment of optimal attentional focus. Some athletes will like to use imagery to recall positive past experiences and generate a sense of confidence. Imagery is a very flexible method to employ prior to competition but it needs to be used correctly for maximum effect. Imagery is not just a form of visualisation, but moreover an all sensory experience that should involve the kinaesthetic sense, emotions and auditory experiences to increase the impact. Many people use imagery to simply see themselves winning but it can be employed to imagine good technique, coping with difficult situations, recreating emotional feelings and rehearsing the up-coming event in the mind. Imagery is a powerful technique since the brain interprets the imagined scenarios very literally, so directly enhancing such psychological variables as confidence. Always keep imagery sessions short (no more than a few minutes) and simple just before competition. Tailoring the imagery to the desired outcome is essential, so if you want to improve your mood, imagine a realistic scenario that makes you feel good. For more advice on incorporating imagery into your preparation, you may like to read a very practical book entitled In Pursuit of Excellence (3). Mental preparation can include the repeated use of positive self-statements (affirmations) such as ‘I have trained hard, and am in great shape’. These affirmations act by occupying our attention in such a way as to change our belief system over time, so that we begin to attend to feelings or happenings than are consistent with these new beliefs. In the example given above, we begin to focus on events that reinforce our belief that we are in great shape, such as a fast training run. In this way negative perceptions can be tuned-out.

The ‘quick set’ routine

Psychologist Jeff Simons has described one of the best ways to organise the last 20-30 seconds before competition in what has become known as the quick set routine (4). This three-phase routine is designed to provide a quick focus that can be used just before competition or as a means of refocusing quickly following a distraction. It is minimal in content, which appeals to many athletes, and involves a physical, emotional and focus cue. An example for a sprinter could be:

Close eyes, clear your mind and maintain deep rhythmical breathing, in through your nose and out through your mouth (physical cue);
Imagine a previous race win, see yourself crossing the line first and recreate those feelings (emotional cue);
Return your focus to the sprint start, thinking of blasting off on the ‘B’ of the bang (focus cue).
However meticulous your planning, things often occur at the competition site that are out of your control. Such events have the potential to impact on your emotional state, distract you from your goals and push you out of your optimal state of preparedness. However, it is important to remember that things only become distractions if you let them. They do not have to negatively influence your mood if you can learn to let them go and refocus. Such distractions can by provided by your opponents. It is increasingly common for opponents to use psych-out strategies or mind games to try and break your concentration and consistency. Comments such as: ‘I’m surprised to see you competing so soon after that injury’ are attempts to divert your attention away from your preparation and towards negative memories and self-doubt. The best strategy with such comments is to ignore them, although that is easier said than done. If you feel yourself attending to them, it is important to become aware that you have lost your optimal focus and need to refocus quickly. First, ‘let go’ of the distraction and put it out of your mind; say to yourself ‘let it go’, shake down your body, and refocus on your breathing. Some people might prefer to use their quick set routine to refocus in such circumstances.

Remember that some opponents are actively seeking to unsettle you, and that by reacting to their comments or behaviours you are falling into their trap and allowing them the psychological edge. By engaging in this psychological duel you run the risk of disrupting your emotional state, becoming over-aroused and suffering a catastrophic decline in performance that is difficult to recover from quickly. Reacting emotionally often means that you discard your carefully laid plans and operate a strategy of reprisal. Self-control is best regained by not reacting to provocation. This, in turn, can make your opponent worried or angry as it demonstrates that his or her attempts to undermine you have failed. Attempts to engage in such antics can, in any case, be a sign that your opponent is worried about you. A classic example of how emotions can affect sport performers came in a famous boxing match between Sugar Ray Leonard and Roberto Duran. Leonard was considered the better boxer who was expected to outclass Duran with slick movements and long-range punching. However, before the fight Duran insulted Leonard in front of his family and this, to the dismay of Leonard’s Trainer Angelo Dundee, sent Leonard into a rage, which completely altered the course of subsequent events. Instead of fighting to the pre-planned strategy devised with his trainer, Leonard let his emotions take over and decided he was going to ‘beat-up’ his opponent. Duran’s actions amounted to a psychological masterstroke as Leonard ditched his boxing skills and opted for a brawl. It was exactly what Duran had hoped for, and he won a points decision.

There are many other potential distractions for the athlete, including the actions of friends or family, coaches or team mates, the environmental conditions, memories, delays and irrelevant thoughts. All of these can detract from your preparations, so be ready to clear your mind and refocus as necessary. Additionally/alternatively, remove yourself physically from the source of these distractions if possible. Learning any physical skill takes time, effort and practice. Psychological skills are no different in this respect, so don’t expect miraculous overnight changes in your performance. If you are a serious athlete, it is best to work with your coach to devise routines and mental plans. Once you are happy with these, they can be introduced first to practice situations and later to competition. Give yourself a few weeks to use these new techniques before re-evaluating them and adding or deleting parts as necessary. It is unlikely that the initial plans or routines will be perfect, so do not be afraid to develop them. It is also sensible to add distractions to your training sessions in order to simulate more realistic conditions. This can include attempting to refocus while people are trying to distract you. You might even practice your refocusing skills using imagery, by envisaging potential distracting scenarios in your mind. Only when you are comfortable with your strategies should you start to use them in competitions. Remember to give it time, as improvements take time to show through.

Emotions are an essential part of sport and competition, but if you don’t gain control of them before competing they might control you and hinder your performance. While it is true that some people are more emotionally sensitive than others, taking mental charge by implementing psychological plans and routines can help all athletes to a more optimal state of readiness for performance.

 

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Sports Psychology - Thought Control


When it comes to doing your best, it’s the thoughts that count.

When it comes to running – or any other endurance sport – your mind can be your biggest asset or your worst enemy. Enjoying your training and achieving your best performances is not simply down to physical conditioning: your mental states and, particularly, the thoughts that run through your mind can affect the way you feel during exercise. It is normal for athletes to plan their race strategy in minute detail, but how many systematically plan what they are going to think about during training or competition?

Having worked with and questioned athletes on their thoughts over a number of years, I can tell you that the number who do plan their thoughts is surprisingly small. I say surprising because, as a sport psychologist, I am aware of what scientific research has been showing for a number of years: that thoughts do matter. In fact the nature and quality of your thoughts can make the difference between winning or losing, enjoying or hating your training, and may impact on your decision to stay with an exercise programme.

Much of this scientific evidence comes from studies of marathon runners. Neuroscientists have shown that we have thousands of thoughts running through our minds each and every day. Athletes spend a large percentage of their time thinking sport-related thoughts, but most of these are unplanned and random. The first step towards becoming more organised and purposeful in your thinking is to become more aware of them. So when you next go for a training run, cycle or swim, try to become more aware of what you are thinking about.


Table 1 – techniques for dissociation

Music – This can generate positive thoughts, improve your mood state and distract you from the physical demands of your sport. But be careful not to get too distracted if you are running in a busy area;
Counting game – Count the number of blue cars you see, or the number of dogs of post boxes. Be inventive;

Alphabet game – Work through from A to Z for a chosen category, such as women’s names or countries;

Rainbow game – Try to notice as many colours as possible while you work out: aim for all the colours of the rainbow;

Active fantasy – Imagine yourself as a lottery winner and decide how to spend your winnings.
Avoid thoughts relating to your work, jobs you have to do and anything problematic, as this can increase tension. Try to be creative and have fun with dissociation. It can help you relax and enjoy your sport even more.


Association and dissociation

So what should you be thing about? Two very different mental strategies have emerged, with both commonly used by elite and other runners. Association involves focusing on bodily sensations and monitoring any changes – usually internal – that occur. Breathing rate and muscular sensations provide physiological cues that allow you to pace yourself with a view to avoiding or minimising pain.

By contrast dissocation is about directing attention away from bodily sensations by a form of distraction designed to reduce the athlete’s awareness of fatigue or effort. This can be achieved by many means, including music. However, more ‘active’ strategies like counting tasks or the alphabet game (see table 1) might be more effective.

I am often asked which of these strategies is best. There is no simple answer, but a recent review of scientific research in this area came to the following conclusions (1):

In general, association appears to be linked to faster running times;
Dissociation can reduce the sense of effort and awareness of physical sensations such as pain and fatigue – usually up to moderate-to-high intensity;
Athletes of all levels appear to favour association in competition and dissociation in training;
Elite athletes tend to use both strategies during training and races, and are able to switch between the two, as required.
When trying to decide which strategy might be best for you, it is important to consider your personal situation, preferences and goals. For example, most athletes perform training runs at a slower pace than they use in competition, making body monitoring less essential. A better goal for training might be to relieve boredom and monotony, in which case dissociation, with active mental processing, might be most beneficial. Dissociation may also benefit athletes who want to improve their endurance by running or exercising for longer at moderate intensities.

However, because dissociation works by distracting the mind, it might work against an athlete setting an ideal pace for optimum performance. The reason why association appears so important in competition is that, by monitoring his bodily responses, an athlete can ride that thin line between pushing for maximum performance and overdoing it.

Association involves entering a more concentrated state when you can react to changes within your body. And focusing on internal states like rhythmical breathing can help you feel more relaxed during physical activity (see table 2). But, on the down side, there is some evidence of a link between association and injury; some athletes, it appears, choose to associate with pain and fatigue-related symptoms and end up pushing themselves too hard.

Most successful elite marathon runners have been shown to combine associative and dissociative strategies when planning their thoughts. There are times, especially in races, when you need to be very aware of your own physical state and of events in the external environment. However, there are also times when you can plan to ‘switch off’ and give yourself a break from the mental demands of competition or training. The best thing is to construct a plan with your coach, exercise leader or even a more experienced fellow athlete. Try to decide between you what is the best approach for you, and plan what you will be thinking about during the race or training sessions.

For a 30-minute training run you might decide on cyclic phases of thinking- e.g. 10 minutes of body monitoring, 10 minutes of alphabet game, then more body monitoring to the end. It’s all perfectly logical once you get started: you wouldn’t leave your physical preparations to chance, so why allow your thoughts to crop up in random fashion.

Table 2 – techniques for associative body monitoring Follow this three-stage plan:

Focus on your breathing: controlled, relatively deep rhythmic breathing is the key to relaxation. When you breathe out, try to imagine the tension leaving your body;
Try to remain relaxed while running (or cycling or swimming), but be aware of tension and fatigue in your muscles. It’s often a good idea to start from the head and work down, giving each area or group of muscles your attention. If you notice tension, try to focus on a cue word, such as ‘relax’ or ‘easy’ and try to let the tension flow out of the muscles;

Keep your pace in line with the information you gain from body monitoring. You might, for example, increase the pace if you feel very positive.
Repeat the monitoring constantly or, alternatively, take some time out for dissociation. You might also reinforce your mood by telling yourself how well you are doing and that you need to keep working hard and remain focused.


Self-talk

When running, cycling or swimming for long periods of time, the mind can wander freely, if you let it. When this happens, your natural internal dialogue – or self-talk – becomes important. If your concentration does stray or your body monitoring detects fatigue, it is vital that your self-talk remains positive. The best thing is to avoid over-emotional self-talk and focus on self-instructing, motivational content. To this end, you can plan and even rehearse what you are going to say to yourself beforehand, just like your might rehearse an important telephone call or lecture. The key is to stay positive even when the situation is less than ideal. This is not an easy feat to pull off and will take some time to master.

The first step in this process is to become more aware of your thoughts during training and competition. If you want to gain more control over your thoughts, try to formulate a simple plan and try it out over a number of weeks during training. If you notice any undesirable patterns in your thinking, such as negative self-talk or loss of focus, you can try to combat these by planning more positive alternative thoughts. You can, for example, frame positive statements that you repeat to yourself regularly. Ideally, write these statements down and place them in prominent positions where you can’t avoid seeing them. Work on recalling these statements when you become aware of negative thoughts or feelings. This might seem a little strange at first, but you are actually programming your brain to notice more ‘positives’ and, over time, with will become a habit.

Athletes often recall that their very best performances are accompanied by few thoughts, a feeling of complete control, effortless movements and a sense of being ‘on automatic pilot’. Sport psychologists often refer to this as a ‘state of flow’. The aspects of positive thinking and focus discussed in this article have been shown to increase the likelihood of achieving flow, although environmental factors can also be important.

Don’t leave your psychological preparation to chances. Remember that you control your thoughts, not the other way round. The way you think is strongly linked to the way you perform. So if you want to perform better, gain greater control and enjoy your sport more, start planning today because in this sphere the thoughts really do count.

 

[Gymgurl]

Sports psychology: Mental toughness: do you have what it takes to maintain focus, motivation and self-belief when the going gets hard?

There are certain moments during competition that appear to carry great psychological significance, when the momentum starts to shift in one direction or another. These situations require athletes to remain completely focused and calm in the face of difficult circumstances. Tennis players talk of the ‘big’ points during a tight match, such as a fleeting chance to break serve; for an athlete, it could be the final triple-jump in the competition after seriously under-performing; for a footballer, it could be how you react to a perceived bad refereeing decision or to going behind in a match your team are expected to win. Think about times when things have not gone quite to plan and how you reacted. The journey towards peak performance is rarely a perfectly smooth road and we learn from our mistakes – or should do. Do setbacks shake your self-belief and lower your motivation or act as a catalyst for even greater effort?

Even great athletes and teams suffer setbacks. Olympic athlete Steve Backley is a prime example. In his book The Winning Mind, Backley cites his psychological strengths and, at times, his weaknesses as major determinants of whether he performed near to or below his own strict targets in competition (1). He talks of the transition from young up-and-coming javelin thrower to major international competitor when, after experiencing success so often as a junior, he found himself under-prepared for the mental hurdles and barriers created by higher-level competition. Backley says psychological strategies were the key to helping him to deal with this competitive stress.

Most top athletes and coaches believe that psychological factors play as crucial a role as physical attributes and learned skills in the make-up of champions. When physical skills are evenly matched – as they tend to be in competitive sport – the competitor with greater control over his or her mind will usually emerge as the victor. Mental strength is not going to compensate for lack of skill, but in close contests it can make the difference between winning and losing.

A key question for sport and exercise psychologists is whether champions have simply inherited the dominant psychological traits necessary for success or whether mental toughness can be acquired through training and experience. Recent research has attempted to explore the concept of mental toughness in sport more thoroughly, and it appears that, while some people are naturally more tough-minded than others, people can be ‘toughened-up’ with the correct approach to training (2).

What do we mean by mental toughness? It is probably easiest to define in terms of how it affects behaviour and performance. A mentally tough athlete is likely to:

achieve relatively consistent performances regardless of situational factors;
retain a confident, positive, optimistic outlook, even when things are not going well, and not ‘choke’ under pressure;
deal with distractions without letting them interfere with optimal focus;
tolerate pain and discomfort;
remain persistent when the ‘going gets tough’;
have the resilience to bounce back from disappointments.
The influence of personality
These characteristics are obviously related to success in most life situations. But it seems that some of us may be tougher than others because of personality traits and learned ways of coping.

Personality research has always stirred up controversy – usually because researchers have not been able to agree on the correct approach to studying it. Some have taken what is known as the ‘trait’ approach, which views personality as stable and enduring, based on individual characteristics. However, others see personality as shaped by environmental influences, while ‘interactionists’ view individual traits and the environment as codeterminants of behaviour. In recent times, this latter position has tended to predominate, based on the view that personality structure involves both a stable core of attitudes, values and beliefs about self, that remains relatively unchanged after early childhood, and more changeable, dynamic behaviours that are influenced by our environment.

Research on the relationship between stress and illness has revealed that some people have characteristics that act as buffers against stressors, making them less likely to succumb to ill health in difficult times. The leading researcher Suzanne Kobasa showed in one study that a personality characteristic known as ‘hardiness’ was a key factor in whether or not highly-stressed executives succumbed to illness. The hardy executives, who avoided illness, tended to perceive stressors as ‘challenges’ rather than threats, so maintaining a sense of control over events (3).

Kobasa suggested that hardiness incorporates three key elements:

Control – the perceived ability of the individual to exert influence rather than experience helplessness;

Commitment – ie a refusal to give up easily;

Challenge – involving a person’s ability to grow and develop rather than remain static, and to view change rather than stability as the norm.
Until recently, few studies had attempted to transfer the concept of hardiness to sport and exercise settings, but it seems very similar to the idea of mental toughness outlined earlier in this article. One study on the relationship between hardiness and performance in basketball showed that seven out of eight season-long performance indicators were significantly correlated with a total hardiness score (4). This finding needs to be interpreted with caution, however, since correlations do not necessarily reflect causation.

More recently, a team of researchers at Hull University have taken the idea of hardiness a step further by proposing a model of mental toughness in sport(2). A key development has been the development of a questionnaire to assess mental toughness that can be used to assess its influence in experimental studies.

The Hull researchers carried out two studies to show how mental toughness was related to performance and cognitive appraisal. In the first study, 23 volunteers performed 30-minute static cycling trials at three different intensities of 30, 50 and 70% of their maximum oxygen uptake, rating the physical demands of the trials at five-minute intervals.

Participants were classified as having either high or low mental toughness based on their responses to the above-mentioned questionnaire and, as predicted, those with higher levels of mental toughness reported significantly lower perceived exertion at 70% of maximum. No significant differences were noted at lower levels of exertion which, as the researchers acknowledged, is consistent with the cliché that ‘when the going gets tough, the tough get going’. The observed differences at higher levels of exertion could reflect a tendency of the more tough-minded to somehow act on the incoming stimuli before it reaches the level of perception, to reduce the perception of strain. Mentally tough exercisers might perceive themselves as having greater control during such conditions, or interpret the higher intensity as a challenge rather than a threat.

The second study, on 79 participants, considered the influence of mental toughness on resilience in adverse situations. Participants were given either positive or negative feedback after completing a variety of motor tasks, and then asked to perform a planning task which was used as the objective performance measure. The key question for the researchers was how participants would respond to feedback that could alter their confidence. As predicted, mentally tough participants performed better on the planning task, delivering relatively consistent performances whether their feedback had been negative or positive. However, those with lower levels of mental toughness performed significantly worse after negative feedback, confirming the greater resilience of those with high levels of mental toughness.

The ‘4Cs’ model of mental toughness
Building on the work of Kobasa, the Hull team proposed that confidence (as well as control, commitment and challenge) was a key element of mental toughness. This has given rise to the ‘4Cs’ model of mental toughness.

Research on mental toughness in sport and exercise has focused largely on individual differences, in which mental toughness is viewed as a relatively stable characteristic. However, classic previous research on animals has suggested that ‘toughening up’ can be achieved through exposure to stressful conditions. Weiss and colleagues observed a toughening phenomenon after exposing animals to cold-water swimming, electric shock treatment or injections over a 14-day period (5). Specifically, the usual decrement in performance following aversive stimulation was not observed after the 14-day period. The intermittent exposure to aversive stimuli had apparently led to the animals becoming more tolerant of – and resilient to – such stimuli.

Although this finding does not necessarily transfer to human subjects, there are distinct parallels with various techniques commonly used as interventions in sport and exercise environments. For example, a technique known as ‘stress inoculation training’ gradually exposes the individual to more threatening situations while self-control is acquired as a means to combat learned helplessness. The stress response is gradually diminished as exposure renders the situation less threatening and the individual experiences a growing sense of control.

Of particular importance here is the idea that exposure to stress in controlled situations is much more powerful than stress reduction or removal, which will not help an individual cope with future exposure to the same stressor.

One researcher has proposed four major influences on toughening, as follows:

Early life experiences. Both human and animal studies have shown links between exposure to stressors in early life and reduced fear or emotionality when exposed to threats in adulthood;
Passive toughening. Intermittent exposure seems to protect against depletion of ‘stress hormones’ and is linked with their quicker returns to baseline levels. In other words, people become less sensitive and more tolerant of stress;
Active toughening. Physical fitness gained through aerobic conditioning is thought to be an important means of self-toughening. This could be related to the application of control;
Ageing. This has the opposite effects to the other three, tending to make people more sensitive to and less tolerant of stress.
Clearly, active and passive toughening are the most relevant manipulations for athletes and can be applied in a number of practical ways. Stress inoculation training is an obvious application, but this is probably best approached with the aid of a sport psychologist. Since I am a sport psychologist, I will give some examples of how mental over-load may be applied to training sessions in order to achieve some degree of toughening.

Rod Laver, the Australian tennis legend, has described how he used practice sessions to simulate ‘tough’ match conditions (7). Laver felt that fatigue placed great strain on the concentration which was crucial to success in long matches. To simulate these conditions, Laver forced himself to concentrate and work even harder during the latter stages of training sessions, when he was tired, so that he became used to the mental strain of such conditions. He has cited this as one of the key factors in his long-lasting success.

Simulation training is a great way to prepare mentally for the challenges of competition, and this can include mental as well as physical stressors. For example, a tennis player could increase the mental pressures in a practice match by starting each service game 0-15 down, and thus getting used to ‘rebounding’ after losing the first point. Alternatively a player with an over-reliance on his first serve could be restricted to one serve only and be forced to become extremely focused and accurate with what is, in effect, a second serve.

To enhance the stress still further, players could practise by playing tiebreakers, or play practice matches in front of an audience. The coach might use bad line calls or spectator noise as a way of exposing players intermittently to distractions and giving them practice at dealing with them.

Tennis is a game with plenty of breaks between play that allow time for dwelling on past events or self-doubting. Using imagery and positive self-talk during dead time in order to remain calm and in control can be an effective strategy. Mentally tough competitors are likely to use strategies that reinforce their self-belief at times of crisis. And these strategies can be rehearsed in practice situations.

With a little invention, simulation training can be used for most athletes, and the opportunity to deal with mental stressors in controlled situations can be an invaluable way to toughen up in preparation for the very real challenges of competition.

 

[Tatyana]

Great info hun!

 

[Gymgurl]

Can you tell what I needed to read LOL Thanks

 

[Bikini Mod]

As I said before, I can't begin to imagine preparing for, let alone competing in such a competition.

Back when I was competing in bb'ing (local level stuff no biggie) I would bake tens upon dozens of cookies and never even lick my finger. Talk about mental toughness LOL and I wouldn't get to eat a single one. They were for my girls and I would give many as gifts to people who where helping me prepare. I find baking to be VERY relaxing and when people would light up at the sight of my cookies, that was all the pleasure I needed, didn't need to eat them.

... that and I would watch our pirated tapes of Pumping Iron and Pumping Iron II; The Women. LOL















OK... so I am wierd it got me to the "finish line!"

 

[jenscats5]

Cliff notes??

 

[BOWTECH]

Cliff notes??

Wow glad to see you GYMGURL and JENSCATS5 and BIKINIMOM it's been a long time and boy have things changed. Glad to see all three of you are still here. Take care to the yourselves which I know the three of you do. How others must be so jealous!!!!!!!!!!
BOWTECH

 

[needtogetaas]

Good read.