Hello and welcome back to Brain in the Game. Brain in the Game is a podcast that's been specifically designed for athletes, coaches and parents who are looking to do their sport just that little bit smarter. Brain in the Game is a cognitive development of athletes, coaches and their communication style. And I'm your host, Dave Diggle.
In this episode 41, we're going to look at: how do I better manage stress and expectations. Something that's key for performance athletes. So expectations, stress, anxiety are all part and parcel of our desire to want to do well. It's because we want to do so well at what we're doing. We want to perform well. We want to make sure that our coaches recognise that we've been putting the hard work into our outcome and a way to measure that is during competition. We want to make sure that our parents, who have probably been funding our career, to a certain degree, see a return on their investment. And we want to make sure that it's a pride thing; we're good at what we do and we can perform when we need to. So there's a certain natural, innate expectation we place upon ourselves when we come to competition time, or come to perform, or we get the opportunity to show the world what we can actually do.
So that's normal. That's everybody. It doesn't matter how cool, calm, collected you may appear on the outside, on the inside there is a certain amount of expectation when we have to perform. What isn't always a necessity or isn't always beneficial to us is the stress and the anxiety that it can cause. So when we think about stress, we expect ourselves to be performing, so there's that stress that comes with that of 'but what if...?'
- What if it doesn't work?
- What if my coach doesn't see that I've been applying all the stuff that they've asked me to do?
- What if my parents don't see that there's a return on their investment; all the time that they've taken me to and from training, the competitions, the money they've put into it?
- What if, maybe, I'm not as good as I thought I was?
When we stress about what could be, what the potential to go wrong is, and our focal point is that negativity, that 'what could go wrong?' we raise our anxiety. We become anxious about that. So our imagination kicks in and goes, not only could they be disappointed, they could actually think that I'm not worthy. And if they think I'm not worthy, maybe they don't want to coach me, maybe they don't want to fund me. Maybe they want to adopt me out. I don't know, whatever it is. Whatever that fear level that grows inside your mind, of what the possible negative consequences could be. That anxiety can have a multitude of different impacts on us, from:
1. Lack of sleep. So we get insomnia before competitions, laying awake at night thinking, but what have I done enough? What if this goes wrong? What if my coach doesn't turn up? What if my coach wakes up that morning and thinks it's not worth going to watch him perform/her perform, whatever it is? Or my parents are sitting there thinking, I know they haven't done all the conditioning programme that their coach has given them, so maybe they're not as invested as we are as parents. All of those crazy things that go through your mind in the depth of the night when everything else is silent and the loud internal chatter becomes even louder, there's no getting away from it.
2. Or you might have that performance anxiety that manifests itself as performance memory loss, where you can't remember a skill or a routine or a trigger word or something that you've been doing multiple times. This is because we become so focused on one aspect that the peripherals become faded and dissipate a little bit. So the things that we just have familiarity to, that maybe we haven't put as much focus on, consequently, we don't remember them. They're not front of thought, they're not memorable memories to us. So we get there and we have amnesia. We go to perform, we stand up and we stand there to go, ready to go and... I can't remember what comes next. What am I supposed to do? What am I supposed to say? We've all been there. I remember as a competitive athlete myself, standing and doing a high bar routine in gymnastics and thinking, I have done this so many times, but I cannot remember how I start. And that amnesia that comes with that is just an anxiety and a shift in focus. I was more focused on what could go wrong than I was on what I should be doing.
3. There's the physical aspect of that. I know many athletes who become physically ill. They get the flu before competition, or they start to vomit when they get to the venue. Or they get to a stage where they just start feeling unwell, lethargic. This physical reaction to the anxiety again, it's natural, what our body is doing is protecting us. It's making us realise that this amount of anxiety isn't necessarily good for us. So what it's going to do is remind us: time to focus, time to focus. And then because we're getting some physical reaction, we take more notice. Oh, you know what? Maybe I'm not ready because maybe I'm coming down with the flu. Anxiety does lower our immunity and we can pick up bugs, we can pick up things that are going around that normally we're fit enough, healthy enough, strong enough to fight off. So there is a physical component to managing our anxiety and there's a physical consequence if we don't.
4. That out-of-body experience. I remember as an athlete, myself, standing there and almost watching myself standing there looking lost. And it wasn't like I was there, it was like I was witnessing, I was watching it on TV or on a big screen somewhere. And it didn't matter how much I said to myself, 'Come on, focus. Get back in the game.' It was like I couldn't hear myself. And that disconnect is a scary place because you feel like you have no control.
So managing and handling the stress and expectations has a massive impact on our ability to perform. And it's something that we need to take into consideration long before the competition day. Managing stress, managing anxiety and expectations are part and parcel of our training process. They should be part and parcel of everything that we do from a week out, to a month out, to six months out from our training, making sure that we have control over our emotions. Because, let's face it, on the day, if you can't control your emotions; if you turn up and you do have the amnesia or the anxiety that makes you feel like you have that out-of-body experience; or you have this physical reaction to all that expectation and that anxiety; it doesn't matter how many hours you spent training. You're not going to be able to perform to your best. So the likelihood is the anxiety is going to win over your ability to perform. So managing our anxiety, managing those expectations, comes down to three core things:
1. Recognising exactly what and where the influences come from. Do they come from me, internally? Is it me putting the expectations on myself? Is it me looking for the negatives? Is it me honing in and focusing on things that could possibly go wrong? Or is it my coach? Has my coach put more expectation on me than I believe that I can deliver? Has my coach put me in a position where they think I can do something that I've never done before? Or is it my coach who's saying and comparing me to, well, everybody else has done this, why can't you do this? Or the rest of the team are performing at this level, you're in this group, you should be performing at this level. Where does this expectation come from? Where do these stresses initiate from? Or is it somebody else? Is it the parents? Is it the sponsor? Is it the organisation? Is it your peers, your friends, your partner? Who is it? By recognising where the catalyst of your stress comes from, and thus the expectations and the anxiety, enables us to manage it a little bit better. So if we know that it's driven by our coach, then we need to sit down and get clear with our coach and go, 'Hey, you saying these things to me, they're making me feel uncomfortable. They're making me feel stressed. They're making me put too much pressure on me.'
Or if it's your partner, 'Hey, come on, you need to back off a little bit, because every time I come home at night and you're saying to me, "How's training going? You've only got two weeks to go, why are you not doing this already? If you think you're going to be ready, maybe you should pull out already." All those kind of things.
Or is it your parents? As a parent myself, I've got three kids and all of them are involved in sport. Even knowing what I know, I sit there and I want the best for them. I want to be able to get in there and help them and almost do it for them, especially as an old competitor myself. I'm incredibly competitive, I will gnaw your leg off to beat you. And my middle child is exactly the same. And so I had this affinity with her when she goes out and she wants to compete, I can see that determination. And I think, 'That's me, I should be in there with her.' But it's not my job, it's not my role. I have to be very conscious.
And the funny thing is, a lot of people ask me, do I mind coach my kids when they're competing? And the simple answer is no. When I'm with my kids and they're competing, I'm Dad. That's all I am. I'm there for emotional support. Irrespective of all the stuff that I know, irrespective of the amount of times I stand there and I think, 'Actually, I can help you here. I can get you over this hurdle.' What I'll do is I'll go and speak to their coach and say, try saying this, or try getting them to do this. So it's not coming from me. I'm just Dad. And I have to consciously take on that role and respect that role, just Dad.
So where do the stresses come from? Who's the influence? Knowing who the influence is enables us to manage that influence. If it's over the top influence because we're too passionate, we're too emotional, we're too bought in, then there needs to be a bit of a gap. If that is the coach who has huge expectations that we think we can't meet, then there needs to be communication and say, 'Well, you know what? This is where I see I'm at. If you see I'm there, how can you see I'm there? Is that me not trusting myself? Or is it you seeing more in it than it really is?' Or if it's me internally, if I'm the athlete and the expectations are coming from me, what am I focused on? In reality, what am I focused on? Am I focused on the negatives? Am I focused on the consequences? And I focused on what other people have said in the past or done in the past? Where is it coming from?
This is an important aspect to every athletes ability to manage their own emotions. If we don't know where the influence is, then it just becomes a bandaid we need to put a patch over every time something goes belly up. Not necessarily dealing with the cause, just the effects.
2. Once we understand where the influence is, we need to understand how they manifest themselves. Do they manifest themselves in fear? Do I become fearful of something and that raises my anxiety. Do I become disconnected and it doesn't matter what goes on, I kind of shut down shop and all the craziness going on around me and I'm cool, calm, collected, but completely disconnected and I can't perform, I can't buy in, I can't get involved. Or does it motivate me? Every athlete is completely and utterly different depending on who's influencing them and what the manifestation of that influence is. So if a parent's influence over a kid who's performing is emotional, then the likelihood is their manifestation is going to be an emotional manifestation. Shutting down shop, forgetting things, not feeling well, vomiting – all those kind of things – having the fear. If it's the coach's expectations, then the likelihood is that it's more mechanical and then it's a fear of letting people down. It's a fear of, I can't actually do that, I might hurt myself. I think my skill level is here, but you think my skill level is right up there. So you have that disconnect between those two. If the influence is internal, then it can be a complete mixture of all of those things. So how do we manage that? How do we best deal with knowing where it comes from and knowing how it manifests itself?
If we focus first of all on the fear, if we're fearful of something and it's an emotionally driven fear, not a practical fear. Not, I've done this before and I've hurt myself – that's a practical fear. I've done it. There's a consequence to this. I've hurt myself in the past or I've seen somebody hurt themselves in the past. That's just as real to an athlete as physically doing it yourself, because they see themselves with their peers, they assimilate. And if one goes out and hurts themselves doing a specific skill, then the reality in their mind is – well, if it happened to them, then it could happen to me. So there's a practicality and a mechanical aspect to that.
But if the fear is driven by an emotion, by, 'I don't want to let people down. I don't know if I'm good enough. I don't know if I've done enough training. What if? What if?' Then we need to recognise what we do have rather than focus on what we don't have. We need to, first of all, recognise what we do have. So this falls within the same psychology of what worked, what didn't work, what would I do different? So, straight away, as soon as we recognise what we do have, we're focusing on the positives. We raise our positive emotion up. Once we raise our positive emotions up, it dissipates the negatives a little bit. It balances out the whole overwhelm of the negativity. So the minute you go, you know what, I don't feel comfortable here. I'm nervous about letting my coach down or nervous about letting my parents down. Actually, I've competed this a couple of times and I did okay. So I've done this before. I actually can do this. I've been training for this for three months and every time I've gone to training, you know what, I've walked away pretty pleased with myself. Straight away, we can feel that shift in emotion, we can feel that calm a little bit. It's not so pointy and sharp and the expectations are, well, it could or it couldn't, rather than it's going to. We need to recognise what we've done before to feel good. Is it, I've done X amount of routines before. I've done my funnel process before. Is it, you know what, I've done and taken a couple of days off before, because that relaxes me. Whatever works for you. We don't want to reinvent the wheel every single time we go out and need to drive, so we want to be able to go out and go, in the past, what have I done that's really worked well for me? And I'm going to do that again. There's a sense of familiarity to that, there's a sense of ownership and control to that, because I've got things that I'm confident about, I've done them. I have a history here and we need to look at how do I want to control this situation? Do I want to shut it down completely or do I want to manage it? Because if we shut it down completely, then the reality of that is we have to shut down everything that comes in contact with that. So it's like a cancer. When you see a surgeon go in and remove a cancer, they remove a certain amount of healthy cells around that and that's because they don't want anything to be leaching in or something they've missed. So if we want to shut down all that emotional fear, then we've got to make sure we do the same process. We're going to take a bit of the positivity around that, too. So we take something away that we could possibly keep and use.
So if we don't want to control the situation clinically like that – we don't want to get rid of it, we want to control it – then we need to make sure what we're doing is feeding the positive emotion. So, you know what, if I'm scared about something, I have a fear about something rather than completely shutting it down and cutting it off and taking some of the goodness with it, what can I use it for? How can I focus? Yeah, you know what, that makes me scared but I've done this, this and this, how cool am I? I'm still a little bit scared, so that makes it important to me, so that's okay. But also I've done this, I've done this, and I've done this. That far outweighs the fear of consequence. It's still there, but I'm stronger. That's an empowering place to be. And it's not so clinical, it's not so, 'I've got to cut everything out.' It's managed more effectively. From my perspective, from a mental coaching perspective, that's how it works smarter with an athlete.
I have a friend who teaches people to completely negate fear and get rid of it altogether. And I think I might have said this in previous podcasts and that's all well and good. And when he asked me to do some work with him, I turned him down because I don't believe we should negate fear.
Fear is part and parcel of our psyche that's there to protect us. If we have none of those benchmarks, none of that strategy or systems designed to protect us there, then:
One, we could hurt ourselves. We could go and do something completely stupid and hurt ourselves; or
Two, we don't know where the boundary is. We don't know how far we can go. So in the back of our mind, we've always got that hand on the handle thinking, 'I don't know when it's going to show its face, but when it does, I'm ready.' We split our intention, our focus. Knowing where the boundary is, knowing how far I can go and when the fear is going to kick in to protect me is comforting. I can work in between the gap. I know my playing field. There's none of that unknown.
So I think fear is just as important to us as motivation, as traction and as positivity. It gives us a holistic perspective on where can we play in. We can play in this whole section here. This is the optimum for me. That's when it gets scary. So in between the two, we're cool. Comfort, familiarity and consistency.
So fear, managing fear, if it's not a practical fear, something that I've done before and I've got hurt, but it's more of an emotional one, then there's a management structure put in place to negate that to a certain degree. To keep it, but also overpower it. That's a very empowering position. If it is a practical thing, if the fear is geared around, you know what, last time I did this and I was really nervous, I landed on my head. Then there's a practicality to that. So we need to go back before that and go, okay, what were you doing before you did that, before you became fearful of it? Were you doing the skill? Yes. What did you do then that you're not doing now? How do you control that situation? You know what, when I was doing it and I was comfortable, I believed in myself, I approached it in this way. This was a technique I used. When I became fearful, I restricted my approach. I wasn't as confident or as committed. So the consequences are I didn't commit to the skill as much as I could have done and I landed on my head.
So I have a choice. I can either continue to be fearful or I can apply something I know that works. Again, empowering position. Giving myself the option to choose. Do I stay scared or do I go back to what I was doing before and go, you know what, I did this before and it worked. So there's a practical aspect to that. And that is, taking back control. If you've never done the skill before, every single time you've gone out you've either hurt yourself or you've baulked out and landed on a part of the body that hurt, then look at the way you learnt the skill. Sit down with the coach and say, 'Right, this skill scares me because I've not actually ever competed it or completed it. So what do we need to do? What do we need to put in place so that I can complete it?' Is it a skill level? Is it just practise? Do I need to get back in the harness? Do I need to have another aspect to this? Do I need to look at the technique better? Does this technique work for me? Am I a taller athlete? Am I a shorter athlete? Am I more dynamic? Am I stronger? More flexible? What do I need to add to this to give me a better perspective on this, and a greater opportunity to replicate this, and do this right?
So it's all about taking ownership. Fear and negating the fears and consequences is all about taking control. Fear is there to protect us. Once our brain recognises no, no, you've got this, the fear level will drop. It's a warning system. I'm not broken. It's just a warning system.
The second one is a disconnect. When we disconnect from something, it's self-preservation. If the emotions in our mind are so overwhelming that every aspect of our life is being dominated by this overwhelmed anxiety, then our brain will protect us and disconnect, unplug us from that overwhelming world. It will make sure that we don't get into this emotional snowball effect where every step I take gets bigger and bigger and bigger and more and more overwhelming. So that disconnect is, again, another self-preservation mode.
So how do we manage to disconnect? When we disconnect, what we're doing is we lose motivation. We've lost clarity and direction. So how do we do that smarter? We lost our way. So we need to then reconnect with what was I doing. Why was it important to me? How is it working for me?
You've heard me talk before about the ant path. And for those of you who have not heard any other previous podcasts or read any of my articles or attended any of my trainings, something I talk about frequently is the ant path. And what ants do is they'll come from their home, find a food source and plot that path. The most effective and efficient path for them. The path of least resistance and the most direct, that's something that works for them. However, if something stops them in their path and it drops in their way, what ants do is, those that are on the side of the home will go back home and go, Right, that doesn't work anymore. Let's find a new food source. And they'll go out searching and send the ants out who do the searching and go, Alright, where next? And they'll create a new path. The ants that are left on the other side, they'll get disconnected from the rest of the ants nest and their colony.
What we want to be able to do is, Okay, something's fallen in our way. What do we need to do to get round that and back on track? Because that's familiarity to us. We know we have this path that works. Something's got in our way. Rather than throw everything away and start again and have that, I don't know what I'm doing next, that uncertainty about this is all new to me. We want to take control and go, Right, what's the one, maybe two steps that I have to take to get around this blockage and back on track? Once we own that, once we recognise that we've got something that's familiar, that works for us. Something has occurred, a bit of pressure from the parents, bit of pressure from the coach or myself... What do I need to do? What actions do I need to take to get around that blockage and back on track? Once I do that, I can re-engage, I can re-connect, I can be re-focused on what my objectives were. And that then just becomes part and parcel of the path that I follow. It's not direct anymore. It's that little side-step around, back on track. That will help us negate the disconnect.
So if you're a coach and you've got an athlete that's disconnected, what essentially has happened is they've unplugged because it's become overwhelming. They don't know what they need to do to get back on track. Talk to them, ask them what was working, when did it go off track? Right, if it went off track at this point, take one step before that point, what do we need to do to go from here around the blockage and back on track? Once you've done that, you watch them re-engage with you.
And the third one is motivation. So if the fears and the anxieties, are the negative. The positive is the motivation. Some people, when they get a huge amount of expectations placed on them and stress, become more focused. They become more intent and intense. And that's because they recognise the drive forward. They recognise the reason why they need to do this. Because all this pressure being placed on them, the peripherals dissipate and they've only got one or two things to focus on. It becomes clear for them. Those kind of people are great under pressure. However, it's all or nothing for them. It's either win or crash out completely. They have little ability, most of them, to be able to navigate things that occur when they get put under pressure. They're so focused on the one thing that they're doing, that intensity, when that gets derailed everything's gone. So those kind of focused people under pressure are either 'win' or 'lose'. There's nothing in between.
So what we need to do is harness that. We need to add some bolster to that, some clarity to that. We want to keep that intensity, that intenseness that keeps them 100% focused, completely on track, going where they want to go, that motivation, that traction, that forward propelling – we want to keep that and add some coping skills to that. So if they do get rocked, it doesn't rock them completely off track. That motivation, that drive is a recognition of the why. They've bought in 100%. If you tell me I can't do this, I'm going to goddamn do this, because I know why I'm doing it. If you tell me that you don't think that I'm ready, I'm going to prove to you that I'm ready. That narrow focus is like the laser beam. It's great. However if it gets cut off, there's nothing past it. We need to make sure from the coaches and a parent's perspective, and a support specialist especially, to make sure that athlete, if they do get cut off again – one, two steps around, back on track.
For me as a mind coach, handling stress and expectations is a preemptive objective. Know your athlete. Know what they're likely to be doing. Are they likely to be influenced by the coach? Are they likely to be influenced internally with their own mental chatter? Are they likely to be influenced by their parents or their peers or their partners? Once you know where the pressure is coming from, you can then keep an eye out for it. See it when the wheels go wobbly, before they go crash. If you know how it manifests itself for them... do they become fearful? Do they let their imagination kick in and the world could be ending for them? Or do they just disconnect and it's almost like someone gliding next to you, but not engaged? Or does it motivate them and it's an all-or-nothing? Win or lose. Win 100% or bail out and have nothing? Once you recognise where they fit, it's important to build a strategy and structure around that, almost like training wheels. If they fall over, somethings going to catch them and get them back on track. They may not see the necessity, they may not see it coming because they're on the inside looking out.
As a coach, it's up to us to watch, to know our athletes, to know if they're coming in for training and they get more disconnected, the likelihood is they're emotionally overwhelmed. If they're coming into training and there are more and more things they're starting to forget, starting to become fearful, starting to scare them, it's likely their imagination has kicked in and it's overwhelmed in that way. Recognise it, build a structure around it and enable the athletes to take control of it.
I hope you've enjoyed this aspect of mental preparation for athletes for competitions, recognising what stress is and the expectations and what the expectation can do to their performance.
Brain in the Game is a podcast that I've put together over many years now. And when I first started doing these podcasts, I would give as much information as I possibly can and most of the podcasts are about 45 minutes to an hour. And over the years, we've got a lot of feedback when people say, look, it's impractical for us to have such a long podcast, so we've cut it back and cut it back and cut it back, gauging off your feedback to us. We're now down to about 15 or 20 minutes on the average for a podcast.
I worked recently with a Tae Kwondo coach and his athlete, where he was, 'I like the longer podcast.' So, John, this one's for you. So I hope you've enjoyed it as much as everybody else. And everybody, until my next podcast, train smart and enjoy the ride. My name is Dave Diggle and I'm the Mind Coach.
