Managing competitive stress

Some time ago I had a coach who told us: "Not everyone is made to compete, there are very few who like to get on the mat (where you fight) and even fewer perform well." Although psychological motivation clearly wasn’t his forte, I must admit that his words are very accurate on a sports level.

Although the human being has a competitive nature and an eagerness to show the world his or her superiority, competitive stress continues to be a factor that greatly influences the performance of the athlete during a competition.

In this post I do not pretend that all who are involved in a sport compete, but I do want to help those who decide to do so that they can make stress their best ally in the moments before the competition.

People who have ever competed in their sport will agree with me that stress always arrives in the moments before the competition in any of its manifestations, whether physical or psychological, such as:

-Increase of heart pressure

-Fears, anxieties and doubts

-Difficulties to fall asleep the night before

-Increase of sweating of the hands

-Stomachache (it can even cause diarrhea)

-We breathe badly

-We lose our appetite

-Muscular tension appears

-Among many others

These manifestations of stress don’t mean that you are a coward, they simply point out that something important in our lives is about to happen and in reality there is FEAR of failure, so the best recipe is to work on our SELF-CONFIDENCE.

Definitely one of the best ways to cope with competitive stress is achieved when we are convinced that we go through an arduous process of physical and mental training in which we leave 110% of our effort. To this we can call it: Building trust in ourselves and in our capabilities.

I would hope that many of you already know how to prepare physically for a competition, or at least surround yourself with a coach who guides you. But how many of you train the mind? How many have had sessions with a mental expert to prepare you for the competition? I would bet very few, or maybe none.

While I can not offer you in this post a complete guide to mental training, I want to share a truly wonderful technique that was used by King Pele before his soccer matches and that has allowed me to compete in Martial Arts tournaments with great tranquility, concentration and confidence. To be understood and applied better I will divide it in 3 simple steps

1. Enter a state of inner peace

Here it is important that you close your eyes to avoid visual distractions. It is a time when you will put your imagination to work.

You are going to relive a moment in your memory in which you were extremely happy, one of those moments that are never forgotten. It is important to remember that in detail, what you saw, what you felt, how it smelled, what you touched and what you heard.

Let the movie run for a while until it connects completely.

2. Revive moments of triumph

You will immediately move on to another movie. This time remember a moment in which you triumphed on a sporting level and it marked your life. It can be any important memory for you, breaking a record, celebrating a triumph, a classification, a change of level graduation, a very hard test that you managed to overcome and filled you with pride, among many others.

Equally remember it with the same level of detail as the previous one for the time necessary until those feelings capture you completely.

3. Project yourself towards victory

Then move on to a new mental image, project yourself during the competition with your opponent, beating him/her in the way your sport demands it. Be creative and realistic. Imagine raising your hands celebrating the triumph and the crowd applauding you, contagion of that emotion. Fill yourself with positive, powerful affirmations and in present tense. One that generates a very positive effect in my mood is to say to myself: I am indestructible.

This is a mental work that you can do while doing your mobility exercises before the competition or even before the workouts (for you to practice) so it could take about 15 minutes to complete.

If you have been wondering if competitive stress is good or bad, I want to tell you that it all depends on how you manage to handle it. What I can tell you is that stress drives us to improve at a sporting level, so it could become your best ally during the competition.

Finally, another super simple way to control competitive stress is through breathing. Before and during competition it is extremely important to BE AWARE OF BREATHING. Controlling it with slow, deep breaths helps calm your nerves.

If you have never competed, I recommend it. That's when we demonstrate yourself what you're really made of as athlete. Remember that it is essential a winning and positive mentality in a competition to perform well.

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