What are some mental strategies for youth athletes who get nervous before competitions?

Question

Dr. Cindy Chang, MD · Answer

What are some mental strategies for youth athletes who get nervous before competitions? I first want to say that I'm answering this as a sports medicine physician and team physician and parent and with my years of experience and not as a licensed mental health professional. I do want to say, also, that it's not unusual for kids to feel stressed-- a little bit stressed or nervous before a game. But really get down to the meat of the matter and ask them, why? Why are you nervous? Let's talk about it. Try to have an open dialogue with your youth athlete, whether or not it's your child or whether or not it's someone that you're coaching. And is it because they're afraid of failing-- the coach failing their parents or their teammates? And if so, why is it? Is it because they don't feel like they can perform to their full potential? And figure out what the reason is. What is their fear? If they have heard parents yelling from the sideline or a coach yelling from the sideline, and they feel like they're being critical, well, then you may want to have a conversation or tone it down to the crowd. Tone it down to the parents. Or talk to the coach. The coach may not understand, especially if it's a youth coach and not a professional coach, how their comments can be perceived by the youth athlete. You want to make sure that the youth athlete's having fun. If they feel this competition is too much above their skill set, then move them down to recreational level. The other thing is sometimes, too many times it's a reward. Like if they win a game, well, then we're going to go get ice cream. Make sure that there's a postgame ritual that happens, no matter if it's win or lose. It's important that your child has fun and that there's a ritual that you can talk about, well, what did you do well? And sometimes, that child can't really do visualization. And I've heard a youth athlete say to me, I visualize a ball going through the hoop, but then it doesn't, and I feel bad. But have them set their own little goals in terms of, what do they want to accomplish for that game, for that practice? And hopefully, that'll be helpful. Thanks.

Dr. Michele LaBotz, MD · Answer

Jesse asks, what are some mental strategies for youth athletes who get nervous before competitions? Well, first of all, I think you reassure them that performance anxiety is absolutely to be expected and that the right amount of performance anxiety, not too little, not too much, actually is helpful for most athletic endeavors. But if your athlete is struggling with performance anxiety, there's three things that oftentimes are helpful in this age group, but it's not one size fits all. You have to be willing to kind of experiment and see what works best for your athlete. But the first thing to consider is visualization. And a lot of people don't really do visualization correctly. Visualization works best if it's realistic. And an example from basketball, for instance, is don't visualize making the lucky shot from half court. Visualize successfully executing those skills that you do over and over again in practice and games, right? Your layups and your free throws, that type of thing. The second thing to consider is relaxation and biofeedback in particular. If we can help athletes kind of get control of their heart rate and their breathing, that can be really helpful to kind of bring that anxiety level down. And there's a lot of biofeedback opportunities with some of our wearable technology. There's a lot of apps. A couple of smartphone apps that are helpful, one is BioBelly, which is kind of a breathing modification technique. And the second is MindShift has been shown to be helpful for adolescents. And the third thing to consider, especially for the younger athlete where relaxation, visualization don't work so well, is good old fashioned distraction. Get them thinking about something else that oftentimes works better for those athletes that are really quite young. Thanks for a great question, Jesse.

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"What are some mental strategies for youth athletes who get nervous before competitions?"