How can you relieve stress in the days leading too a race?
The key to managing stress before a race is to understand that it is your chimp brain exaggerating things, and that sports is not life or death. You should also create laminated cards outlining the 24-48 hours leading up to the race, such as what playlist to listen to, what foods to eat, when to warm up, etc., so you can avoid getting flustered and forgetting things.
Transcript: "So, stress is super important before a race because it actually helps you get your best performance. But we want to control it and not let it get out of hand. So the first thing is when you do have stress before a race is to control it. Make sure you understand it, that it's really just your chimp brain exaggerating things. Sport is not life or death. So you need to face everything and respond and usually when we have stress it's telling us we're worried of upcoming performance, we're worried of being embarrassed or something. So it means we care, it means we think we can make a difference. And remember there's really three main parts, I'm making this simple, but there's three parts to our brain. The chimp brain, the emotional side that exaggerates everything. You need to realize sport is not life or death. Control this, this is the emotional side, usually it's things we don't want. Then we have the professor brain which is the rational smart side. We want to engage this part more. Then we have the computer brain which is just automatic things we don't notice. So realize what's going on and the other thing is to avoid stress and to have the least amount of stress, you need to have 24 and 48 hour laminated cards that tell you what to do in every moment. Bill Belichick has a great saying, know what your job is and do your job in every moment. And you should have cards telling you what to do from playlists to listen to, to foods that are right, when to warm up, when to eat, when to drive to the airport, how long it takes. I know it sounds simple but when you get stressed out you get flustered and you forget things. So have an outline of what to do in the 24, 48 hours before the race and you will be fine."
