How well performers manage their emotions can determine the quality of their performance. Performers are most likely to achieve peak performance when they are mentally and physically prepared, positive, focused, and able to manage emotions like anxiety. Anxiety is a negative emotion that performers can experience when they perceive a situation as threatening, and they can experience its effects in their body, their thinking, and their performance.
How Does Anxiety Impact Performance? It’s Complicated.
Most performers do their best in their optimal zone of anxiety, arousal, and intensity. How anxiety impacts performance depends on a variety of individual factors including the intensity of the anxiety, the performer’s skill level, the type of task they perform, how much they experience the anxiety in their body and in their thinking, and how they interpret the anxiety. Anxiety is more likely to harm performance the more intense it is, when a performer is lower in skill, the tasks are more technical and depend on fine motors skills (balance, coordination, timing, precision), the more their anxiety impacts their thinking (worry), and when they perceive the anxiety as harming rather than helping their performance.
How to Use Mental Skills for Managing Anxiety
Mental skills that help performers manage anxiety for peak performance include relaxation strategies, psyching up strategies, and cognitive restructuring. Relaxation strategies help decrease anxiety, arousal, and intensity and include diaphragmatic or deep breathing from the belly and progressive muscle relaxation, tensing and relaxing muscles to reduce the bodily effects of anxiety. Psyching up strategies increase activation if a performer needs to increase arousal or intensity and include intense pre-performance exercise, listening to music, and motivational self-talk. Cognitive restructuring involves noticing negative unrealistic thinking and generating positive realistic thoughts to reduce the effects of anxious thoughts and worries and remain focused on peak performance.
Performers can learn more about sport psychology online or enlist the help of a certified sport psychology consultant and design an evidence-based mental preparation plan to get to and stay in their optimal zone. In addition to following this blog, AASP has great resources for parents, coaches, athletes, and people interested in learning more. Follow this blog and check out the resources on the AASP website for more information about mental skills for performance and sport psychology.
