Train for Trust: Handling High Pressure
Imagine your favorite athlete handling the most intense pressure you can think of. It could be a championship match, a game-deciding play, or anything else with high stakes. What do they do and think to feel in control despite the pressure?
It’s not a simple trick or skill. It comes from an entire season, or even career, of training for trust.
Pressure comes from multiple sources, like caring deeply about the results, having limited opportunity, and most commonly, not having control over the outcome. If an outcome (winning a game) was completely within your control, there would be far fewer “unknowns” to worry about. Anxiety stems from not knowing or having control over what happens in the future - a quick ticket to feeling a ton of pressure!
When your big game or moment comes, the last thing you want is to crumble under the pressure. In sport psychology, we might tell an athlete to breathe, ground themselves in the present moment, and focus on the process of playing their game. Without consistent training of these techniques, they’re more like band-aids - temporary solutions that may not be effective enough to reduce the intense pressure.
A more enduring antidote to the nerves is learning to trust your training.
Learning to trust your training is essentially trusting yourself to adapt to whatever situation may come up. Anxiety, and subsequently, pressure, are rooted in the mystery of how you will perform. Fear of the unknown can derail anyone’s game, causing their self-talk to reflect these types of thoughts:
“What if I fall short of my expectations?"
“What if their star player dominates us?”
“What if that nagging injury flares up again?”
The list goes on. The mindset that squashes all of these worries is trusting yourself to be capable of giving a great performance no matter what unknown occurs. So, how do you train this mindset?
Here are 3 ways to train so you can trust yourself when it counts.
Build Trust in Practice
One way to quickly boost confidence is to look back on all of the training you’ve done. Thinking about all of the sweat, pain, and hours you put into practice can put into perspective how well prepared you are. Make this technique even more powerful by planning ahead.
Below are 2 ways to improve the quality of your practice, and ultimately, your trust:
Before practice, visualize yourself walking into a packed arena, facing a rival, or what it feels like to have the game in your hands. Get your heart rate and nerves up! Doing this consistently over the course of a season helps prepare your mind and body for the real experience, reducing the weight of the pressure when it’s at its highest.
Come to each practice with a mission. Not putting in quality practice time leads you to feel unprepared when the pressure is on. One way to prevent “going through the motions” is coming to each practice with a mission - something specific you’re going to work on. Maybe it’s the way you communicate to your teammates, how you prepare for each rep, or experimenting with your routine. There’s no problem having the same mission twice in one week or even in two practices in a row. Over the course of a season, coming to every practice with a mission will increase the gains you make during practices, and ultimately, the confidence you feel when it matters the most.
Remember Your Big Moments
One significant source of confidence is experience. How is your confidence when throwing a football for the first time compared to the thousandth time? Having experience in your sport builds a strong foundation for your confidence. We can apply this same logic to feeling more confident in high pressure moments.
For example, you just finished a regular season game and you had the potential game winning play in your hands. A high pressure moment! How did it go?
Good, I scored and we won!
Look back on this moment and game the next time you find yourself dealing with pressure. Remind yourself that you’ve been here (or somewhere similar) before, and you succeeded then. Why shouldn’t you be able to succeed again? This type of inner-dialogue builds your ability to trust yourself.
Bad, I completely choked!
Don’t look back on this play when searching for confidence to offset anxiety. Instead, reflect on this moment to figure out how to be better for next time. Confidence rises when we have a plan to be better for the next opportunity.
Also, you survived! It wasn’t the end of the world that you didn’t come through in this high pressure moment, and it happens to everyone at some point, even the most elite.
Elite athletes are their own best coach - they know the ins and outs of their game better than anyone. An elite athlete catalogs a high pressure moment like this and learns from it. They ask themselves, what went well? What could’ve been better? How will I train to be better next time? Experiencing a high pressure moment is not something to waste!
Develop Your Mental Game
As I like to describe, developing your mental game is like building a mental skills toolkit. You can reach in for a different tool to improve how you think and feel in that moment. Certain mental skills, like visualization, are excellent in preparing your body and mind for big moments. Others, like purposeful breathing, can reduce the effect anxiety produces and ground yourself in the present. Many people end up reaching for one tool more than others. While that’s normal and perfectly fine, this doesn’t mean you should ignore the development of other mental skills.
As mentioned earlier, confidence sinks when you have little control. This lack of control leads to overthinking, anxiety, and a performance far from your potential. Developing a mental skills toolkit adds to your sense of control. How? Because you have multiple tools to rely on if you need them. Compare it with another nervous player who doesn’t have any tools to rely on - they’re getting nervous and don’t have any reliable methods to manage the nerves, further increasing their anxiety and pressure they feel!
It can be nerve-wracking to think about all of the unknowns that may come up during a big game, and whether or not you’ll succeed despite them. Through the three methods above, you’re investing in your ability to adapt to anything that comes your way when the pressure is on. Throughout the season, ask yourself, "how am I training to trust myself in the future?"
