Competition Anxiety - The Nervous Athlete:

Q: I'm an athlete (hurdles) and I get very tense before competitions, to the point where I may even throw up because I'm so nervous. There's no doubt that it's affecting my performance, and if I could get this under control I believe I could improve my times and enjoy the race more. How can sports hypnosis or sports psychology help?

A: What you're experiencing is fairly typical of competition anxiety, but you can learn to control it. The first thing to do is look at your preparation - the more prepared you are, the less you have to be worried about. Do you have a pre-comp routine i.e. do you follow the same process each and every time you compete? Do you have techniques for relaxing yourself and creating a focus? These are both important techniques for preparing yourself for an optimum performance. Another method that works for many people is visualisation under hypnosis. What we would do is develop scenarios leading up to the start of a race, which you would visualise while in a calm and relaxed state. This allows you to experience these scenarios and deal with the associated anxiety in a safe and secure environment, eventually leading to you being able to attend meets without undue anxiety. We would couple this with specific relaxation and focusing techniques in a pre-competition routine to use on competition days.

Confidence - Martial Arts Grading:

Q: I'm about do do my brown belt grading in Judo, and although I've obviously done quite a few gradings to get to this point, I'm feeling extremely apprehensive about this one. It's quite a step up, and although my coaches tell me I've got no problem, I'm not not as confident as they are! How can I become more confident about my grading, and can you do anything about calming my nerves?

A: It's not unusual to feel nervous before a grading, and generally it can be helpful in focusing your mind. When it does become a problem is when your nerves interfere with your performance, but there are things you can do to minimise this. Pre-grading nerves are often closely linked to your self-confidence, so I would start with that. From a practical perspective, try to analyse why you're not as confident as your coaches think you should be - have you missed much training recently, or are there particular techniques you feel you could be doing better? A good exercise you could do is to list all points that you will be graded on and give each a mark out of 10 based on how well you think you know them. Then do special training focused on the low scoring points until you can give them all 10/10 (don't neglect other aspects of your training though!). You may also benefit from a hypnotherapy session focusing on improving your confidence and visualisation of a successful grading. At this point, visualising a previous successful grading can also build your confidence, and by creating a snapshot of that you can call on it whenever you need a confidence boost. I have no doubt you will see a marked change in your perception of this grading in a relatively short time.

Focus & Concentration - The Distracted Golfer

Q: I'm a semi-pro golfer and am doing quite well at the moment, but I'm having some problems when it comes to putting, especially when there are people around. I'm finding it really difficult to focus on my shot and I keep being distracted by the people around me, the other players and so on. I find my mind racing with all sorts of thoughts, and then I start to get nervous and just hit the ball to get the shot over with! As a result I am missing shots more than I should and it's starting to affect my game badly. What can I do?

A: In many sports, the ability to concentrate is essential for success. In sports such as golf, your focus needs to change at different points in the game: when teeing off for example, you need to be able to focus on a much wider area than when you are putting. The problem in this case is losing concentration during a period (i.e. putting) that requires a narrow field of focus. By being distracted as you are, you're unable to focus on only the relevant factors involved in putting, which is worsened by your negative self-talk. The first thing to do would be to practice concentrating by first of all just concentrating on a golf ball in a quiet room - every time you get distracted, start again, until you can do this for about 5 minutes. Then introduce a distraction - perhaps some music or a TV. You would slowly then build up this skill until you could change your focus whenever you wanted. At the same time we would need to deal with your self-talk, and creating a focus trigger or cue word to bring you back on focus is often a good way of dealing with this. Finally, make sure you have an effective pre-shot routine - this should include relaxation, concentration and visualisation of the shot in addition to your practice shots, so that you are in the right frame of mind for each shot.

See also: Frequently Asked Questions