Per­for­mance anx­i­ety symp­toms are of­ten present in ath­letes. But now more than ever the av­er­age per­son who may not be ac­tive in sport is ex­pe­ri­enc­ing fluc­tu­at­ing lev­els of anx­i­ety due to the on­go­ing pan­dem­ic and rise in Covid-19 cas­es and deaths. Be­fore learn­ing how to man­age the symp­toms of anx­i­ety dur­ing com­pe­ti­tions or chal­leng­ing cir­cum­stances it is crit­i­cal to un­der­stand the re­la­tion­ship be­tween anx­i­ety and per­for­mance.

Shar­ing of ex­pe­ri­ences and knowl­edge is en­cour­aged at all times and un­der­stand­ing more of how elite ath­letes deal with their sit­u­a­tions is use­ful but of course, every­one deals with stress in dif­fer­ent ways.

Peo­ple with a so­cial anx­i­ety dis­or­der (SAD) fear so­cial and per­for­mance sit­u­a­tions. The most com­mon fear is pub­lic speak­ing and now for the av­er­age per­son on the street, pub­lic in­ter­ac­tion is al­so a grow­ing dear. How­ev­er, oth­er types of ac­tiv­i­ties such as mu­si­cal, ath­let­ic and med­ical-re­lat­ed may al­so lead to anx­i­ety.

While some peo­ple be­come "pumped up" ahead and dur­ing com­pe­ti­tion, if you in­ter­pret the rush of adren­a­line as anx­i­ety and neg­a­tive thoughts or fear take over, this can in­ter­fere with your abil­i­ty to per­form. Of course, a cer­tain amount of stress can be good as we have all heard about the ath­letes who ‘thrive un­der pres­sure but the prob­lem is that when those stress lev­els get too high, they have a neg­a­tive ef­fect on per­for­mance.

Anx­i­ety be­fore or dur­ing ath­let­ic com­pe­ti­tions can in­ter­fere with some­one’s per­for­mance as an ath­lete. The co­or­di­nat­ed move­ment re­quired by ath­let­ic events be­comes in­creas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult when your body is in a tense state. While a cer­tain lev­el of phys­i­cal arousal is help­ful and pre­pares one for com­pe­ti­tion, when the phys­i­cal symp­toms of anx­i­ety are too great, they may se­ri­ous­ly in­ter­fere with your abil­i­ty to com­pete. It is sim­i­lar to our build-up for a covid-19 test or vac­ci­na­tion or even the re­cov­ery process for those who have the virus or oth­er form of sick­ness.

A cer­tain amount of wor­ry about how you per­form can be help­ful in com­pe­ti­tion. If there is a large dif­fer­ence be­tween how you fare dur­ing prac­tice and how you do dur­ing com­pe­ti­tions, anx­i­ety may be af­fect­ing your per­for­mance. If you are an ath­lete who par­tic­i­pates in in­di­vid­ual sports, you are al­so more like­ly to ex­pe­ri­ence more anx­i­ety than those who play team sports. It makes sense that be­ing part of a team helps to man­age some of the pres­sure that you feel when you com­pete alone. This tells us that be­ing among per­sons in groups can as­sist us with what­ev­er anx­i­ety we are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing now, of course, once it's with­in the reg­u­lat­ed num­bers.

In gen­er­al, self-con­fi­dence tends to be high­est when you be­lieve in your abil­i­ty and feel that you have prop­er­ly pre­pared for a com­pe­ti­tion. The same can be said for per­sons feel­ing more re­as­sured that they can beat this Covid-19 bat­tle if they are all pre­pared by be­ing vac­ci­nat­ed and in a safer en­vi­ron­ment.

I spoke to Na­tion­al foot­baller Kevin Moli­no on his ex­pe­ri­ences, play­ing in front of home fans or away, com­ing back from two ACL surg­eries and play­ing for the coun­try when the ex­pec­ta­tions are high. For some­one like him, there ob­vi­ous­ly would be some lev­el of anx­i­ety about re­turn­ing to play af­ter ma­jor surgery.

“It’s dif­fi­cult for every­one men­tal­ly. More so now as a sports­man, you are in a sense re­strained at home not be­ing able to do much,” Moli­no told me.

“Our bod­ies are ac­cus­tomed and de­signed to be­ing ac­tive and com­pet­ing out­side. It is dif­fi­cult when that is tak­ing away from you. Then for ath­letes like my­self, we al­so have to han­dle dif­fer­ent lev­els of anx­i­ety when it comes to train­ing and re­hab or prepar­ing for match­es. I try to deal with it by al­ways work­ing on my men­tal side re­lat­ing to the game and life sit­u­a­tions.

“We didn’t play for al­most four months when Covid-19 showed up in ear­ly 2020. I had to find ways to strength­en my men­tal ca­pac­i­ty and there were ex­er­cis­es and pro­grammes I got in­volved in. Then I’ve al­so had to deal with come­backs from in­jury. There were days when I didn’t feel to work out but that’s when it counts most. It’s about how bad you want it. Sport teach­es us things that school can­not teach us. Sport teach­es you to be strong which is al­ways re­lat­able in day to day life. To trav­el to play games, be­ing on the road, trav­el­ling to play in places like Mex­i­co is dif­fer­ent and you have to have a dif­fer­ent kind of ca­pac­i­ty for this. But even if you aren’t there yet, there are ways to pre­pare for it," he added.

“I am the kind of per­son to al­ways find a pos­i­tive in most or every sit­u­a­tion. You al­ways have to look for a so­lu­tion. The av­er­age per­son who is not an elite ath­lete can try this ap­proach al­so. Work­ing out takes a lot of frus­tra­tion and anger out of you and hav­ing a loved one or some­one close to you to fo­cus on al­ways helps. There is al­ways some­one who can keep you go­ing. You think about them and you find pur­pose there.”

It is ad­vised If you find that your anx­i­ety symp­toms are se­vere and do not im­prove with the use of self-help strate­gies, plan a vis­it to your doc­tor or con­tact a ther­a­pist to dis­cuss your con­cerns as pro­fes­sion­al treat­ment may be nec­es­sary.

"Try to en­sure that you are as pre­pared as pos­si­ble so that you are con­fi­dent dur­ing the chal­lenge. Wor­ry and con­fi­dence are at op­po­site ends of the spec­trum; when con­fi­dence and prayer are strong, it tends to crowd wor­ry out of the mind."

Ed­i­tor's Note:

Shaun Fuentes is the head of TTFA Me­dia. He is a for­mer FI­FA Me­dia Of­fi­cer at the 2010 FI­FA World Cup in South Africa and 2013 FI­FA U-20 World Cup in Turkey The views ex­pressed are sole­ly his and not a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of any or­gan­i­sa­tion. shaunfuentes@ya­hoo.com