Staying Calm before the Big Race
A lot of times athletes are advised to relax, to stay focused, to not let their nerves get the best of them when it comes to big races. But often, the same people giving such advice don’t really provide any concrete strategies as to how to calm the nerves. As a result, athletes enter races in various states of mental unpreparedness. In some cases, they’re too amped up, in other cases they try too hard to relax and only make themselves more tense. While it’s true that every athlete has to figure out his or her optimal emotional state of mind in order to perform at his or her best, figuring it out on one’s own can be very difficult, if not darn near impossible.
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When the pressure intensifies as the stakes rise, the cause of a letdown, breakdown, or outright disaster – especially in the hurdles – can be lack of mental preparation even though the body has been trained to supreme fitness. Sprinter Asafa Powell is an athlete who comes to mind when I think of this topic. Powell has a phenomenal start, is a big, powerful runner with impeccable mechanics, and is arguably the most impressive pure sprinter the sport has ever seen. However, throughout the course of his career, Powell has struggled in championship races, and as a result does not have the resume of accomplishments usually associated with those considered to be among the best ever in their event. Powell’s problems, as he has acknowledged himself, have had more to do with maintaining his composure in high-pressure situations than with a lack of physical abilities or a lack of effective training methods.
Because the intensity in the sprint and hurdle events is so pressurized, it has to be looked at differently than the pressure in team sports, or even in longer running events, such as middle-distance and distance. A basketball player, for example, can be jittery with nervous energy prior to the start of the game, but has time to get into the flow as the game goes on, and can regroup during timeouts and halftime. Same with any other team sports. Even individual sports like tennis and boxing offer breaks in the action, opportunities to regroup. In a sprint race or a hurdle race, everything happens in a flash of time, with no opportunities to talk things over with a coach or teammates. If you have a bad start, you can’t go back and start over. If you hit a hurdle, you can’t call a timeout and prepare to do better over the next one. For this reason, the psychological aspect of sprinting and hurdling is on a whole other level than it is in any other sport.
So let me go ahead and provide some strategies that have proven effective for me and/or for my athletes when it comes to handling the pressure in the final moments leading up to a big race, when it comes to channeling the nervous energy so that it can be used as fuel as opposed to being choked by it. I’ll also take a look at some breathing exercises that are designed to reduce stress and help athletes to perform up to their potential.
1) Stay conscious of your breathing. When you’re nervous – I mean, really nervous – you literally forget to breathe. It’s sounds ridiculously simple to remind yourself to breathe, but I would say it’s a very important thing to do. It’s not that you literally hold your breath, but you breathe so shallowly that your whole body tenses up. And when you’re in a state of tension, you’re in a state of fear, which is a very bad state to be in before a race. When in doubt, breathe. Long slow inhale, forceful exhale.
2) Keep moving. When the big race is only minutes or seconds away, and you’re standing behind your starting blocks, and the starter will soon give you the first of commands, don’t just stand there. Keep shaking out your legs, do some arm swings, close your eyes and visualize the race, being sure to mimic the arm motions you will soon be performing. Jump up and down a little bit. If you have room, pace up and down behind the starting line. A body in motion helps the mind to stay relaxed.
3) Stand behind your blocks and stare down your lane of hurdles. For some reason, I found that doing this relaxed me tremendously and filled me with confidence before races. To me, it was a way of saying, this is my lane, I earned the right to be here, I can control what happens right here right now, so I’m not gonna worry about what happens in any of the other lanes. While gazing down the lane, I focused on the first hurdle as a way of reminding myself to clear that one first. Don’t think about all ten; focus on the first one. I also focused on my breathing. With each deep inhale I’d tell myself I was gathering up all my nervous energy, and with each exhale I’d tell myself I was channeling it down the track. This is my lane, I’d tell myself, and I’m gonna do what I came here to do right here right now in my lane.
4) Create tension and release it. While standing behind your blocks, inhale as you tighten your fists into a ball. Hold your breath for two seconds, then exhale forcefully while unclenching your fists. Repeat as many times as you like. This technique allows you to visualize yourself in the blocks. When clenching your fists and inhaling, visualize yourself rising into set position. When holding your breath, visualize yourself holding set position, waiting on the gun. When exhaling and unclenching your fists, visualize yourself blasting out of the blocks.
5) Go to your happy place. This is the strategy basketball coach Phil Jackson employed when coaching the Chicago Bulls in the 90’s. During a timeout toward the end of a close ballgame, he’d tell his players to go to their happy place. In other words, think about a place you’ve been where you felt safe, happy, comfortable. Visualizing yourself in that place can provide immediate relief from anxiety, and serve as a reminder that regardless of what happens in the upcoming moments, you have an inner peace that the results of this race cannot effect. Once you understand this as a reality, fear of failure diminishes, and you are therefore available to the moment. You trust your instincts and you trust your body to act on its own. I never used this strategy myself, but I’d imagine if I did I’d see myself working on a word jumble with my mom in the house where I grew up. Or I’d see myself in the backyard with my two older brothers throwing around a football when I was ten years old. Such “happy places” are very simple, very ordinary, yet very calming and reassuring, creating the quietly confident frame of mind necessary to excel under high-stress conditions. And along with the visualization there must be long, slow inhales accompanied by forceful exhales. Breathing is always of paramount importance. And the reason the exhales must be forceful is because you’re about to run a hurdle race, not a distance race. A 400m hurdler will want to be less forceful with the exhales because he or she will need to distribute that nervous energy over a wider expanse of time.
The above ideas should serve as a good starting point for those of you reading this article who haven’t developed any strategies of your own for dealing with big-race pressure. But I’d encourage you to experiment some on your own, and to simply observe what you already do that is working for you, and to do those things more consciously. Most importantly, don’t underestimate the importance of the psychological aspect of the sport. You cannot reach your potential as a hurdler if you step into the starting blocks holding onto any doubts about your abilities.
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