Developing Composure in Clutch Situations

15 Steps to Mental Strength in Sports – Step 11: Composure in the Clutch  

Step 11 – Developing Composure in Clutch Situations

How do you handle pressure, especially during a clutch situation like a championship game?

It doesn’t matter how good you are, how much you’ve practiced or how much you’ve been coached, if you can get stay cool in critical situations, if you’re nerves get the best of you, you will never, ever…not ever achieve peak athletic performance.

True champions thrive in clutch situations.  Think of Michael Jordan and you get the picture.

When it comes to achieving peak performance in clutch situations you need to:

• Understand how you respond to stress; know how to read yourself, i.e. good nervousness or bad nervousness.

• Know what you do consistently do to get yourself uptight.

• Have several relaxation techniques in your mental strength bag and know how and when to use them

Here’s the thing that most athletes don’t understand and that is stress does not come from the outside people or circumstances.  It doesn’t come from the crowd, from importance of the game, the weather, or even your coach.

Stress comes from how you choose to respond to them.  Notice I said you choose.  You see you do have a choice as to how to respond.  Unfortunately for many athletes this is an unconsciousness and automatic reaction and not a thoughtful response.

You see, it’s not what’s happing to you (outside events) that causing your nervousness, but what’s happing inside (your head).

This is good news!

How is this good news you ask?  Well no one else makes you nervous, only you can. So you are in complete control of your nerves.

Mental Strength Plan for Calming Nerves

With a little bit of mental strength training you can create a proactive plan to stop nervousness before or during any competition and achieve peak performance.

Please remember, that being relaxed is the key to achieving peak athletic performance.  When you’re uptight you will never reach your full potential

Here are four steps to help gain control over your nerves in critical situations so that achieve peak athletic performance.

Step 1: Your first line of defense is for you to know how to read yourself.  This means you must be able to quickly know what happens before you get nervous

Let’s create a nervous scale from 1 – 100 with 1 being snoozing and 100 being over the top as follows:

• 1 – 33: Not enough excitement; performance flat; Just don’t care.
• 34 – 66: Optimum arousal; peak performance, in the zone.
• 67 – 100: Bad nervous; over aroused, too excited; When you make the performance and its outcome too important.

Now you need to become aware of your tendencies.  Before a typical event do you know where you are on this scale?  Awareness gives you’re a choice and you can do something about it.

I’d like to do the following exercise in how to read yourself.  In your journal or a piece of paper label the top “Poor Performance.”  This can be either not enough nervousness or too much.

You experience nervousness three ways:

1. Felling – “good” feelings are very different from “bad” feelings
2. Mentally – type of self-talk and you focus on, good vs. bad
3. Behave or act before a performance; good vs. bad

Now think back to the last time you had a bad performance under pressure.  I know this might be hard to do, but it give is shot anyway.

Then think about and write down:

Signals of detrimental nervousness:

1. What was I feeling?
• Where was the energy in my body?
2. What was I thinking?
• What was my self-talk? About me, my opponents, the game, etc
3. How did I behave?
• Did I isolate myself, did I go quite, and was I running around all over the place?

Now do the same exercise for when you had a great performance under pressure

Signals of positive nervousness:

1. What was I feeling?

• Where was the energy in my body?

2. What was I thinking?

• What was my self-talk about?

3. How did I behave?

• Did I focus on the task at hand?

If you’re not able to read yourself you’ll end up never achieving peak performance.

You’re ability to discern where you are before a performance will allow to take the necessary actions to change your state.

Step 2: Acting “as if.”  This has been mentioned several times in previous posts. In this step you deliberately change your outward behavior to coincide with how you feel and behave when you’re in the optimum zone of arousal.

If you act the way you want to become you become the way you act.  You’re “leading” yourself as opposed to faking it.  You have experienced this before and all you’re doing is “reminding” yourself what this feels and looks like.

Step 3: Is to understand the primary cause of nervousness and where it comes from. Remember, the source is not outside yourself, you generate it from the inside. This is done by what you focus and concentrate on, before or during a competition.  Focusing on the wrong things and you’ll send yourself into over arousal or flat-line.

What is the “wrong” focus?  All the things out of your control like:

1. The judges or referee’s
2. Weather
3. Opponent
4. Coaches (how they have treated you
5. Other people’s expectations
6. If you get sick
7. Your teammates
8. Any past mistakes
9. Any future results

If you focus on the UC’s (uncontrollable’s) before or during an event:

1. You’re going to get more and more uptight
2. Your level of confidence will start to go down
3. Performance will suffer

You mental strength practice as a peak performing athletic is to be able to effectively handle the UC’s when they show up. You do this by using your concentration skills and focus.

It’s OK if you get a UC that pops in your head just don’t let them camp out there.

Step 3: Notice any UC’s and swiftly shift your focus away from them.  You need to get to know you’re UC’s VERY well.  Each one is unique to you. Become aware of the UC’s that grab your attention so that you can dismiss it and refocus on what’s important. Which one or two of the UC’s really through you off?  Which one’s get to you…write them down and look at them regularly.

Get to know your enemy so you can prevent an attack.

Step 4:  Having effective and dependable relaxation techniques.  You may have two sets of these.  One set for before an event and the second while you playing the game.

One of the quickest ones that I suggest is 7-11 breathing.   You take an inhale for a count a 7 and then exhale for a count of 11.  This will activate your parasympathetic nervous system and calm you down. More centering exercise can be found on Mental Strength Training for Athletes”

The bottom line here is that you want to have a tool kit that will help you get centered and focused at the task at hand and keep you mind on the only thing you can control, your performance.

You can continue to develop your mental strength and concentration for peak athletic performance by picking up a copy of “Mental Strength Training for Athletes” today.