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The Swimmer's Guide To Performance Anxiety and Pre-Race Butterflies'

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This article discusses managing pre-race nerves and performance anxiety in swimming. It explains that trying to eliminate nerves is counterproductive, as the physical symptoms of anxiety like increased heart rate can actually help performance. Instead of fighting nerves, swimmers should adopt a "challenge mindset" that views the race as an opportunity to prove themselves. The article outlines three mindsets: 1) challenge mindset 2) threat mindset, where nerves feel overwhelming 3) overly calm mindset with minimal physical response. It cites a study finding athletes performed best when in a challenge mindset and scored themselves highest, compared to those in a threat mindset or with low anxiety. Managing nerves by embracing rather than fighting the physical symptoms may help swimmers perform at

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The Swimmer's Guide To Performance Anxiety and Pre-Race Butterflies'

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Carmelita Tangca
26 views3 pages
This article discusses managing pre-race nerves and performance anxiety in swimming. It explains that trying to eliminate nerves is counterproductive, as the physical symptoms of anxiety like increased heart rate can actually help performance. Instead of fighting nerves, swimmers should adopt a "challenge mindset" that views the race as an opportunity to prove themselves. The article outlines three mindsets: 1) challenge mindset 2) threat mindset, where nerves feel overwhelming 3) overly calm mindset with minimal physical response. It cites a study finding athletes performed best when in a challenge mindset and scored themselves highest, compared to those in a threat mindset or with low anxiety. Managing nerves by embracing rather than fighting the physical symptoms may help swimmers perform at

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This article discusses managing pre-race nerves and performance anxiety in swimming. It explains that trying to eliminate nerves is counterproductive, as the physical symptoms of anxiety like increased heart rate can actually help performance. Instead of fighting nerves, swimmers should adopt a "challenge mindset" that views the race as an opportunity to prove themselves. The article outlines three mindsets: 1) challenge mindset 2) threat mindset, where nerves feel overwhelming 3) overly calm mindset with minimal physical response. It cites a study finding athletes performed best when in a challenge mindset and scored themselves highest, compared to those in a threat mindset or with low anxiety. Managing nerves by embracing rather than fighting the physical symptoms may help swimmers perform at

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26 views3 pages

The Swimmer's Guide To Performance Anxiety and Pre-Race Butterflies'

Uploaded by

Carmelita Tangca
This article discusses managing pre-race nerves and performance anxiety in swimming. It explains that trying to eliminate nerves is counterproductive, as the physical symptoms of anxiety like increased heart rate can actually help performance. Instead of fighting nerves, swimmers should adopt a "challenge mindset" that views the race as an opportunity to prove themselves. The article outlines three mindsets: 1) challenge mindset 2) threat mindset, where nerves feel overwhelming 3) overly calm mindset with minimal physical response. It cites a study finding athletes performed best when in a challenge mindset and scored themselves highest, compared to those in a threat mindset or with low anxiety. Managing nerves by embracing rather than fighting the physical symptoms may help swimmers perform at

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Janean Peros October 3,2019

Gr.12 St.Dominic PE

‘The Swimmer’s Guide to Performance Anxiety and Pre-Race


Butterflies’
It’s Friday morning, you kick the sheets off your freshly shaved-down legs, and you jump out of
bed. Take a deep pull of air and exhale. Today is gonna be a good day. On these special
mornings, the mornings you wake up knowing that later in the day you are going to swim faster
than you ever have, things just feel different. There’s something in the air that smells of
possibility, a lightness in your feet, and a surge in your mojo that comes from being rested and
sharpened for battle after being bludgeoned over months of hard training. Today is the day that
you step up on the block and let all that hard work rip. The very thought of racing causes your
heart rate to pick up, the butterflies begin flapping a little harder, and flashes of crushing your
PB’s and the competition explode across your mind. As the countdown to your race marches on,
the intensity of the performance anxiety increases. The physical symptoms include shallow
breathing, increased heart rate, a slight tremble in your hands, lips and knees, sweaty palms, and
maybe even a touch of nausea (maybe crushing those 7-11 burritos last night wasn’t such a
bright idea. Mentally, you try your best to be calm, but you’d be lying if there wasn’t some doubt
sprinkled in there. Fear of being perceived poorly by teammates, coaches, maybe even your
parents. Your focus narrows. And while you try to stay locked in on doing the things you need to
do, there is a strong pull to rushing through the moment as quickly as possible. Pre-race nerves
affect us each a little differently and they vary in intensity depending on the circumstances
surrounding the performance. Your pre-race nerves at a mid-season meet, racing an off event,
won’t be the same as when you are racing for gold at a championship meet. Swimmers tend to
have a muddied take on pre-race nerves. That it’s something to be quashed, overcome, and that
it’s generally a bad thing. The “problem” with pre-race nerves isn’t that you are experiencing
them, it’s the mental and emotional way you deal with them. The trick to swimming fast when
you are nervous isn’t eliminating anxiety, it’s using it. Riding the anxiety lightning Swimmers
will often get advice like, “Hey, don’t freak out, man. Just relax!” which doesn’t help or work. It
tells the athlete that anxiety and stress can be eliminated. That what they are experiencing
is wrong, dysfunctional, and needs to be suppressed. But stress and anxiety are primary warning
signals that our brain will continue to give priority attention. No matter how hard you try to
rationalize them away or shoo them out of your brain, they will over-ride everything. It’s like
that error message that your computer keeps honking at you, no matter how many times you
click “OK” or close the message window. The frustrating reality of stress and anxiety is that the
harder you try to suppress the anxiety, the more you end up focusing on it. This causes a
downward spiral where we feel the anxiety, interpret it as something bad, try with limited
success to eliminate it, and then feel powerless when it gets worse.The frustration and
powerlessness translates into behaviors that end up causing our performance to crater: We obsess
over what other swimmers are doing. We bypass our pre-race routine to speed things up. We
rush through our preparation, wanting to get it over with. These understandable responses to the
stress of performance anxiety are typical, but ultimately not helpful in using those pre-race
nerves for good and swimming our best. So if trying to squash performance nerves is only going
to backfire on us, but the physical symptoms help us swim faster, what in the chlorinated name
Janean Peros October 3,2019
Gr.12 St.Dominic PE

of backstroke flags are we supposed to do? What’s the right mindset for managing butterflies? A
lot of the advice around dealing with pre-race nerves revolves around finding a place of calm and
relaxation. Deep breathing exercises, mindfulness training, journaling, visualization, and so on.
For the athlete that is way too wound up, these things can be profoundly helpful. But believe it or
not, complete calmness and suppression of the physical effects of performance anxiety should
not be your goal before competition. The anxiety, butterflies and arousal all serve a purpose—
they are priming you for battle. Pre-race nerves and butterflies help you swim faster. Just like
your paddles or fins, performance anxiety comes in a few different sizes and shapes. There are
three that you should know about, and if you have spent any time competing at all, I bet you will
recognize each of them in your swimming history. 1: Challenge mindset The first state we are
going to look at is the optimal one. It’s the challenge mindset. Essentially, a challenge mindset
means you view the upcoming competition/race-super-impossible-set as a challenge. An
opportunity to prove yourself. When you are realistically and seriously confident about how you
are going to swim, those nerves seem to be automagically interpreted correctly. They are “good”
nerves. We feel aggressive with our effort and take on the difficulty of the moment as a
challenge. 2: Threat mindset We all know and loathe this one. You know, when the nerves get
the best of you. When you get swept away by them and feel powerless to rein them in. You find
yourself mesmerized by what the competition is doing, all the people in the stands, and the do-
or-die expectations that you place on yourself that makes the nerves feel more threatening than
performance-boosting. A threat mindset means we start thinking defensively. We are more prone
to choking in this mindset.3: Overly calm Even though the other two mindsets seem particularly
familiar, there is a third response to performance anxiety. It’s when you have a minimal amount
of butterflies or physical response to competition. Maybe it’s an in-season meet and you are
exhausted from a hard block of training and you have no speed, the pool is a little rec center with
starting blocks that don’t have wedges, and your competition are kids who are still learning to
swim. Whatever the case, you are so calm, possibly to the point of not caring, that you miss out
on a lot of the physical awesomeness that comes from having more optimal levels of anxiety and
nerves, like added blood flow, non-essential systems shutting down, heightened focus, and so on.
You aren’t all that nervous or excited. You’re kind of, just, whatever. How do the mindsets
perform? Did you recognize moments in your racing history where you dipped your toes into
each one of these mindsets? Now, these three anxiety states might just all wash together in your
eyes. Does it really matter? Does it make a difference on performance how anxious you feel? As
you can guess, some research on the topic shows that yes, it can have a very real effect on
performance. A recent study took a group of elite soccer players and measured cardiovascular
output before a big soccer match. The players listened to a recording detailing the importance of
the match, how demanding the match would be, and how critical the game would be to the
player’s career. As the players sat there, they were wired up to see what kind of physical
response they were having before the game. By measuring cardiovascular output as it related to
total peripheral resistance researchers could see if the soccer players were having a challenge or
threat response prior to the match. Once the match wrapped up, each player provided an
evaluation of their performance on a scale of 1-100, with their coach also scoring the athlete’s
performance. As you can probably guess, when players had a “challenge” mindset before the
game, they scored highest. Coming in second were the players who had a more “threat” response
Janean Peros October 3,2019
Gr.12 St.Dominic PE

to competition. And pulling up the rear were those who were the most calm. The players who
had a limited physical response (aka lowest amount of butterflies) actually scored the poorest.

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