Whether you play golf, or tennis, you run, snowboard, figure skate, or ski, you experience the benefits and challenges of being an individual sport athlete. There are so many benefits to having a sport that you can do yourself: you don’t need to find a team, your challenges and triumphs are your own, and you are responsible for your own performance. Being responsible for your own performance can be great, when you’re playing well, but what happens when you are anxious? Or you’re having a bad day? You can’t rely on your teammates to pick up your slack. So what do you do? How do you take on that responsibility and that stress? Do you handle it well or does it eat at you, causing overthinking during your games or practices, maybe at night causing less than ideal sleeping patterns? As individual sport athletes, it is essential to have the knowledge of how much your mental state can impact your performance, and the tools to ensure you can combat whatever challenges your sport, life, or your brain can throw at you!
Many people consider mental performance important when it comes to readiness to play your best in competition, but when it comes down to actually using mental skills, many people don’t know where to start. Assessing what could be improved upon is difficult to do on your own, but can be a necessary process in finding where to focus and what would reap the most benefits for you as an athlete and as an individual. It is important to remember that not every technique or tool will be as effective for one person as it may be for others. That being said, what are some common issues that individual sport athletes run into?
Performance anxiety, or pressure to perform, is an extremely common feeling before a competition. Since you compete alone, all eyes are on you, or you and your opponent. Finding ways to prepare for that feeling so that practice doesn’t differ from competition so much can be important. If that isn’t an option there are mental skills, such as imagery, that can be beneficial as preparation for those feelings. Another common common experience for individual sport athletes is a challenge to balance sport with other aspects of your life. This could include relationships (friends, family, romantic), school, work, personal time, etc. Developing mental skills to aid in routines and focusing can be beneficial in finding that sport-life balance and protecting yourself from burnout.
By working with a mental performance specialist, you can learn about these tools and work together to find what may work best for you to not only aid in the troubles that you may be experiencing, but also improve your performance beyond what you are currently doing! Individual sport athletes do not have the same support in teammates as team sport athletes do, even when you are training with a team. Once competition starts, you want to make sure you are prepared for the best performance you can do on your own. Let’s have a conversation about how mental skills training may be beneficial to you in your sport!
