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In my last article I discussed the case of Coach Urban Meyer as an example of burnout and the long term effects of stress. As I noted, young athletes might notice the impact of stress and pressure with physical symptoms such as headaches, stomach aches, and difficulty sleeping (particularly before a big performance). Perhaps of more immediate concern, stress can negatively impact your performance.
Stress and your stress response occur automatically to help you prepare for danger. While the original, evolutionary intention of this bodily mechanism was survival and overcoming danger to one’s life, today our stress response gets triggered to a broader range of dangers. These include fear of failure, judgment, and any threat to our image or self-esteem. As you can see from this much broader range of situations, we live with almost constant stress. As an athlete there are also stresses surrounding performance that contribute to the build up of inappropriate body tension.
How does stress impact performance?
Stress is one of many things that activate the body. We see players, particularly in football, jumping up and down, bouncing into each other and yelling and screaming just prior to a game. These players are activating their body through physical activity and enhanced motivation. As an athlete, you know that without this activation your performance will be flat or unfocused.
Stress has specific physical consequences however, that may not be optimal, particularly for accuracy, fine motor coordination and even for stamina. Stress tends to tighten muscles. Stress also releases adrenalin throughout the body. Within certain limits, these effects are okay and can even enhance performance. It’s when stress goes beyond this optimal level that we see performance go south. Too much adrenalin can create a jittery feeling in your body that affects accuracy and is distracting, making it difficult to focus. Stress caused by fear of failure can make it more difficult to focus and can reduce flexibility of response.
Too much muscle tension can have a number of performance impairing consequences. Any performance that involves accuracy requires full muscle control. With increasing levels of stress the athlete looses some of this control. In addition, when you are running, with each stride, there are opposing muscles that must alternately contract and then relax in preparation for the next contraction. Tight muscles resulting from tension and pressure have greater difficulty relaxing. In fact, many Olympic athletes specifically train their muscles to be able to relax better to improve running ability.
While the football player may gain a brief advantage at the start of a game by activating their body, most sports, including football have an element of stamina that affects the outcome of a performance. Whether we are talking about football, basketball, hockey or even golf, it is not uncommon to notice the negative effects of fatigue toward the end of the performance. Reacting too much to stress results in the overuse of energy can leave the athlete too fatigued to optimally finish a performance.
Managing stress
In the last article I discussed the importance of training some form of relaxation; giving yourself greater facility in turning down the activation of your body. This might seem strange to think about if activation is helpful to performance. As noted above however, it is also important to have control over this activation so that you don’t wind up in the “red zone” of too much tension and adrenalin overload.
It is helpful to think of your activation working on a continuum. There are two aspects to this that can be helpful:1) when you are not engaged in performing, you might want to bring your level of activation down this continuum to conserve resources for greater stamina, and 2) when you are engaged in performance, you want to be able to regulate and achieve optimal activation levels: not too low yet, not too high.
Training optimal levels of stress and body activation
The next time you are engaged in a performance, pay attention to your body signals. Notice muscle tension - not only of the muscles you use to perform, such as in your arms, but also in your jaw and forehead. Muscles not used for your sport will show you your nonspecific reaction to stress, fear and worry. Make a conscious attempt to release this tension and to periodically check in with these muscles.
