**Make sure you read Predicting Injuries module before you read this one. That way, you’ll know the basics of anxiety and how it impacts your performance.
Relaxation is a temporary deliberate withdrawal from everyday activity with the aim to moderate the physiological response of the autonomic nervous system. Relaxing can:
- Regulate symptoms of the fight-or-flight response
- Prevent and deal with pain
- Decrease feelings of stress and anxiety
- Increase focus and confidence
- Improve performance (sport performance or rehab movements) since the body is not tense
Controlling anxiety centers around 1) modifying your perceptions of an event so that you reduce your anxious response and 2) controlling the physical body so that you can reduce the physiological response. With injuries, often relaxing more can help alleviate some of the pain. Basically, you can approach this through the two approaches: relax the mind or relax the body. When one of them relaxes, usually the other does also.
Relax the Mind
First, pay attention to psychological factors that influence performance anxiety. Remember that all of these are dependent upon the performer’s perception.
- Event importance
- Audience effects (The presence of one person can change a performer’s perception.)
- Individual emphasis- How much attention is paid to the individual performer?
- Fear of injury
- Expectations of Success
These psychological factors are controlled or modified by doing a self-exploration. This is often where a mental performance coach, sport psychologist, or therapist can assist. Sometimes, we know these things but until we have the space to discuss and explore them with a professional, they don’t hit the same way.
For example, you are playing in the championship game. Everything is riding on this. You know it. Everyone else knows it. That can increase the pressure immensely! Diving into this with a professional, they might ask you to consider other options. You say everything is riding on it…but is it really? Every single thing in life changes if you lose this game? You don’t want to lose, but why not explore what happens if you do lose? Often, just deeply considering those options are enough to dispense some of the pressure.
The game is still important…you just don’t feel the overwhelming pressure as much, so you can relax.
Relax the Body
Another way to increase relaxation is through the physical aspects. The autonomic nervous system is comprised of two divisions: 1) the sympathetic nervous system (SNS; prepares the body to fight or run) and 2) the parasympathetic nervous system (PSNS; relaxes the body to aid in the recovery and processing of energy). You may recall from Stress: Portrait of a Killer that the actions of the SNS prepare us to fight for our lives. However, our busy human world fires off the SNS for things like traffic, trying to meet deadlines, presentations, etc.
When we relax, we tell our SNS that we are safe and that it can back off to let the PSNS take over. Think about doing things that tell your body and mind that you are safe. Doctors (and sisters) Emily and Amelia Nagoski wrote a book called Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle. In it, they explain how the stress response works and how it is fueled by social and cultural structures, functions, issues, engagement, etc. They explain that once our stress response is enacted, we must allow it to complete the cycle. The stress response is about survival and keeping us safe, so we need to tell our bodies that we are safe and not running from a lion, tiger, or bear. According to Burnout (and the research they found to support this), we have seven options
When we are engaged in one of these activities, our bodies should recognize that we are safe and that the SNS can shut down and the PSNS take control. Think about these seven things in our daily life and during recovery from a sport injury. We may do these less when we are injured due to trying to stay focused on recovery, movement restrictions due to the injury, pain, etc.
Some additional physical-based strategies are:
For each of these strategies, you can look up some of the experts linked here and read more on their teachings.
