The following post is an excerpt from Preparing for Pressure – my book to be released on August 20th. Click Here to pre-order your copy.
“Every athlete feels pressure; it is how they’ve been nurtured to deal with it that counts.“
I find athletes are far more willing to groove fundamental strokes than to develop the skills necessary for competition. The often debilitating high-pressure scenario athlete’s face during competition is remedied with deliberate mental and emotional training. Athletes aren’t born competitive tennis experts. Performing their best when they need it the most is nurtured.
The US Navy SEAL’s motto, “We don’t rise to the occasion…we sink to the level of our training,” best describes performing under pressure.
Confidence Bias: The False Reality
“Pre-match over-confidence leads to match-day under-confidence.”
Athletes and parents often have skewed opinions of their competitive skill levels. Is it because Molly, once held her own against a much higher level opponent in a practice set in 2019? Or maybe because Mrs. Johnson watches her son Zack hit beautiful groundstrokes while his coach feeds balls right into his strike zone for the entire lesson. These false leaders cause skewed opinions in parents and athletes.
Confidence bias leads to an inaccurate belief in one’s true competitive skill sets. The concern with over-confidence is that the athlete is positive that they have all the skills necessary to compete supremely without actually ever training those skills. False reality result in devastating losses and blame games. The opposite, under-confidence, bias also wreaks havoc under pressure. Some well-trained athletes suffer from their lack of confidence in competition; harboring unjustified negative beliefs or nurtured undermining pessimistic viewpoints. Either way, their lack of self-esteem seriously affects their performance.
The good news is that with proper software development, false confidence from both the parents and the athlete can be re-wired. Re-routing inner dialog through self-coaching is a great start. Athletes who suffer from confidence bias would be wise to trade in some of their hours grooving groundstrokes and replace them with solution-based software sessions.
Preparing for pressure includes the awareness of the athlete’s confidence bias. Allowing false belief systems leads to future anguish.
“Come tournament day false confidence sabotages.”
