Mental Preparation for Adolescents Before the Big Game, Meet, or Race
Adolescent track and field athletes together smiling.
It’s the week before a big game, meet, or race. What can you do mentally prepare? This post focuses on adolescents, but many of the ideas are applicable to adult athletes as well. Additionally, there are so many more to consider. This post just has three to get you started.
#1: Stress and Coping Skills
One of the biggest topics to address is stress and anxiety. McDonough et al. (2013) addressed how stress is inherent in adolescents competing in sports. Furthermore, competitive sports result in several stressors that are both related directly and indirectly to how they perform, in addition to the stress that adolescents experience as they develop physically, emotionally, and socially (Neil et al., 2011; Reeves et al., 2009; van Rens et al., 2016). Now is the time to remember all the different coping skills you have for managing stress and anxiety. Hopefully, you have had some time to develop your tool box of skills long before, but if you haven’t you can still learn a few new ones. One such skill that you may know about or may want to learn is the utilization of breathing. A study by Kuppusamy et al. (2020) demonstrated how yogic breathing can help shift a healthy adolescent’s nervous system to a more parasympathetic state. While this study was more extended, six months, it does point out that breathing is impactful.
#2: Social Support
Another topic to address is the value of social support. For athletes and adolescents, social support is crucial (Aitchison et al., 2020; Vernacchia, 2007; Wan et al., 2019). Remember the value of encouraging your fellow athletes as well as yourself. If you have a team, you may want to consider working together to create a team cheer or practice what it means to be socially supportive at the event as well as long term. Again, this skill topic could benefit from being introduced and practiced earlier in the season rather than right before, but there is always time to encourage support and team cohesion!
#3: Compassion and Self-Compassion
Again, this concept would be better introduced earlier in the season. However, hearing and learning about compassion and self-compassion can be beneficial. The reason for compassion and self-compassion is that compassion involves action, whereas empathy is an internal experience (Stevens & Taber, 2021). The research about self-compassion and adolescents demonstrates that self-compassion is beneficial for emotional regulation to help with stress, enhancing feelings of gratitude, and fostering prosocial behavior (Lathren et al., 2019; Yang et al., 2021). All of these benefits are helpful for self and demonstrating good sportsmanship. Furthermore, Mosewich et al. (2011) found a negative relationship between self-compassion and shame inclination, guilt-free shame inclination, social shape anxiety, externalized body consciousness, fear of nonperformance, and fear of negative feedback. Adolescent athletes (and truthfully all athletes) can benefit from building self-compassion and compassion to improve performance and build themselves up. Dr. Kristin Neff’s website has numerous self-compassion activities that anyone can use (linked below the Learn More section).
These ideas go beyond the traditional ones like making a list and making sure everything is packed and ready to go. These traditional ideas are still great. It is up to each individual to decide what works best for them.
take action today moment:
Make sure you have a well developed tools box for working with stress and anxiety. If you do not yet have one established, do not wait and start filling your tool box. Additionally, explore Dr. Neff’s website and consider integrating some self-compassion exercises into your day. Bonus! Self-compassion can help with managing stress and anxiety.
Learn More About Self-Compassion and Anxiety and Stress Busting Tools:
Self-Compassion - Kristen Neff
20 Best Anxiety Tools for Helping Your Clients Cope
Tools for managing stress and anxiety
5 Mental Tools for Athletic Success
References
Aitchison, B., Soundy, A., Martin, P., Rushton, A., & Heneghan, N. R. (2020). Lived experiences of social support in Paralympic swimmers: A protocol for a qualitative study. BMJ Open, 10(9), e039953. http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2020-039953
Kuppusamy, M., Kamaldeen, D., Pitani, R., Amaldas, J., Ramasamy, P., Shanmugam, P., & Vijayakumar, V. (2020). Effects of yoga breathing practice on heart rate variability in healthy adolescents: A randomized controlled trial. Integrative Medicine Research, 9(1), 28-32. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.imr.2020.01.006
Lathren, C., Bluth, K., & Park, J. (2019). Adolescent self-compassion moderates the relationship between perceived stress and internalizing symptoms. Personality and Individual Differences, 143, 341. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2019.02.008
McDonough, M. H., Hadd, V., Crocker, P. R., Holt, N. L., Tamminen, K. A., & Schonert-Reichl, K. (2013). Stress and coping among adolescents across a competitive swim season. The Sport Psychologist, 27(2), 143-155.
Mosewich, A. D., Kowalski, K. C., Sabiston, C. M., Sedgwick, W. A., & Tracy, J. L. (2011). Self-compassion: A potential resource for young women athletes. Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 33(1), 103-123.
Neil, R., Hanton, S., Mellalieu, S. D., and Fletcher, D. (2011). Competition stress and emotions in sport performers: The role of further appraisals. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 12(4), 460–470. doi: 10.1016/j.psychsport.2011.02.001
Reeves, C. W., Nicholls, A. R., & McKenna, J. (2011). The effects of a coping intervention on coping self-efficacy, coping effectiveness, and subjective performance among adolescent soccer players. International Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 9(2), 126-142. https://doi.org/10.1080/1612197X.2011.567104
Stevens, F., & Taber, K. (2021). The neuroscience of empathy and compassion in pro-social behavior. Neuropsychologia, 159, 107925. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2021.107925
van Rens, F. E., Borkoles, E., Farrow, D., Curran, T., & Polman, R. C. (2016). Development and initial validation of the role strain questionnaire for junior athletes (RSQ-JA). Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 24, 168-178. doi: 10.1016/j.psychsport.2016.02.004
Vernacchia, R. A. (2007). Working with individual team sports: The psychology of track and field. In R. Lidor & K. Henschen (Eds.). The psychology of team sports (pp. 70-82). Fitness Information Technology.
Wan, Y., Chen, R., Ma, S., McFeeters, D., Sun, Y., Hao, J., & Tao, F. (2019). Associations of adverse childhood experiences and social support with self-injurious behaviour and suicidality in adolescents. The British Journal of Psychiatry, 214(3), 146-152. https://doi.org/10.1192/bjp.2018.263
Yang, Y., Kong, X., Guo, Z., & Kou, Y. (2021). Can self-compassion promote gratitude and prosocial behavior in adolescents? A 3-year longitudinal study from China. Mindfulness, 12, 1377-1386. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-021-01605-9