Mental Health Performance - Athletes, Stress & Scheduling Energy
About the Author
Ben Foodman is a licensed psychotherapist & performance specialist. He owns his private practice located in Charlotte North Carolina where he specializes in working with athletes to help them overcome mental blocks (the yips), PTSD, ADD / ADHD and achieve flow states through the techniques of Brainspotting & Neurofeedback. If you are interested in services, use the link here! Enjoy the article below!
Introduction: Athlete Performance & Energy Management
Athletes that are dedicated to their craft are immensely committed towards scheduling their lives around their sport. Family, friends, school and other responsibilities will naturally orbit the individual athlete’s sport performance domain when they are invested in their craft. However, in my experience when athletes come to consult with me, there is a common problem that arises through this scheduling set up. Athletes typically minimize the impact that these other ‘orbiting’ categories have on their life which inevitably has a strong impact on their performance (this could be either a good or bad impact depending on how the individual handles these issues).
As such, I have conceptualized this problem through the following explanation: while many athletes have incredible insight into their athletic abilities, sometimes they can underestimate the impact that life stress has on their bodies, and overestimate how much energy they have internally to ‘attack the day’. Because of this athletes often arrive at practices physically and psychologically depleted, leaving them confused as to why their performances don’t match their expectations. For this Training Report I want to discuss this issue by exploring what stress is, how it affects the body and how you can manage your energy to deal with stress. With that being said let’s begin by exploring what stress actually is.
Part I. The Body Keeps The Score
When we think of stress, there are many different terms and definitions that can come to mind. I prefer to start with the more general, umbrella term which can be defined as ‘a state of mental or emotional strain or tension resulting from adverse or very demanding circumstances’. It’s important to start from this base definition because we all experience varying types and intensities of stress. While athletes no doubt experience stress within the field of performance, they also experience stress outside of sports. While this is an obvious fact, the extent to which we recognize the intensity of stress is usually underestimated.
This is in large part due to the fact that athletes tend to view stress outside of their sport as a ‘separate’ issue. In my experience, athletes that are struggling to cope with concerns about securing a college scholarship or worrying about gaining new sponsorship cannot see the connection between these types of issues and sport performance demands. Part of the rationale to separate these issues is the belief that these problems can be compartmentalized and are exclusively psychological stressors. But this is a critical mistake that can have a negative impact on performance. Let’s explore why this is an error in judgement.
Part II. Athletes, Physical & Mental Stress Relationship
As previously mentioned, when we think about the word stress a lot of different concepts come to mind. But interestingly enough whether we experience psychological or physical stress, both of these categories affect the same system: us. One of the most common misconceptions I run into when working with elite athletes is that they underestimate the tax that psychological stress has on the body. We know from a wide array of different studies that research has shown that psychological stress can actually extract tangible, internal resources such as glucose. For instance, the more cognitively demanding a task is, the lower our glucose levels can become. This is because our brain needs energy to actually process complex information.
So when an athlete cites how interpersonal relationship issues, or financial stress is a ‘separate issue’ from their sport performance, I often have to point out how even those types of mental stressors require energy resources. Inevitably if an athlete overestimates how much they have in energy reserves to make it through the day while also underestimating the impact that psychological stress is having on their body, this mismatch will cause the athlete to become frustrated and confused when their physical performances does not meet their initial expectation. Because it is imperative that athletes have a full account of their available internal resources, athletes need to find strategies that more effectively track their potential performance status.
Part III. Scheduling Stress For Athletes
One exercise that I encourage athletes to participate in is to create a flowchart that encompasses all of the major categories of one’s life: family, friends, sport, sponsors, health, etc. On a scale from 1-10 (1 being terrible, 10 being amazing) rate how well that category is playing out in your life. For example, if you feel your social life is healthy and in an ideal position, you might rate that at an 8. After you have rated every category, add up all of the scores and divide that number by the total number of categories top rating (if you score a 2 on family, a 6 on friends and a 8 on sport, the final category would be 16/30).
While not a perfect match, there is a good chance that the final score is a representation for not only how well you are doing overall, but also how full or depleted you are in terms of your energy. Not every athlete I have provided this exercise to finds that this is the perfect match, but the vast majority of clients that have used this metric have reported to me that their final scores are usually very accurate to how they are feeling overall. Whether you use this method or not, I encourage you not to underestimate the impact that areas of your life outside of your sport are affecting your performance. Remember, taking care of your WHOLE self is working towards performance excellence.
Note To Reader:
If you are an athlete reading this segment of the TRAINING REPORT, hopefully this content was helpful! I put the Training Report together because I felt like many of the discussions on issues such as the Yips/mental blocks, strength training & other subject matter on athlete performance concepts were really missing the mark on these ideas (e.g. how trauma is the direct cause of the Yips). If you are interested in learning more, make sure to subscribe below for when I put out new content on issues related to sport psychology & athlete performance! Also, if you are looking to work with a mental performance specialist, you are in the right place! USE THIS LINK to reach out to me to see if my services are the right fit for your goals!
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