How do you cope with anxiety and nervousness before and during a race? What are some very effective strategies?
How do you cope with anxiety and nervousness before and during a race? What are some very effective strategies?
Have a beer.
BEAT THAT MEAT SON.
Find a good yoga studio in your area and start taking classes ASAP. Apply the breathing principles and relaxation strategies you learn in yoga to your running and racing.
Learn the difference between anxious and nervous.
I get nervous before races, but it's a positive thing - the same butterflies that you get waiting for your new date to show. It's one of the reason I love to race, it's a complete rush once the gun sounds and you start to release that pent-up energy.
If you are anxious - just think "what's the worst that could happen during this race?" "Is it really all that devastating?" But ask this before a race; during a race, you probably are thinking you are going to die. You are correct, you are going to die, but probably not right now.
sm*ke a bowl
bucklebelt wrote:
Find a good yoga studio in your area and start taking classes ASAP. Apply the breathing principles and relaxation strategies you learn in yoga to your running and racing.
This^^
breathing techniques and some of the stretches (e.g. the four parts of half-moon and some hip stretches like frog or pigeon) will help relax you
Picture all the other runners naked.
Then, pretend that the naked mob is chasing you to make you "theirs."
It might make your anxiety worse, but if it's not motivation to get off the line fast, I don't know what is. Unless, of course, you're into that kind of thing.
Here's the dynamic. You get anxious about a race. Then you get more anxious about getting anxious about the race. You become increasingly anxious that your anxiety will hamper your performance.
One poster talked about using the energy from anxiety to improve your performance.
This is what you have to do. And its counterintuitive but it works. You get rid of fear of performance limiting anxiety by embracing it. Purposely try to make yourself as anxious as you can to improve your performance. Relish it, embrace, develop it. Its your way of channeling all you energy into the run.
Really try to get as anxious as you can. When you do you will master it.
(You can't fool yourself you really have to want to make yourself anxious)