What are the Key Ingredients to Athletic Confidence?
Athletic confidence is crucial to playing at your peak in the playoffs and major sports events. Athletes understand the elements that undermine confidence but seldom take the time to explore the factors that lead to athletic success.
By recognizing what influences you, you can counteract the negative aspects and enhance the positive contributors. Many factors detract from athletic confidence such as:
- Worrying about making mistakes
- Fear of disappointing others (teammates, coaches, parents, or fans)
- Negative self-talk or a judgmental internal dialogue
- Setting unrealistic standards
- Trying to achieve perfection
- Not managing performance anxiety effectively
- Poor relationships with teammates or comparing yourself to others
- Buying into the harsh criticism of those around you
- Lacking focus or inability to ignore distractions in pressure situations
- Lacking mental toughness
- Neglecting physical training or not putting high effort into practice
- Lack of attention to mechanics and technique
- Mentally replaying recent past failures
- Limited exposure to high-pressure situations
- Preparing haphazardly for competition
The list of confidence-breakers is long but necessary to understand how potential mental and physical factors can detract from confidence.
Now that you know what harms confidence and the negative traps many athletes fall into, you can start countering confidence-crushers and begin building strong, lasting confidence.
How to Overcome Confidence-Crushers
- Spend time developing mental toughness and other necessary mental skills
- Focus on your strengths and achievements
- Focus on controllable factors rather than external pressures
- Set realistic goals for the season
- Learn from defeat
- Spend time each day to work on building confidence through visualization and positive self-talk
- Prepare to the highest extent you can
Take, for instance, the confident play of the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay women’s basketball team. In the Horizon League tournament quarterfinal, UWGB won in dominant fashion over Oakland University, 84-55.
The winner of the Horizon League tournament will earn an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament. The No. 1 seed UWGB (27-5) is looking for their second straight Tournament berth.
UWGB senior Jasmine Kondrakiewicz commented on how the team has grown their confidence and prepared to perform at their peak throughout the season.
KONDRAKIEWICZ: “We know going into each game what we have to do. We know, again, that everyone is coming in to give us their best. We always have a target on our back. So, I think just going in there, fully prepared, trusting ourselves, and trusting our preparation. Knowing that we have been in that situation before for the past however many years. Just taking that experience and using that to our advantage.”
Kondrakiewicz’s comments revealed the keys to UWGB’s confident play: focus on the game plan, preparing at a high level, trusting their ability to perform under pressure, recalling past successes, and relying on their mental toughness.
Building strong, lasting athletic confidence is a daily process. Taking some simple but powerful daily actions can help you take your confidence to the next level.
Work to manage your confidence busters and have more stable, proactive confidence!
Do something each day to build your confidence. Growing confidence is an active process. Each time you take action, the better you will perform under pressure during the playoffs and major sports events.
Related Sports Psychology Article
- Building Confidence for Athletes: Tips from Experts
- How to Perform Under Pressure with Confidence
- How to Build Confidence Like the Pros
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