How to Overcome Pre Competitive StateAnxiety and Dominate your nextJiu-Jitsu Competition
What is Anxiety?
There are 2 types of Anxiety - Cognitive & Somatic Symptoms - AKA Physical and Mental Symptoms
4 Sub-categorized Types of Anxiety:
• Anticipatory • Fight & Flight
• Environmental • Limiting Beliefs/Internal Triggers
Somatic - pounding heart, sweaty, dilated pupils, butterflies, nausea, vomiting, digestive issuesCognitive - Racing thoughts, doubt, catastrophizing, jumping to conclusions, what IF’s.
All of these self doubts and feelings of inadequacy can also contribute to lack of self - confidence
ANXIETY TYPE
Anticipatory
Anticipatory Anxiety is the Anxiety you feel the second you sign up for a comp. You may feel it in waves as you think about the upcoming event, or as you continue planning for it.
Factors that may increase / decrease = How big is the comp, is there travel, how long is the drive, how many fights do you have, is this the first time you are participating, how long are the matches. This is when all of the “I DON”T KNOWS” and What IFs Swirl around in your mind.
STRATEGIES
• Create a Pre-Game Plan/ Routine - helps you create a sense of familiarity and safety, helps answer the unknown questions. Creates an action plan, pulls your focus and energy from fear based thinking to confidence and present thinking. You can feel confident knowing that you have a system in place.
• Pregame can include - how you pack your back, specific warm ups - itinerary - specific snacks, hydration, music, which gi/equipment do you need etc., get really specific
• Visualization is also really important in this phase - you may find yourself thinking of the event , and catastrophizing - so my tip is to train your mind to Never end on worst case scenario!! Always end the visualization on a positive. There are 2 WAYS to END ON A POSITIVE - 1) rewind the film, and start again to land the visualization on a positive. 2) Inject a positive response or reaction to get back on top or in abetter position in your scenario.
• Meditation - breathing - mindfulness, helps activate the parasympathetic nervous system.• WAKE UP AND GO FOR A RUN!!! HELPS Displace the nervous energy.
• PUT IN ON A SHELF or Tuck it away in a box in your mind - helps you put it out of mind instead of obsessing about the event
Environmental Factors
Your nervous system needs a chance to adapt to the new environment, so make sure you give yourself plenty of time to acclimate and ground. If you arrive late, rushed, and the sights of the mats and the amount of people is overwhelming, it will pull away your focus. Arrive early and allow some space to take it all in, and pull in all of your nervous system regulating techniques. This is a BIG one for people who are energeti-cally sensitive - also bear in mind that each individual will have a different dominant sense, so it’s important to know which one you are and accommodate.
Visual - you see everything first - lights, amount of people, cameras, opponent, sizing them up.
Auditory - get triggered by the noises, and how loud it is, the cheering, the loud talking, the announcements Kinesthetic - energy in a room is palpable, you can pick up on other peoples nerves which can amplify
your own.
PLEASE SEE WORKSHEET #1 to help find out what your dominant sense is!
STRATEGIES
• Acclimating to the environment , give yourself TIME to get used to the settings. Your nervous system needs time to adjust to the setting
• Auditory - MUSIC OR NO MUSIC - personal preference, but get used to the noise- as this can be distracting and overwhelming for you.
• Visual, sit in the bleachers and watch and allow yourself to take it in
• Kinesthetic, ground your energy, and practice separating yourself from everyone else.
This takes practice.
• FIND YOUR MOTIVATING FACTOR - this will help maintain confidence, and helps pull in the drivingforce to successfully complete the task (ex. Are you wanting to complete a big event and prove to yourself you can do it? Are you wanting to make your friends proud? Whatever the reason, keep that in theback of your mind)
Fight & Flight
Unavoidable Physiological Response that you feel prior to a fight, a competition, or getting on an airplanefor example. It immediately precedes the event.
We have 2 Types of Nervous Systems
Parasympathetic Nervous System - Resting state - returns heart rate to normal
Sympathetic - Fight flight - pounding heart, sweaty, dilated pupils, butterflies, nausea, vomiting, digestive issues
What we want to do is activate the parasympathetic nervous system = HOW?
It’s important to note that the Vagus Nerve makes up 90% of the parasympathetic nervous system- and a happy and stimulated vagus nervous contributes to higher cognitive thinking and better problem solving -and reduces fight and flight.
STRATEGIES
Belly Breathing (Box Breathing) is the number 1 protocol and can assist with emotional control
• Other protocols, grounding energy, feeling the ground• Find your Mind - Body Connection
Getting grounded into your body will help you become present and help accessing “FLOW STATE”
HOW TO GET GROUNDED
• Feel the ground under your feet
• Notice your breath
• Notice how fast your heart is beating• Feel the sensations in your body
• Splash cold water on your face
• Clench and unclench your fists
• Pat down your body from your head down to your toes• And most importantly - deep slow breathing
• Fixing Your Gaze
Cognitive (Limiting Beliefs - Thoughts Patterns)
Our unconscious mind will create a ceiling around our performance - we call these limiting beliefs. They are meant to keep us safe and in a bubble. But a lot of them are unreasonable, they just snowball over time, and cause a lot of fear, doubt and worry.
If you’re having some of these intrusive and toxic thoughts, (I can’t do it, I’m not confident, Sabotaging yourself from Fear of failure, Thinking you’re not fast or technical enough) These can contribute toObsessive worry, feeling self conscious, over-complicating thought patterns, and over analyzing your technique and plays.
What does this do to your body? It makes you feel Tight, Tense, Anxious, Uneasy, Pensive and it’s really hard to perform when you’re feeling all wound up.
In life we want to feel Confident - soft - find the freedom in play - focused - worry free, ease, we want to feel comfortable in our body.
COMMON LIMITING BELIEFS
“I’m not good enough”
“I’m scared to give it my all”“I’m going to fail”
“I’m not ready”
“I’m too anxious”
“People will judge me”
“I don’t have the proper body”
“I have no chance”
“This is out of my league””I’m too overwhelmed”
STRATEGIES
Bring awareness to your roadblocks, thought patterns and barriers that are holding you back. This is the first step in letting go of these patterns. It allowsthem to come to the surface in order to be cleared.
PLEASE SEE WORKSHEET #2 ‘GAP’ Worksheet
Mantras - Tapping can Help Rewire the unconscious
Journaling Your Beliefs - and bringing awareness into what they are, and why they’re there.
Challenge Your Thoughts & Find the Facts - draw comparisons to your beliefs, and actions. And work them backwards. And write out every thing you know to be TRUE!
For Example: If your core belief is that “People will think I’m a loser if I LOSE”
Ask yourself, why? Did you have critical parents, were you teased as a child, or tried to fit in as a kid and felt like it was hard to make friends? All of these thoughts have a root and there are ways to flip the script. Challenge the thought by reframing it to “Win or Learn”, Most people don’t even have the guts to try a Jiu-Jitsu Class, LET ALONE A COMP! That’s amazing!!REMEMBER YOUR WHY - Your Motivating Factor can be very powerful in helping you overcome your Fears and doubts. Always pull that into your focus as much as you can.
State Elicitation - think about a time that you felt really positive, happy, calm and successful. Maybe one of your best games , or one of your happiest days- and turn up all of the colours, sounds, scents, emotions, make it feel as real as possible and lock that in place. Try to reach back to the last successful competition, or how you feel super flowy in practice instead of a negative moment.
