Hello, and welcome back to Brain in the Game. Brain in the Game is a podcast that's been specifically designed for athletes, coaches, and parents who are looking to do their sport just that little bit smarter. Brain in the Game is the elite of the mindset tools, and I'm your host, Dave Diggle.
In this episode 62, we're going to look at how to handle big competition pressure. As the first week of the Rio Olympics settles in and all the media starts to settle down and all the dramas about whether the event will go ahead or not, starts to give way to the athletes as they come to the centre and their performances become what we watch rather than news that we listen to. As many of these athletes step up and do their best, we sometimes forget that every single one of those athletes, despite looking cool, calm, and collected, are actually dealing with tremendous amount of nerves. Many of them at their first ever Olympics, maybe even their first real serious event, end up with the demons inside battling over how they perform their routines or their performances on the day. All those years of preparation, perseverance, and dreams come often down to these two weeks of intense competition pressure.
So how do we handle those big competition pressures? And why do some people handle them way than others. We've seen this week already, and running into day 2, that some of the nerves are getting to some of the athletes, making silly mistakes that they've probably not made all year. So how do we do that? Is that a physical thing or is that a psychological thing? Well, clearly, it has to be a psychological, a mental process that they're going through, something that's derailing their performance that hasn't derailed them in the previous competitions. So therefore, if it's a mental a mental aspect and an emotional management tool, then there's something we can do smart about it. And that's what we're going to talk about today. Whether it be an Olympics, a World Championships, whether it be a national title, the Fear of consequence is what deroules many athletes over and above their ability to perform. So we've all heard commentators say, The athlete that rises to the occasion, they're the ones that end up becoming the champions. Or do they? Do they actually rise to the occasion? Is it something within the occasion that makes them perform better than they've ever performed before?
Well, the reality is very few athletes actually perform better under that intense pressure. More often than not, the athlete that does perform well under that pressure has trained himself to react and respond to pressure. It's not necessarily an innate part of them that says, Right, this is the biggest competition, the biggest show on Earth. Now's the time to be the best at what you do. Because that's way too much pressure, way too much expectation, and way too many fears of consequence of things going wrong to allow any athlete to actually perform the way that they know they can. So the reality is those that do step up, those that do the best routines, the fastest times are actually well-versed at switching it into that next stage. Those of you have heard me talk about stepping up to that pressure, stepping up to that performance. I've used the analogy of Roger Federer in the tennis, when often he'll get to lose a match and you'll step up a gear. That's because he's well-versed at how to do that, how to dig in and find the performance that he knows he's got inside him. It's a performance that he's done numerous times before, and he knows exactly where, psychologically, to go and find it.
So today we're going to talk about how do we prepare that? How do we get to a stage where we know we've got that confidence, we've got that familiarity to be able to step in there and go, Right, this is the biggest show on Earth. Now, let me switch that on. So if they don't always step up and allow them to rise to the occasion, then what are they doing? Why do they not rise to the occasion every single time? Why do they not give us their best performance every single time they're put under the spotlight, under the competitive microscope. It comes down often to how we value the performance or the consequences of that performance. So clearly, as an athlete, I know what it's like to perform I know what it's like to be on that world stage and step up and have everybody looking at you and everybody turn around and go, This is the biggest stage. Now is the time to do it. And that's often where the fault lies. As an athlete, We, too, look at it and go, That one's worth way more than that one over there, or the one I did two weeks ago or six months ago.
What we're doing is raising the value and the importance and what ones we prioritise prioritise to perform on. So from a psychological perspective, the thing I never knew as an athlete was to be able to manage my performances and consistency. And you've hear me talk about frequently enough now to know that The sign of a champion is those that can perform each and every time. It's that consistency. It's that replicability. It's that ability to step up and be that athlete at every single competition that allows us to be a champion. Why do we tend to value one performance over another? Why do we not look at a club competition and say, This is just as important for my growth as the Olympics is for my objective. Why do we not look at trials and different kinds of competition and say, Right, they're just as important, maybe for a different reason, but they have the same value point so that we can step up and perform on that level each and every time. Well, it's just training, really, and it's just the environment that we've got around us and how, as humans, we tend to hierarchise different things over other performances.
Clearly, we know as the Olympics have started this week, and we all watched the opening ceremony, that pageantry, that importance, that glamour, that glitz, that is valued greater than in our and in everybody's social understanding, then maybe the regional competition that happened two weeks ago in front of an audience for, say, 50 people. We know that certain things have a bigger consequence. We know that when you perform on a world stage and you do do that performance and you win that competition, then there's a greater number of people who will know who you are, who will see that success. Our internal sense of achievement is greater based on the amount of people and the number of people who recognise that success. Humans, we're pack animals. The more people in the pack, the greater we get revered by the bigger number of people, the better we feel about our position in that pack. But the reality is, if we want to perform consistently every single time, then it makes sense that we create a value point for every single performance, whether that be the regional competition, the national, the international, or the Olympic or the world.
It doesn't matter if we want to get that replicability of performance. And that's something as an athlete, we need to shift in our mindset. It's not that's only this competition. It should be that's my opportunity to perform at that level again. When I can perform at that level, it allows me to step up to the next level. That should be just as important to us, just as much value as being at the top of the field. Let's talk about value, why one performance is more important than another. It won't lead to consistency or confidence if we value that performance. Because if you go out in a regional competition and you do the best performance of your life, the reality is in the back of your mind, you're saying, But that's just a regional comp. Yet we want to replicate that, don't we? If you've just done the best performance of your life, you want to be able to replicate that performance each and every time. If you don't value it, then your brain won't replicate it. If you don't turn around and say to yourself, Wow, I did that. I'm so proud of that. That's exactly what I want to do next time.
It won't be a selectable performance pattern in your brain. The next time you go out because you've devalued that and said it's only a regional comp, your brain is going to go, Right, we've got to recreate a performance. So what do we want to do? It'll start taking bits and bobs from everywhere, and it will create it there and then rather than replicate something that's been successful. Humans do this all the time. If we don't value something, then we don't replicate it, whether it's a school exam, a driving test, or an elite performance in a competition. So how we choose to see every single performance is important for replicability. If we don't value it, we don't replicate it. It's quite simple. And if we train We're doing the performance at our best, yet we do not value it and a competition leading into the big one, then what are we going to train for? What is training for? Ask yourself that question, why do you train? If If you're training to be able to perform at that high level, then every single time that you succeed, you need to value that performance. Otherwise, when you come to the big one, there's no reference points to call upon.
There's no performances in training that you turn around and go, Now I take all those parts and put them together, because the parts have had a decreased or devalued value in your brain. How How do we do this smarter? It's not just skills. We want to complete and compete the way that we've trained, and we want to train the way that we want to compete. We know we need to be calm, focused, and confident, and this comes from good preparation. That's not new news. We know that when we're calm, it's because we know we know what we need to do. We trust, we've done all the preparation. We're focused when we're very clear on what we're trying to achieve, what we're performing, how we're supposed to be performing. And we're confident when we've got that history of success, when we recognise, yes, this isn't the first time I'm going to do this. I have done this a squillion and seven times before. Of course, I'm confident. I know exactly what to expect. Being calm, being focused, and being confident is all about preparation. How we prepare is the critical aspect. This has very, very little to do with the competition itself.
If it's a regional competition, a national, international, or Olympics, the same preparation process needs to be put in place. We know that raising the value and the importance add to the pressure if we're not used to it, which also adds the fear of consequences. The fear of consequences increase our unforced errors, if you want to use tennis terminology. Those unforced errors are our brain's way of saying, This is all going way too fast. I don't know what to do. Let me make it up, and we make mistakes. We want to perform subconsciously. Whenever you watch the best of the best, they make it look easy because in their mind, literally in mind, it is easy. They've done it before. They're just performing what they've done in training, in preparation. I often talk to my clients about the three stages of their world, whether they're the non-athlete, the athlete, or the pure athlete, Or there's just themselves are recharging the student you and the performer you. You've heard me talk about this before on previous podcasts. The non-athlete is just when they're down tools, they're relaxing, they're recharging, they pressures off them, and they're just being who they are.
The student mode is the learning mode. This is where we are when we train. We're okay to make mistakes, we're okay to push boundaries, we're okay to try things that we just would not try in competition, to find where our abilities lie, to find where our boundaries are and what ones we can push and what ones we cannot. The reality is the most simplest thing to do from a mental perspective is perform. Because we have to do less. All we've got to do is what we know we can do. We're not going out there to reinvent something. We're not going out there to push boundaries. We're not going out there to create a performance. We're going out there to produce what we already know, what we've trained, what we expect ourselves, the objectives we set out to achieve. So the most simple thing from a mental perspective to do is do we already know. The most difficult place to be is in training, where we're learning what we don't know, when we're pushing those boundaries, we're growing as an athlete. So if we can train smart, if we can get all the parts put together in our training, then it makes sense that performing them, it comes down to just being able to replicate what we already know.
So I've got five steps that I take every performing athlete through, and I'm going to go through those steps of you right now. So step one is plan past the event. So if you're heading for the Rio Olympics, if I was to be working with you, I have been working with many athletes at that level, have gone off to these games and said, right, what's after these games for you? What does that do? That shifts all the focus from being pinpointed at that one performance. It shifts all the pressure away from just that 30 seconds, that's two minutes or whatever it is they're performing for. It pushes it past that. What step does this Olympics give you in the bigger career picture. So it takes some of that pressure off. It also creates a trajectory, goes past that, which utilises these Olympics. So knowing many athletes get to the big event and then they go, I don't know what else to do after this. This is it. This is everything. This is my whole world. This is if it goes belly up today, my life is over. That's a crazy place to be because what all you're saying to yourself is, if you do not perform, If you do not do everything you possibly can right this instant, then that's it, game over.
But that's not what it is, is it? We know that. We know there's a life after performing. We know there's probably always going to be another competition. You may not make the next Olympics after that. You may be too old or whatever the realities of those are. However, if we build this as a trajectory long past this performance, then we lower the anxiety associated to that one-off performance. I've just watched some of the athletes, obviously being a former gymnast, I've been watching the gymnastics, and there's been a lot of very simple mistakes being made. Often this is made because of the anxiety, the increased pressure, the increased expectation. These athletes, these gymnasts would have done these routines, stuck these landings 100 times, 200 times before they even got selected for the Olympics. Why are they making mistakes now when they shouldn't be making those very simple mistakes? It's because they've increased the value, which means they've increased the pressure on themselves. So planning past the event lowers that anxiety, decreases that pressure. Also, it gives you something to look forward to beyond that point. So we utilise the serotonin, the dopamine in the brain to look past that and to be excited about what comes after that.
Step two is to complete the funnel process. Now, again, many of you have listened to my podcast. Now, I talk about the funnel process, the seven to two. The 7: 00 to 2: 00 funnel process is you sitting down as an athlete and going, Right, for me to perform at that event, what do I need to do to get what I want? If I want to compete in a certain way, then what do I need to do to get there? If you go through that process and you tick all those boxes, and you come to competition day, and you have done everything that you've highlighted, there's less fear of consequence because you have prepared well. Not only have you prepared well, you know you've prepared well. You've created this filed system that you've ticked along the way. Every single time that you tick a box, you release serotonin in the brain. You feel good about that. Every single time you release serotonin, you've ticked a box, you move on to the next one, you create traction, momentum. We stack the filing system, the funnel, to be top-heavy. So the first part of the preparation has more in it than the last part.
So we get that momentum, that speed of ticking 10 things, 8 things, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, whatever it is. It gets faster and gets more momentum into that. For those of you who are doing big preparation, maybe over a year, two years. For the Olympics, it's over four years. So in order to do that, we have funnels that feed the funnels that feed the funnels that feed the funnels. Each one of these funnels allows you to get to the next phase. It creates that traction, that framework, that mental framework, that reliability to go, I've done all this, which means I can step to the next level. That confidence, that familiarity, gets sucked into your subconscious. You know you've done it before, so therefore you know you can do it again. You're ticking it off. You're rewarding yourself. You're telling yourself, Yep, done. I can do that. So when you get put under pressure in the next funnel, you go, No, I've been here. I'm prepared for this. And then the next funnel, next funnel, all the way through to the competition. So step two is all about funnelling. So the funnel process is designed to make sure that you feel like you've done everything possible for you to be ready and prepared for the next phase, whether that's another funnel or the competition itself.
Step three is visualisation, which is the cornerstone for much of what we do. It builds that familiarity to what you're going to do. So I tell all my clients to visualise on the world stage. I want to make sure when you step out in front of those, whether it be a thousand people, a hundred thousand people or a million people on TV. You've been there before. There is no surprises. There is no, look at all those people. It's I've been here. I know what to see. I've seen it 100, 200, 300 times inside my head. I know what to expect. This is nothing new to me. If you can visualise your performance the way that you want your performance to be on that global stage each and every day, when you step onto that stage, you're somewhere comfortable, you're somewhere familiar. You've been there before. This is like being at home for you. This home away from home inside your mind. You will always have increased emotions because you are on that world stage, you are there. However, by being familiar about that, you lower those to a point where they don't have a negative influence on your performance, on your ability to perform.
They're not going to cloud your patterns and triggers that you've honed so particularly well to perform the way that you want. So visualisation is a cornerstone skillset. Not only do How do you perform on that well stage, not only to perform the way that you desire to perform, but you celebrate the successes that come with that. So there's that emotional reward for being on that stage. There's that emotional reward for performing that specific way. Again, we're looking at the serotonin, the dopamine, the wants, the reward process of, Yep, that was awesome. Now I want more of that. Step four is bring a piece of the competition into your training, so you can take your training into the competition. You heard me talk earlier about why do we train? Will we train so that we can perform a certain way? If we don't train for that performance, when we go to perform, then it's essentially turning up unprepared. So we want to make sure every single training session, and I even get the youngest of youngest athletes who don't compete yet, to bring a little bit of a competition into their training session. Whether that be, Right, you've learned this new skill today.
We're going to sit down and one at a time, you're going to go through and you're going to show us that new skill. So we desensitise and familiarise athletes into performing the way that they want to perform. And we build that through every single stage of their development, to the point where if they're going to go and compete on a international stage, then every single session that they train should have a A competition component in that. A part of their training is training to compete. So when they do step up in that competition, they're actually taking a neural connexion between what they do in training to what they do in competition. I've seen numerous athletes step up to competition and go, I'm not prepared. I want one more training session. I want to do one more routine. I to have another go at this skill. When you ask them why, they'll say, I don't feel ready. I don't feel like I'm here and prepared. But you've done it 100 times in training, but that was different. That was in my gym. What's the familiarities? I stepped into a boxing ring with a young fighter the other day, and I said to him, When you go into a professional fight, what's different?
And he said to me, It's a different ring, it's a different blah, blah, blah, blah, blah I said, So there's more things that are the same than that are different. I want you to remember that. So when you prepare correctly, when you step into that competition environment, you'll recognise all the things that are the same, not the things that are different. Once we recognise those similarities, we feel comfortable, calm, and confident. That's exactly the best platform to perform from. Looking for those similarities. So the key to doing that is training an athlete to bring a competition inside every single training session. It can be two minutes. It's at the start. It could end up being 20% of their training when they're going for an elite competition. They're still in student mode, but they switch from student to performer so frequently that they know how to step up from the student and leave all those learnings to one side and just perform what they know and then go back to the student mode so they can unpack it and repack it. Number Four is a critical aspect to creating athletes that can deal with the pressure of high performance competitions.
The last one is to set objectives. Now, when we set an objective, we've got a clear focal point. When we're focused on something very, very specific, our environment has less of an influence over us. By training an athlete every single day to set an objective, what's your objective in training today? It's to achieve A, B, C, and D. Awesome. Next day, we reward that night, and the next day, next day, next day. So we train the athletes to be incredibly focused on objective, not reactionary to their environment. If we're stepping on the world stage, the last thing we want to do is go, This is huge. What do I do now? We want them to step on that world stage and go, I know exactly what I need to do. I'm focused on my objectives. I'm not focused on what may or may not happen. I know what's going to happen. I've been here a squillion times before. I know how to set an objective and be focused on that objective. We want to create that funnel vision towards an objective. So what are the five steps? Plan past the event, complete the funnel process, utilise visualisation for being there, creating that familiarity, Bring a piece of the competition inside every training session so we can take our training session into the competition and set clear, concise, and precise objectives in every single aspect of our preparation.
So we switch into that pattern of focusing on what we want, not what may or may not go wrong. So as you settle in for the Olympics and you're watching these athletes on the world stage in Rio, just remember, the reality is they're no different from you or me. All they're doing is trying to battle their own fear of consequence. What you can do is to do it smarter. You can begin that process, that training process right now. When you get off this podcast, think to yourself, what one of those five skill sets can I instantly apply to my training? Where am I going with this? Where do I want to compete? Is my world stage next week, next year, four years away? How do I prepare smart? So when I get that opportunity to step on that world stage, I'm not focusing on what can go wrong. I'm focused on what I'm going to do right. I hope you've enjoyed this podcast, and I look forward to our next episode. And until then, train smart and enjoy the ride. My name's Dave Diggle, and I'm the mind coach.
