Why stress can rob athletes of success.
The biggest problem athletes face, is that no matter how fit and prepared they may be for an event, they can never be 100 percent certain that they will be performing at their best during that event..The reason is that the stress of pressure on the field harms performance. And the best way to insure yourself against the effects of stress on your performance is to raise your baseline stress tolerance.
When it comes to stress management most athletes prepare themselves to perform under pressure by rehearsing for every aspect of the event and having strategies in place to cope during the event. This approach works well for performance stress prior, during and after an event. Unfortunately this approach is of limited benefit, because it cannot redress the negative effects of the total life time of stress experiences each of us carries. This personal stress history creates an unconscious stress load which impacts negatively on performance.
