“I’m Just an Anxious Athlete”: How Your (And Coach’s) Labels Get in the Way

“I’m just an anxious athlete.”

“I’m not good under pressure.”

“I’m just not competitive.”

“I can’t reset well.”

Often, these statements trickle into athlete’s vocabularies without them noticing and without any second guessing.

The experiences they’ve had become who they believe they are - leaving little (if any) room for change.

And athletes aren’t the only ones susceptible to this - it happens to coaches too. “Oh, they’re just not resilient,” “They don’t have any drive in them,” “They just aren’t a competitor.” We place ourselves or our athletes into boxes, reinforcing the belief and preventing room for other possibilities.

But when we, as sport psychology providers, hear these types of statements, we get curious.

How is the athlete responding to anxiety and pressure? What makes it difficult to respond to challenges the way they want to? Is the statement always true or are there moments of exception? Who did they hear the statement from first? What have they tried already? How does environment impact their behavior?

In ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) this idea is referred to as “self as content” vs. “self as context.”

Self as content = The story I hold about the athlete I am. A fixed, stable space without room for change.

Self as context = A place of observing, where my thoughts and experiences are not who I am and can change in different settings and conditions.

Let’s use an example to illustrate.

A weightlifter says, “I’m a mess under pressure.” Their coach says, “They’re not resilient. They just crumble when it matters most.” Upon closer look, we see an athlete that’s usually pretty eager to take heavy attempts and ask coach to go up after a heavy make in training. (They want to push themselves.) In competition, they feel confident and composed through warmups and on approach to their first attempt. (They have access to some solid arousal regulation and mindset approaches that allow them to manage pre-performance nerves and pressure of the environment). When they make a lift, they stay cool and regulated and shift their attention to the next lift. (They’re capable of being present.) This changes after misses. In training, a miss leads to withdraw. They don’t want to take another. Nerves go way up, confidence goes way down. In competition, misses send them spiraling. They can’t think about the next lift because they’re already thinking about missing every other lift and not totaling.

This is not an athlete that is simply “a mess under pressure” and “just isn’t resilient.” This is an athlete facing specific barriers to translating the mental skills they have to a specific challenge, that hasn’t had the conditions and support to practice navigating these situations differently, and that might need to debunk some inaccurate stories about themselves (self as content) and develop new ways of approaching mistakes.

None of these steps can happen if both athlete and coach assume the story is already written.

Observe yourself this week.

Consider noticing when you make “I’m a …..” “I always….” and “I can’t….” statements. Adjust them.

Are you an anxious athlete or an athlete that experiences anxiety before heavy attempts? Are you unable to reset or have you just not figured out a way of resetting that works for you yet?