Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome back to the Raising Elite Competitors podcast. This is a special athlete tip episode. So, athletes, this one is for you. I'm Coach Brie. I'm a mental performance coach for girl athletes and I'm so excited that you're here, because today I'm talking about when you do not feel ready to compete, which is pretty normal. There's times when, as an athlete, you don't feel ready for the competition, but you've got to go do it. You've got to go compete and do your thing and do your best. How do we navigate those moments? What should we be doing to help us feel more ready? I'll talk about how feeling ready isn't necessarily the same thing as being ready and some simple things that you can be focusing on when you do find yourself in those moments. And before I get into today's episode, I want to give a shout out to an athlete inside our program, the Elite Mental Game. This is our signature self-paced mental training program for girl athletes, proven to increase your mental strength so you can separate yourself as an athlete. So Ava is who I'm giving a shout out to today. Ava is a girls hockey player in Arlington, massachusetts and she has been absolutely crushing it on the field. So she changed into a new hockey team this season, which, if you've ever done that as an athlete, that's a kind of a hard place to be sometimes. You know. You've got like new dynamics, new teammates, new coaches, like it can be tough. And not only has she transitioned and established herself as an amazing teammate and a leader, she feels like she has been a lot better on the ice, her effort has been better. She's been able to show up more confidently as an athlete. So, ava, I just want you to know that we see you and you're doing great. So keep it up. Keep doing that work physically as a teammate and as a leader on your team, but also mentally, so that you can continue to separate yourself as an athlete.

Speaker 1: 1:48

All right, let's get into today's episode Athletes. Like I said, if you have ever found yourself in this situation where you've got to go out and you've got to compete, maybe you have a big competition, maybe you have not. It's not a big competition, but you have to do it and you're not feeling ready. So maybe you're not feeling confident, you're not feeling like, for whatever reason, you're ready to take on the competition. You know to show up and do your thing and maybe you're just like feeling a little bit off. There could be a number of reasons why you're feeling this way. Some common ones are maybe it's a big competition, so we tend to get, you know, nervous for good reason, because that competition matters to us and we want to do really well. And so then our brain can start to tell us things like maybe you're not ready. You start to second guess, like if you are ready to do what you need to do.

Speaker 1: 2:31

Out there Other reasons, like expectations. You've got expectations for yourself, expectations maybe that you're feeling from coaches, parents, teammates, and you're just feeling the weight of that. Sometimes you just feel a little off. You wake up and you're like okay, something feels off. Maybe you feel like you didn't have a good practice the night before. The day before You're like well, my last time playing I wasn't practicing well, so is that going to happen again? So we start to kind of go down all of these paths which can make us show up and feel maybe not ready. Here's what I want you to focus on in those moments.

Speaker 1: 3:09

Feeling ready is different than being ready. Feeling ready is a feeling, and feelings are not things that we really want to rely on when it comes to being ready to compete. You won't always feel ready as an athlete, to do what you need to do Okay, even as an adult. There's other times in your life where you have felt this too, where I don't feel like working out all the time. I don't feel like doing the things that I want to do or that I need to do Okay, you still have to show up and do them, okay, and so I want you to get this out of your mind that you need to feel ready in order to compete. You don't actually have to feel ready. You do have to choose to be ready in those moments, and here's where there's a little bit of a difference, and those little differences make a huge impact in how you show up as an athlete.

Speaker 1: 3:49

Typically, the best athletes have these slight shifts in how they're thinking. Champions think differently. Really good athletes think differently about those things. Average athletes wait to feel ready in order to compete and play their best, and then afterwards, when they don't actually probably play well, they're like well, I just didn't feel ready or I felt off, and they blame it on that. Because you're listening to this, you're not one of those athletes. So, instead of waiting around for a feeling which may or may not come when you're ready to compete.

Speaker 1: 4:17

You're going to choose to be ready. How do you choose to be ready? Being ready is a choice. Okay, here's how you choose to be ready. You're going to choose in this next competition. Okay, before I'm about to go out there, I'm choosing. Then I'm going to step onto the court or the field or the mat, this pool, wherever you compete, and I'm going to choose to work hard. I am going to choose to get out of my comfort zone. I'm going to choose to focus on what's in my control. I'm going to choose to be a good teammate. I'm going to choose to take coaching. So if you can decide that, even though I don't feel ready, this is the choice I'm going to make, then you are ready.

Speaker 1: 4:56

So if you can say to yourself and you can confidently answer those questions yes, yes, I'm going to show up and I'm gonna work hard in this competition, no matter what comes my way, I'm gonna give 100%. I'm gonna show up and I'm gonna be a good teammate, no matter what the score is. What's going on with the score? What's going on with my scores? Whatever, I'm going to choose to be an encouraging teammate that looks people in the eye and encourages them. Okay, you're gonna choose that.

Speaker 1: 5:18

I'm going to choose to take coaching. I'm going to choose to focus on what's in my control. I'm not going to worry about the refs. I'm not going to worry about the what the other team might be doing. I'm not going to worry about all those things that are in control. I'm going to totally focus on what's in my control and give a hundred percent. If you can say yep, I can do that, then you're ready. You are ready. You don't have to wait around for a feeling. You don't have to be like, oh okay, well, the feeling didn't come, so I'm not going to play. Well, no, you just get to choose to do what you do every single day in practice and every single day in competition, because every single day in practice, you're probably working hard. You're probably working hard to be a good teammate, you're taking coaching, You're focusing on things that are in your control as much as possible. You're doing all those things, and so you can choose that. You know what. I might not feel ready, but here's what I'm going to do I'm going to show up. I'm going to work hard, focus on what's in my control. I'm going to take coaching. I'm going to be a good teammate, all of those things, a hundred percent, you can do. And when you decide that's what you're going to do, ta-da, you're ready. Okay, you were not waiting around, 100% motivated all the time to do things.

Speaker 1: 6:22

Okay, as an athlete, the way that you separate yourself is you're not waiting for a feeling, you're choosing to be ready. So, guess what? You're ready. So the next time you find yourself in that situation where you're like, ugh, not feeling it, okay, you're gonna tell yourself, say you know what, even though I'm not feeling it, I can still show show up and work hard, even though I might not be feeling it right now. I'm going to trust that if I step out onto the competition floor, mat court, whatever, and I'm just going to give everything that I have, I'm going to respond quickly to anything that happens. I'm going to adapt. Then I'm ready. Okay, being ready is a choice, it is not a feeling.

Speaker 1: 6:58

Now, some of the things that athletes do in the elite mental game to help them get to that feeling of ready, because it is helpful when you do feel ready. When you feel ready and you choose to be ready, when those two things align, it's whoo you're feeling like you feel, like you walk a little lighter out there, your head's a little higher. It does feel good. And so the things that athletes inside the elite mental game do is they have a specific pregame routine that they do every single time before they compete and that helps get their brain and their body into the right physiological state in order for them to compete. Every athlete in our program has their own custom, what we call their hype number, on a scale of one to 10. This is how hyped they need to be. This is the number that they need to get out in order for them to play their best. So they find what that number is, 10 being like they need to be super hyped, like running through a brick wall, and one is on the lower end, like I need to be more calm and steady.

Speaker 1: 7:45

Every athlete knows what their hype number is and they have a specific routine to get there, and so athletes in our program have a combination of a specific visualization that they do a certain song, that they listen to a certain warm-up routine. They have a routine. It doesn't have to be complicated. Some of other routines start the night before. Like they do a specific visualization, some of our athletes do the highlight reel visualization the night before a competition and then at the competition themselves, right before, they have like two or three things that they do every single time before they compete and that helps them get to that state that they need to be.

Speaker 1: 8:15

So if you wanna take this another step, make sure you have a specific pregame routine so that you are getting to that feeling of ready more often and you're not just waiting around for things to happen. You probably have some things that you already do, naturally, before you compete, that you probably do every time, but the more specific you can get and the more routine you can get with it so that you get to your hype number every single time, that is going to make a huge difference. So that's what athletes inside the elite mental game are doing, so that they can get to that feeling of ready as well as choosing to be ready. All right, athletes, I hope this was helpful. Listen to it before your next competition, where maybe you're not feeling it because you don't have to feel it, you get to choose. All right, I'm Coach Bree, a mental performance coach for girl athletes and athletes. I'll see you in the next athlete tip episode of the podcast.