Pregame nerves are normal, but can quickly turn into a distraction and cause you to underperform depending on how you respond to them.
There is no way for us to eliminate pregame nerves altogether. However, what we can do is work to reduce the feelings of nervousness you experience before a game.
The best way to reduce your nerves before a game is by using specific sports psychology exercises that work to calm your mind.
The top five calming exercises for pregame nerves include: mindfulness meditation, count breathing, visualization, talking to teammates, and self-talk.
Exercise #1: Mindfulness Meditation
One of the main ways pregame nerves hurt your play is due to the impact they have on your attention.
When you feel nervous before a game, what do you normally think about?
Do you think about how you wish you weren’t nervous? Do you think about how the game will go and hope you’ll play well?
When you think about how the game will go, or even how you wish you weren’t nervous, your attention isn’t present. This type of thinking only worsens the feelings of nervousness you experience.
Being present is a key characteristic of peak performance. For you to play your best, you need your attention to be in the here and now.
When you are nervous, it’s likely your attention has drifted into the past or future.
The goal with mindfulness meditation is to get you present and calm your mind.
How Mindfulness Meditation Calms Your Mind
When our mind is not calm, it is full of racing thoughts. Pregame nerves lead to and are fueled by racing thoughts.
This is why once you feel nervous and start to worry about how the game will go, your nerves only grow worse.
Mindfulness meditation is an exercise that works to calm your mind. It quiets many of those racing thoughts and centers your attention in the present moment.
The calmer your mind is, the less racing thoughts you’ll have. The less your mind races, the less feelings of nervousness you will experience.
How to Practice Mindfulness Meditation Pregame
The closer you use this mindfulness meditation exercise to the start of the game, the better.
Here’s how you can use mindfulness meditation pregame to calm your nerves:
- Get into a comfortable seated position with your back straight.
- Set yourself a timer for five minutes.
- Close your eyes and begin taking nice, deep breaths.
- Focus your attention on your breathing.
- When you begin to think about anything other than your breathing, notice that and then return your focus onto your breath.
- Repeat this process over and over, continuing to try and focus on your breath, until time is up.
Exercise #2: Count Breathing
The mindfulness meditation exercise described above is a way for you to calm your mind going into a game.
But what happens when the five minutes are over and you have to open your eyes again? Won’t the nervous and anxious thoughts just come back?
Not quite as much as they would have if you had not done the meditation at all. That’s the good news. However, they will still return. Which is where the next exercise comes into play: count breathing.
Count breathing is a simple exercise where you take deep breaths, counting while you inhale and exhale.
How Count Breathing Calms Pregame Nerves
Pregame nerves are driven by thoughts about what will happen. Now this is an incredibly natural way to think going into a game and during a game.
Your goal is to play well, and so it makes sense that your mind will think about what will happen and you may even begin to hope the game goes your way.
However, as natural as this type of thinking is, it’s not actually helpful. In fact, it only worsens nervousness and can lead to full blown sports performance anxiety.
Instead of thinking about how the game will go, you want to be present. Fully focused in the moment, letting go of the outcome.
Count breathing helps take your attention away from the future or the past and center it in the present. Taking deep breaths also works to reduce the physical symptoms of nervousness you feel.
As you inhale and exhale, your mind and body are calmed. But most importantly, as you focus on the counting, your attention is centered in the present moment.
How to Practice Count Breathing Before a Game
What you want to do is decide on your breathing rhythm. How long will you inhale for and how long will you exhale for?
Here are a few common breathing rhythms you can try:
- In for 4, out for 4.
- In for 4, out for 8.
- In for 5, out for 5.
- In for 5, out for 10.
Once you’ve selected your rhythm, it’s time to apply it in the moment. You do this by simply counting in your head as you inhale and as you exhale, and continue to do so over and over again.
One breath won’t do much to calm your pregame nerves. But using the count breathing over and over again will work incredibly well.
Exercise #3: Visualization
Visualization in sports helps build trust in your skills. When you mentally rehearse yourself playing well, confidence will grow.
But it can also be used to calm nerves before a game by visualizing in a slightly different way.
No matter what you visualize, the core principles of visualization in sports always remain the same. You want to go into as much detail as you can and you want to bring emotion into the scene.
Detail and emotion are what make scenes real for us. You want to make the scene you are imagining as real as possible.
How Visualization Calms Pregame Nerves
The type of visualization I recommend using pregame to calm your nerves is a visualization for relaxation.
Our goal when it comes to calming your nerves is to relax the mind. Relaxing the mind allows your racing thoughts to slow down and reduces the stress you feel pregame.
Visualization for relaxation does just that.
What you’ll do is imagine a relaxing scene. As you imagine a relaxing scene, your mind will calm and your body will feel the same emotions you normally feel when you’re really in that relaxing environment.
These feelings of relaxation and calm will then be carried into the game.
How to Use Visualization to Calm Pregame Nerves
The visualization exercise you can use is a simple one. All it involves is you imagining a relaxing situation. However, we do want to break it down into two different parts.
- Part One: Give yourself time either the morning of the game or when you are warming up to close your eyes and visualize a relaxing scene. Choose a scene where you are the calmest. Spend about five minutes taking deep breaths while visualizing the scene. This is a great way to calm your pregame nerves.
- Part Two: Right before the game begins or as the game is beginning, think back to your relaxing scene. You likely won’t be able to close your eyes here, but you can still think about the relaxing scene and allow the feelings of calm to wash over you.
Applying both parts of this visualization for relaxation will work to calm your nerves going into a game.
Exercise# #4: Talking to Teammates
There was a lacrosse player I worked with who used to experience a lot of nerves before a game. He would get so many pregame nerves, in fact, that he would underperform as a result of them.
As we worked together, we implemented many tools to reduce his pregame nerves. But there was one tool that stood out above the rest that he applied pregame…talking to his teammates.
Now I know that talking to teammates doesn’t necessarily seem like a sports psychology tool.
In this instance, however, we are viewing it as a tool because it is a powerful way to reduce your nerves.
How Talking to Teammates Calms Pregame Nerves
When you feel nervous before a game, it’s easy to worry about the nerves. This worry leads to tension and fuels underperforming.
Talking to teammates works to manage such pregame nerves due to the way in which you are talking to your teammates.
With this tool, I am referring to you talking to your teammates in a fun, lighthearted way. Not in a stressful way.
The lacrosse player joked with his teammates and kept things light going into the game.
This works to calm your nerves because you aren’t putting added pressure on yourself. In fact, you are keeping yourself loose and relaxed by talking in a fun way with your teammates.
How to Use Talking to Teammates to Calm Pregame Nerves
Talking to your teammates needs to be done in a fun and lighthearted way.
You want to be careful not to complain to them or allow the conversation to fuel your worry.
Keep things light.
Joke around with them. Have some fun. Talk about things besides the game.
I know this may seem distracting, but you must remember you are using it as a tool. The nerves you feel are already distracting. They are doing nothing but increasing tension when you play which reduces performance.
Talking to your teammates keeps you relaxed. The more relaxed and loose you are going into the game, the better you will play.
Exercise #5: Self-Talk
Anxiety and nerves in sports are directly related to your thinking. Especially once you notice the feelings of nervousness in the first place.
Self-talk in sports refers to the way you talk to yourself. This will include your thoughts as well as any words you say out loud to yourself.
The way you think and speak to yourself impacts the way you feel, leading to a certain type of behavior on the field or court.
When wanting to reduce pregame nerves, an important aspect of your mental game to pay attention to is your thinking.
How Self-Talk Calms Pregame Nerves
What goes through your head when you feel nervous before a game?
Do you think about how terribly you normally play when you feel that way? Do you think about how much you wish you weren’t nervous and how you need to get rid of the feeling?
Both of those types of thoughts will only worsen your nervousness.
If you thought something different instead, you would see your nervousness reduced.
The way you think pregame either fuels further feelings of nervousness and anxiety, or works to reduce those feelings and increases focus and confidence.
It all depends upon the types of thoughts you have and the language you use with yourself.
Think in a calming and confident way, and your nerves reduce. Think in a stressful and worrisome way, and your nerves worsen.
How to Use Self-Talk to Calm Pregame Nerves
There are two ways you can use self-talk to calm your nerves going into a game.
The first is by focusing on the way you speak to yourself when you notice feelings of nervousness.
Instead of wishing you didn’t feel that way and trying to get rid of the feelings, you want your thoughts to be focused on accepting the feelings you’re experiencing and then reminding yourself that you can play well in spite of the fact you’re nervous.
This idea of acceptance is crucial to reducing your pregame nerves.
The second way you can use self-talk to reduce nervousness is a self-talk routine.
This is a list of calming and confident statements you read to yourself before the game. Then, right before the game and even during the game, you can think about those statements to fill your head with positive thoughts.
Final Thoughts
Pregame nerves are normal in sports, but can quickly lead to underperforming if you don’t manage them in a positive way.
If you try to resist the nerves or wish they weren’t there, this will only worsen the worry you experience.
Instead, you want to use proven sport psychology tools that work to calm your pregame nerves.
There are five main ones I suggest you choose from:
- Mindfulness Meditation
- Count Breathing
- Visualization
- Talking to Teammates
- Self-Talk
Don’t try to use all of them at once. Choose one or two and stay consistent with them. Then, either add another or swap one out until you find the exercise(s) that are the most effective at calming your nerves before a game.
Thank you for reading and I wish you the best of success in all that you do.
