Mental Games: Dealing with Pressure and Contextualizing Competing
Mental Games: Dealing with Pressure and Contextualizing Competing We are all competitors. We want so badly to win, that sometimes we forget why we started competing. For most of us, it was because we started as typical meatheads who wanted to try and lift awkward things from the floor to platforms and above our heads. As we continue to grow, our expectations for ourselves increase significantly. You win your first competition? Now you have to win the next five. If you don’t, it’s perceived as a step backwards. You hit a national record? Now you better go and hit a world record. And if you don’t you perceive yourself as a failure and putting yourself out there to compete gets more and more difficult. I’ll give you an example. Two years ago, I won my first National Championship as a u90. Then, I went and hit the United States axle record. I spontaneously signed up for a local show a few weeks later. In that local show, I went in with the expectation that I c...