The goal is to reach a state in which you can tell yourself "Right now I feel stressed!" This is the first and most essential step. After this you will always be able to recognize when you are under stress. This will allow you to pass to the next step and learn how to deal with stress. In this stage you will learn how to reach your maximum potential even when you are UNDER stress. One thing must be clear from the get-go, and that is, that stress CAN NOT be dismissed. It is impossible to dismiss it. By following my reasoning (although I am not a psychologist) you will learn how to face stress and regulate it, as well as, how to perform to your full potential even when in a stressed situation.
First, after many years of searching and researching I have come up with a simple definition for stress:
Stress is what you feel and react to in a threatening situation and in uncertainty.
However, the threatening situation can be real, like a car that suddenly appears in your lane, somebody attacking you or an opposing player running towards you in order to tackle you. Threatening situations can also be vague and unreal.
In sports most threatening situations are a result of our thoughts and they exist only in our imagination or mind.
For example the following thoughts:
-What will happen if we lose the game?
-What if I play badly or get injured in the game?
-What if I don't play well and the coach takes me out?
Stress can come suddenly and last a second (a sharp turn ahead while biking) or it can be continuous, like in soccer throughout the whole season.
Stress can cause a bad feeling, however; it can also be pleasant like the uneasiness before "that" first date.
Stress can be negative and can hurt our performance, but it can be positive as well and push us to better functioning (to train and prepare better for the game and try harder).
In soccer there are NO SITUATIONS of real stress - a threat over our lives or over our well being. The only real threat is about being injured by an opponent, when he is wildly running towards you and trying to hurt you intentionally.
We create all other stress situations in sport; as their origin is in our thoughts, imagination and feelings.
One of the main characteristics of soccer and all other sports is UNCERTAINTY.
It does not matter against who you are playing, you can never know in advance what will be the final score and you don't know how good you will perform in the game.
Therefore; UNCERTAINTY AMPLIFIES STRESS!!!
If we would know the score from the beginning we would not feel under any pressure)
It is difficult and almost impossible to cancel the feeling of real stress, but it is possible to cope with it in such a way that will lessen its influence as much as possible.
It is certainly possible to significantly reduce the level of stress that originates in the thoughts that occupy our head and it is possible to regulate the level of stress!
What happens in our minds is the following process (I write this because I lived through it and it is a personal occurrence, as well as a team occurrence as I was talking to my ex teammates and coaches who all experienced these mental turn of events): When our brain recognizes a real or imagined stressful situation, it prepares the body for immediate reaction. People are capable of reacting to stressful situations in one or two ways: fight or flight.
In other words, when we face a threatening situation our brain commands our body to prepare immediately to fight the threat or run from it. This is a survival reaction that dates from the primitive ages of civilization. Accordingly, when the ancient man came across a small animal, he prepared to fight it, but if the animal was bigger and stronger than he was, he prepared to run away. In short: he ate or he was eaten!
When we react to a dangerous situation today - even unreal and based on our thoughts, our body reactions are the same as the instinct to survive: to fight or to flight.
However; as people and especially as athletes we cannot run or fight. On the contrary, we have to remain in position in the game, and function under stressful situations. As soccer players we need more than just function, we need to give our best performance and maximum ability and it is not a simple task.
What happens in our body at times of stress?
As we have stated the body automatically prepares for survival reaction. In this state, our glands release into our bodies various substances. One of them is adrenaline, whose function is to prepare the different body systems for functioning in an emergency.
What do we feel when this happens?
In our body: - the blood pressure rises and the heart rate/beat gets faster in order to provide more blood to the muscles, the sugar level in the blood rise as well providing more energy for all the muscle functions. The body perspiration increases, in order to cool down the body and all the body systems that are not essential for survival stop or decrease their functioning (the digestive system and others)
Our emotions: - there is a feeling of danger and anxiety,
Our behavior: - typical reactions are violence, escape, withdrawal and lowering the reaction threshold.
Our thoughts: - it impairs our concentration ability, we experience difficulty taking decisions and confusion.
All these changes find their expression in the body and thoughts of the soccer player. If they happen before or during the game they hurt the player's ability to play to the maximum of his potential.
How does stress influence the player's ability during the game?
Does any stress hurt performance?
The answer to these questions lies in the illustration you all have in your notebooks from the winter session done at the Union Valle Elementary school that dealt with Intensity and Ability and it looks like an inverted U. This is called an inverted U curve. It illustrates that there is an optimal ability to stress ratio and if you can find it in yourself and keep it under control, you will be at the height of your game.
On the left side of the curve you can see that in the beginning with the increase in stress levels our ability increases as well until it reaches its maximum (an example for such situation are contests or games without a crowd. In such games there is less stress and usually athletes and teams are unable to show their maximum ability). From this follows that a certain level of stress is essential. But still, if stress level continues to rise, ability is impaired. (if we continue with the previous example, usually in big contests, like State Cup Finals, ODP Regional Tournament Finals, League and Tournament Finals, athletes do not break any set records and usually the quality of the game is poor.)
Each player has his own specific curve. In other words, the range of maximum ability changes from one player to another. Some players reach their maximum potential at lower stress levels, any increase in the level of stress will immediately impair their ability, and there are players that reach their maximum only under higher stress levels. Such players will be less influenced by great stress, however; lower level stress will lead them to poor performances.
Your goal: learn how to react to stress, so you can find the level of stress that best fits the range of your maximum potential. After you have achieved this, you should try to bring yourself to this level of stress, before and through the game.
This is not an easy goal- but it is certainly possible!!!!
Let's check now how does stress express itself in athletes before and during the game.
Sings of stress before the game. (I will try to list the most common ones I used to experience and some that through my conversations with teammates and coaches were revealed to me.)
Some players can show the sign of stress a couple of days before the game, and others can only feel stress the night before the game:
-Difficulty falling asleep.
-Difficulty to engage in activities that require concentration, like reading a book.
-Lower reaction threshold, being easily irritated by, siblings/friends/parents.
-Lack of tolerance.
-Difficulty remaining in the same place.
-Stomach aches, feeling uneasiness in your stomach, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea.
-Strong perspiration, frequent urination (everyone who has been around players before a game has experienced the never-ending urge of the players to go to the rest room.)
-Headache, dryness of the mouth.
-Cramp of muscles.
-And any additional reactions that each of us has developed through the years.
The closer the day of the game gets, the stronger the feelings and signs of stress become. Usually the peak level of stress is reached in the minutes before the game. Your personal feeling of stress and its signs get stronger the more the result of the game is important to you.
Although the list of stress signs is long enough, every one of you have your own typical signs of stress too. Certainly, not every sign is present in all of us. While I was working with girls, I had a superb player who would vomit almost before every game and with another excellent player at ODP who was yawning exaggeratedly in times of stress. (Thank God, I have recognized early that I was not boring her to tears, but this was her clear sign of stress before the game.)
I do think that there is only one way to know and recognize the signs of stress. Every player should be aware how he experiences stress and its intensity, and be able to say "Now I am under stress" or "I feel under more intense stress than usual".
Only the moment when you accept that you are under stress and you recognize its level of intensity, will you be able to deal with it.
From my personal experience and the knowledge of others, we know that athletes prefer to deny the stress and not to recognize it. Athletes treat stress as a personal weakness.
I have met players who were having all symptoms of stress before every game. These same players never connected these symptoms to stress. They always had the same answer which they thought it was a reasonable explanation to the situation (they ate something bad, 24 hour virus, etc.)
In my opinion the biggest mistake of a player is the denial of the stress he feels. This denial prevents him from dealing with stress and causes an immediate harm to his performance on the field.
Therefore; gaining stress awareness is the first step in coping with stress.
Stop here and please read again through the stress signs and try to find which of them fits your reaction when you are under stress.
I have also found an additional mistake many players and coaches fall victim to. That is their belief that once they are on the field and the game begins the stress disappears. This is a wrong conception and this is the reason why even those players who are conscious about the signs of stress, still don't do anything to cope with stress, because they are sure that with the entry to the field for warming up or later when the referee blows the whistle, the stress will disappear and they will play to their best.
This belief is completely wrong. Stress does not disappear on the field, it simply shows itself in a different way.
Usually, when players enter the game, the physical signs of stress disappear (there is no urge to go to the rest room, stomach aches disappear, etc.) This is because the body "knows" that there is no possibility right now to continue to go to the toilet, but it does not mean that stress has gone.
A player who was under stress on the sidelines or the locker room before the game will continue to be under stress on the field as well.
Signs of stress on the field:
Lack of concentration: - difficulty performing successfully even the simplest passes.
Mistake in perception: - wrong calculation where the ball will go and mistakes in approach to the ball.
Violence:- committing crude, unnecessary fouls.
Low reaction threshold: - easily getting angry, yelling, cursing, (usually yelling and cursing at teammates or referee over mistakes in their play.)
Coordination troubles:- lack of eye-feet coordination that hurts performance.
Feeling heaviness in the legs: - even before the player has started to run, he already feels that it is hard for him to run and move around, his speed is lower and his flexibility is limited.
Easily giving up: - loosing hope and not trying harder.
Tendency to run away from the game and not to cooperate: - this finds its expression, when every time you try to pass the ball to another players he is already well guarded by a defender. Sometimes he even signals not to pass him the ball (a midfielder who does not come to get the ball). Sometimes you can see a tense forward that tries to hide himself behind the defender who is marking him. Looking from aside, you can see that not the defender follows the forward, but on the contrary, the forward attaches himself to the defender. In this way he can not receive the ball and nobody can criticize him afterwards. In many cases it's the forward that complains to the other players that they don't pass him the ball.
Difficulties breathing and dryness in the mouth: - Feeling of lack of air, that is felt not at the end of the game, but even before the first sprint - the air is gone.
These signs of stress change from player to player and not all of them appear in all the players. Specific signs of stress develop in every player during his career. It is understandable, that the appearance of a part of these signs in the players, even for short periods of time, hurts their performance and leads them to making mistakes.
It is important to recognize the signs of stress that are typical for you. This way if you were unable to cope with the stress before the game you will be able to deal with it throughout the game. This is a more difficult task but it is possible.
Stop here and read through the list of stress signs on the field again and try to understand in what way they appear in you. I have comprised the list that I have mentioned at least one for all of the players in the team. Some of the players are ready to admit that they enter the field tense. However; they are wrong when thinking that this is not a big problem, because after a couple of minutes in the game they already get rid of the stress and succeed in showing their maximum ability.
Sometimes this is true. The tension can disappear after a couple of minutes, but what will happen in these minutes, until the stress is gone? When we are dealing with competitive and later professional sport, we don't have the opportunity to play poorly in the first five minutes of the game and then to improve our play. Sometimes you won't be able to correct the first five minutes of lack of concentration with 85 minutes of excellent game.
Remember, that mistakes you make in the 5 minute block of stress in any part of the game could be the difference between winning and losing.
Everyone who is interested in soccer knows that many goals and missed goal opportunities happen in the first 5 minutes of the game, and usually the reason for this lack of concentration as a result of tension in the players. The main AIM of every player (in order to show his maximum ability from the start to the end), should be the recognition of his feeling of stress and its intensity BEFORE a game, and the ability to handle these feelings BEFORE he enters the field.
The secondary goal should be to correctly and immediately identify the feelings of stress and their intensity in a player during the game. In this way the player will be able to deal with this feeling or (not less important) can change his game to fit the existing situation.
Step3: Stress is a normal reaction but it is necessary to control it!In this step you should achieve:
-The right recognition of stress
-Estimation of stress intensity
-Regulation of the level of stress to the most suitable level in order to best fit your maximum potential.
After you gain an understanding about the signs of stress and you admit that the denial of stress is a mistake, you will learn how to cope with stress before the game and till the final wistle. Your goal should be to deal with stress before the game, so when you enter the field, you will be able to fit your level of stress to your best game potential.
The ability to cope with stress during the game is a lot smaller compared to the ability to do so before the game. It is important to leave the unnecessary stress at home or in the dressing room.
Before you learn how to cope with stress it is important to learn what your stress level is at a certain time and what is the stress level that you need in order to reach your maximum potential. To achieve this I offer you to build for yourself a stress-meter. It can be much like a speedometer of a car or like a digital meter or like scales or any other measure that fits. Now concentrate on the stress signs that happen in you in this moment (your breath rate, stomachaches, uneasiness, inner turmoil, lack of concentration, etc.) and try to give them a number value from one to ten.
Do this now!
This value in fact indicates the level of your stress reading this article, (I hope it is low).
Now, try to close your eyes and remember your last game. Go back with your imagination to the minutes before the game and try to think of a number that will describe the level of stress that you experienced before the game.
Do this now!
Close your eyes again and try to remember your best performance - the game in which you felt you reached the maximum of your potential. Try to remember how you felt before the game and write down according to your stress-scale the level of stress you experienced before the game.
Do this now!
The three different values express your stress level at the moment, the stress level you experienced before your last game and the level of stress you need in order to reach your maximum performance.
What is left for you to learn, right now, is how to control your stress level and always reach the best suitable stress level for your maximum performance on the field. This is what we will discuss in the next article. Meanwhile, try to train yourself to work in different situations with your stress meter. Give yourself a stress value that describes the level of stress you experience the night and the morning before the game, couple of hours before stepping on the field, with the blowing ot the wistle and in other situations.
In your free time try to train and find the level of stress you need in order to achieve your maximum ability. You have had for sure a lot of good games. Try to remember them and remember the stress level you had before the game, till you reach the right value for achieving the maximum of your abilities. Be aware that we don't speak about one value but a range of values. (For example: Stress in rest 1-2, stress as I put on my soccer shoes before the game 8-9, the best suitable stress for your performace 6-7, etc)
Please practice and work on this for a week so that next Saturday as I will post my COPING WITH STRESS article, you will know exactly how to react and what to do. Please ask me for any assistance you need in mastering this step. I would also like to ask the parents to try and assist all the players in understanding the concepts put forth in this article.
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