How to Handle Performance Anxiety as an Athlete

Verywell Mind articles are reviewed by mental health professionals. Reviewers confirm the content is thorough and accurate, reflecting the latest evidence-based research. Content is reviewed before publication and upon substantial updates. Learn more.

Sport performance anxiety, sometimes called "choking," involves a decrease or impairment in performance due to perceived stress. Such stress is often caused by an athlete's high expectations and the added pressure of being observed by onlookers.

Performance anxiety symptoms are often present in athletes. While some people become "pumped up" during the competition, if you interpret the rush of adrenaline as anxiety and negative thoughts take over, this can interfere with your ability to perform.

Before you learn how to manage the symptoms of anxiety during competitions, it is critical to understand the relationship between anxiety and athletic performance.

How Anxiety Affects Sport Performance

Anxiety before or during athletic competitions can interfere with your performance as an athlete. The coordinated movement required by athletic events becomes increasingly difficult when your body is tense.

A certain level of physical arousal is helpful and prepares us for competition. However, when the physical symptoms of anxiety are too high, they can interfere with your ability to compete.

A certain amount of worry about how you perform can be helpful in competition. At the same time, negative thought patterns and expectations of failure can create a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Anxiety may be affecting your performance if there is a large difference between how you fare during practice and how you do during competitions.

Signs of Sport Performance Anxiety

While everyone's individual experience differs, some common signs of anxiety in sport performance include:

• Apprehensiveness
• "Butterflies" in the stomach
• Chills
• Clammy hands
• Fatigue
• Increased breathing rate
• Muscle tension
• Rapid heart rate
• Sense of panic or impending doom
• Sweating
• Trembling
• Weakness

In some instances, people can experience panic attacks due to performance anxiety. During a panic attack, a person may experience intense, overwhelming fear, nausea, chest pain, pounding heart, difficulty breathing, and dizziness.

Causes of Sport Performance Anxiety

Sport psychology is a division of psychology aimed at better preparing an athlete's mind for competition. Most sports psychologists work with athletes to help them understand what causes this anxiety and to overcome anxiety about performance during competitions.

Several factors can play a role in causing anxiety in sport performance. Some of these causes include:

• Social anxiety: People with social anxiety disorder (SAD) fear social and performance situations. The most common fear is public speaking. However, other types of performances, such as musical and athletic, may also lead to anxiety. This type of anxiety would be diagnosed as SAD in its most extreme form.
• Lack of experience: Some types of athletes are more prone to feeling the effects of anxiety on performance. As an amateur athlete, you are more likely than seasoned professionals to experience anxiety that interferes with your ability to perform in competition. This makes sense due to your relative lack of experience in competition and managing feelings of being "pumped up."
• Solo sports: If you are an athlete who participates in individual sports, you are also more likely to experience anxiety than those who play team sports. It makes sense that being part of a team helps manage some of the pressure you feel when competing alone.
• Performance location: There is evidence that if your team plays at the venue of the opposition (known as an "away" game), anxiety levels tend to be higher than when your team plays at home.

Having greater fan support and being more familiar with the location helps to reduce anxiety.

How to Thrive Under Pressure

How are elite athletes consistently able to rise to the challenge when faced with the tough competition? Research shows that self-confidence plays a role in how you respond to symptoms of anxiety during athletic performance.

If you are confident in your ability, you are more likely to have a positive reaction to being "pumped up" and will thrive on the challenge of competition. Elite athletes are often so focused on their behavior that they interpret arousal as excitement rather than anxiety.

In general, self-confidence tends to be highest when you believe in your ability and feel that you have adequately prepared for a competition.

Worry and confidence are at opposite ends of the spectrum; when confidence is strong, it tends to crowd worry out of the mind.

Get Advice From The Verywell Mind Podcast

Hosted by therapist Amy Morin, LCSW, this episode of The Verywell Mind Podcast shares strategies for creating a motivated mindset, featuring TB12 CEO John Burns.

Coping With Anxiety in Sport Performance

There are many strategies you can employ to reduce performance anxiety symptoms, such as the following:

• Prepare: Ensure you have practiced enough to be confident during the competition. Spend extra time on practice and preparation in the days or weeks before a game or performance.
• Get social support: Ask friends or family to root you for "away" games. Knowing that your support system is there to cheer you on can help you feel more confident and less anxious. You can also generate that "team spirit" even for individual sports by making friends with other competitors.
• Reappraise arousal: Learn how to interpret arousal during the competition as positive or acceptable rather than negative. Reappraising anxiety as excitement can help combat performance anxiety.
• Change negative thoughts: Negative thoughts can make anxiety about sports performance worse. You can combat this by using cognitive reframing to change your thoughts about situations. Identifying negative thoughts allows you to actively challenge them and replace them with more positive, realistic ways of thinking.
• Use positive self-talk: How you talk to yourself about your performance can also influence the amount of anxiety you experience. Research has found that positive self-talk can contribute to greater confidence and self-efficacy, better performance, and less anxiety.
  

You can also use several strategies to help manage anxiety and induce relaxation related to athletic performance, including visualization and progressive muscle relaxation.

A Word From Verywell

If you find that your anxiety symptoms are severe and do not improve with self-help strategies, plan a visit to your doctor or contact a therapist to discuss your concerns. Severe anxiety in sport performance can be a sign of social anxiety disorder. In such cases, professional treatment can provide relief and help address anxiety before it interferes with your life and ability to function.

Verywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read our editorial process to learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.

1. Ford JL, Ildefonso K, Jones ML, Arvinen-barrow M. Sport-related anxiety: current insights. Open Access J Sports Med. 2017;8:205-212. doi:10.2147/OAJSM.S125845
2. Judge LW, Urbina LJ, Hoover DL, et al. The Impact of Competitive Trait Anxiety on Collegiate Powerlifting Performance. J Strength Cond Res. 2016;30(9):2399–2405. doi:10.1519/JSC.0000000000001363
3. Hardy L, Hutchinson A. Effects of performance anxiety on effort and performance in rock climbing: a test of processing efficiency theory.Anxiety Stress Coping. 2007;20(2):147–161. doi:10.1080/10615800701217035
4. Rowland DL, van Lankveld JJDM. Anxiety and performance in sex, sport, and stage: Identifying common ground. Front Psychol. 2019;10:1615. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01615
5. National Institute of Mental Health. Panic disorder: When fear overwhelms.
6. Osoria, Fd, Crippa, JAS, Hallak, JEC, Loureiro, SR. Social anxiety disorder, fear of public speaking, and the use of assessment instruments. In: Selek, S, ed. Different View of Anxiety Disorders. 2011. doi:10.5772/18629
7. Alder DB, Ford PR, Causer J, Williams AM. The effect of anxiety on anticipation, allocation of attentional resources, and visual search behaviours. Hum Mov Sci. 2018;61:81–89. doi:10.1016/j.humov.2018.07.002
8. Pluhar E, McCracken C, Griffith KL, Christino MA, Sugimoto D, Meehan WP 3rd. Team Sport Athletes May Be Less Likely To Suffer Anxiety or Depression than Individual Sport Athletes.J Sports Sci Med. 2019;18(3):490–496. PMID: 31427871
9. Kang, H, Jang, S. Effects of competition anxiety on self-confidence in soccer players: Modulation effects of home and away game. J Men's Health. 2018;14(3). doi:10.22374/1875-6859.14.3.9
10. Kang H, Jang S. Self and relative effects of competitive state anxiety on perceived performance in middle and high school taekwondo athletes: An actor and partner interdependence model analysis. Iran J Public Health. 2021;50(6):1167-1176. doi:10.18502/ijph.v50i6.6415
11. Brooks AW. Get excited: reappraising pre-performance anxiety as excitement. J Exp Psychol Gen. 2014;143(3):1144-1158. doi:10.1037/a0035325
12. Rowland DL, Moyle G, Cooper SE. Remediation strategies for performance anxiety across sex, sport and stage: Identifying common approaches and a unified cognitive model. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2021;18(19):10160. doi:10.3390/ijerph181910160
13. Walter N, Nikoleizig L, Alfermann D. Effects of self-talk training on competitive anxiety, self-efficacy, volitional skills, and performance: An intervention study with junior sub-elite athletes. Sports (Basel). 2019;7(6):148. doi:10.3390/sports7060148
14. Pelka M, Kölling S, Ferrauti A, Meyer T, Pfeiffer M, Kellmann M. Acute effects of psychological relaxation techniques between two physical tasks. J Sports Sci. 2017;35(3):216–223. doi:10.1080/02640414.2016.1161208

By Arlin Cuncic, MA
Arlin Cuncic, MA, is the author of The Anxiety Workbook and founder of the website About Social Anxiety. She has a Master's degree in clinical psychology.

• Meet Our Review Board
• About Us
• Editorial Process
• Diversity Pledge
• Privacy Policy
• In the News
• Advertise
• Terms of Service
• Careers
• Contact
• EU Privacy
• Crisis Support

Verywell Mind's content is for informational and educational purposes only. Our website is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

We Care About Your Privacy

We and our 100 partners store and/or access information on a device, such as unique IDs in cookies to process personal data. You may accept or manage your choices by clicking below, including your right to object where legitimate interest is used, or at any time in the privacy policy page. These choices will be signaled to our partners and will not affect browsing data.

We and our partners process data to provide:

Store and/or access information on a device. Use limited data to select advertising. Create profiles for personalised advertising. Use profiles to select personalised advertising. Create profiles to personalise content. Use profiles to select personalised content. Measure advertising performance. Measure content performance. Understand audiences through statistics or combinations of data from different sources. Develop and improve services. Use limited data to select content. List of Partners (vendors)