Managing Stress in Competition Season

 

One of the things I've been thinking about lately, as we get into competition season, is how athletes handle the stress of this time of year. Kyle and I spent a full episode of Coaching Conversations on the mental performance side of competing. If you want to listen to that conversation, it can be found here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5UMwSH8KkrTuK6dO1qeupG?si=_QUKoSJxQ3GG3sX-IRQRFg 


The short version is this: a lot of athletes spend the entire day in a heightened state of stress and then expect to turn it off the moment after the lights go out. That doesn't work very well in a normal training week, and it works even worse the night before a competition. The good news is that there are simple things you can do about it.


The Night Before


I have personally never had much of an issue sleeping, except for the night before a competition. Even at a multi day event, it's just the night before the first day, and after that I've always been fine. Coaching is a bit different for me. For a big competition like a semifinal, or anything I'm traveling to, my sleep starts to deteriorate about two weeks out. It starts with wondering if I remembered everything I need to have ready, and then it spirals into remembering that I forgot to put a movement into an athlete's training program.


Kyle described the cycle well on the podcast. You lie down calm, one of the events pops into your head, you get the adrenaline dump, and then your brain just starts going. His answer is to move from what he calls non functional thinking, which is worrying about your competitors and the things outside of your control, toward functional thinking, which is reviewing your strategy, your warm up, and your plan for the next day.


I advocate for physical checklists for the same reason. It can be on your phone, but I want something where you have to scratch an item off or check a box. Then you can look at it and say that I've taken care of everything I need to take care of to be prepared, and I'm okay. One of the tricks I use for myself when things start to get stressful is to sit in bed and breathe. I take slow inhales and exhales and try to count to 10 with nothing in my mind other than the number I'm on.


You Can't Unwind a Whole Day at 9 PM


Where this topic came from is that we inevitably see athletes get stuck in a stress cycle. They wake up and go to a job, which creates stress. They have their phone on them constantly and they are constantly scrolling and getting notifications, which heightens the stress cycle. Then they get to the gym, which is more stress, albeit a different type of stress, because the gym is a stressor and not a stress relief. Then they get home and realize they have things to do around the house.


Before you know it, they have spent from 6 a.m. until 8 p.m. in a heightened state of stress and never given themselves a chance to back off and relax. Trying to unwind all of that at 9 p.m. by turning the lights off and going to bed doesn't work very well. You can only control your job stress so much, but if you recognize this pattern in yourself, the phone is a great place to start.


Keep in mind that Stress + Rest = adaptation. Too much stress and not enough rest creates a lack of adaptation 


One of the ways I've been able to avoid burnout as a coach is that my phone doesn't live next to me at all times. It lives in a different room when I'm doing my deep work, and I can bring it back during my breaks. Kyle made the point that the same problem shows up for athletes on game day, when the phone distracts them from what they need to be doing.


Have Something That Isn't CrossFit


For a lot of people, CrossFit is the center point of their life and while I think it’s a very fun focal point, I think it can become too consuming. Some athletes coach classes or do personal training for work, they train to compete as their hobby, and then when they get home they watch videos about CrossFit. When you spend that much time on a single thing, it never creates space to get out of ruts or down regulate. 


I think it is crucial to have some diversity of hobby, and specifically something that is mentally engaging without being stressful. Knitting is a perfect example. You have to pay enough attention to get the pattern right, which means you can't be fully engaged with anything else. Playing an instrument or woodworking does the same thing. Crafting or creating something creates a deep engagement with that task, and it also creates a deep disengagement from fitness.


The other thing I have found with athletes who are that single minded is that failure becomes an attack on who they are. Having things away from the sport gives you a bigger sense of being. Kyle put it better than I did on the podcast. You still care, but your entire existence is no longer riding on the outcome of an event, and that frees you up to take the risks that could actually win you one.


Practice Staying Calm When It Gets Uncomfortable


There are also ways to train this inside your sessions. I like to put people at slightly faster than true warm up paces and have them breathe only through their nose. Nasal breathing restricts how much air you can move, and carbon dioxide levels inevitably rise. That is the exact same thing we experience in a MetCon.


The difference is that now you have the opportunity to relax through it and realize that you are going to be okay. It lets you micro-dose coping with that feeling, whether it shows up as anxiety or as the moment in a MetCon where you have to make a decision to keep going. Small consistent exposures will allow you enough practice to start to really improve this skill in a competition and that could be a major separator on the leaderboard. 


Stop Stressing About Your Recovery


Something I've been seeing more and more is athletes stressing about their recovery. Sleep is the clearest example. Stress about sleep severely deteriorates your sleep quality and your sleep quantity. If you want to be in bed by 10 p.m. and you don't get there until 10:20, don't start thinking about the 20 minutes you lost, because that is how 20 minutes turns into an hour and 20 minutes. We see people stressing about recovery scores and sleep scores, which is all part of that same cycle. 


This gets really prevalent around competitions, when the list of "need to's" grows. I need to get to the sauna, I need to get my cold plunge, I need to get my red light therapy. There was a recent review of recovery modalities, and the finding was basically that sitting around and doing nothing was every bit as effective for recovery as any of the interventions we use. Those things have benefits outside of recovery, so I'm not telling you to stop using them but understand the mechanism for why they may be working. 


Kyle's pushback was fair. Some people will not rest unless that time is scheduled and protected, and the sauna works for him because he can't take his phone in there. If you know you are someone who can't sit still, putting constraints around sitting still is very beneficial. And if a cold plunge makes you feel good, placebo works, so keep on keeping on. But if you have the ability to relax on your own, it's probably not worth spending money on things when you can just go into a state of relaxation. 


The Bottom Line


I have watched lesser talent far outperform greater physical talent based on mental performance alone. As Kyle said at the end of the episode, almost every athlete goes through these things in competition, so you are not experiencing them alone, and there are methods for improving them.


Try to think about relaxation as an art. You are going to mess up, the first few attempts are not going to be pretty but with time and effort, it will improve. If you need an intervention to force the relaxation then pull that lever but if you have the ability to do it without, you will save yourself some time and money in the process. 


If you want a coach who builds this into your training, you can apply to work with me here: https://www.coachrynesullivan.com/work-with-me 


If you want to follow along with anything else I am doing, you can find everything here: https://linktr.ee/RyneSullivan


— Ryne Sullivan

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