Coaches Stressing Out Prior to Game
April 23, 2007 by John Northey
Stress is a feeling that’s created when you react to certain events. It’s the body’s way of rising to a challenge and preparing to meet a tough situation.
What can happen if you’re over-stressed?
Stress becomes a problem when you become over-stressed and it starts to affect how you think, how you communicate, how clearly you make decisions on the day.
If you become over-stressed it may have unwanted consequences for your health and in particular, carries over to your players and your support team.
This can become an enormous problem, when players run onto the arena they too are stressed out.
Players and staff are well aware, how the coach is feeling, calm / tense / stressed out
Emotional feelings such as;
- feeling hostile, angry, or irritable
- feeling anxious
- avoiding certain players
- moodiness, feeling frustrated with things that normally don’t bother you
- creates low self-esteem or lack of confidence (within the playing group)
- anxiety attacks, yelling/shouting instead of controlled authority in your voice
Managing Stress
Taking some deep breaths – Deep breathing can help to relax the body and hence calm you down.
Taking deep breaths before the game
Before you address the players prior to entering the ground
Focus on what it is you are about to do and say.
Remember it is not all about the coach it’s about your players how relaxed they are and how they perform win lose or draw.
It’s about your support staff and how they team together prior to and during the game
Stress out after the game
- This won’t happen
- You will be happy in victory, (positives and negatives) looking forward to the next contest
- After defeat you will be focusing on improvement (positives and negatives) both on the training track and the next game
I have found in my years of experience that stress is present at all times as a coach. How you as a coach deal with this can have a major impact on how the team will perform. If the stress impacts in a negitive way this can be picked up by your players and their performance will suffer. Conversly if you control the stress you can use this as a tool to focus on what you need to do and this will also flow on. Once stress is excepted as part of any game just like a bump it is then when it wont effect you.