Emotions – Managing Anger, Frustration and Other Destructive Emotions During Competition and Training

Destructive emotions in sports such as: anger, frustration, embarrassment can be a big obstacle for athletes. These emotions can  lead to loss of control, poor performance, injury and cause an athlete to be a big distraction to their team. Destructive emotions are usually very fast totally automatic response and athletes who have problem with anger and frustration discover that because it is an emotional response, no amount of analyzing the “whys” actually helps in creating different outcomes. Destructive emotions are not solved by more analysis or thinking, but rather by learning how to think and feel differently.

There are usually situations and/or people who trigger an athlete to lose control over their emotions and behave in ways that are not supportive of their best performance. Often it is easy to identify a clear pattern, what triggers it and what the athlete does to create and maintain these disjunctive behaviors.

Destructive emotions can be resolved once the athlete learns how to relax in those situations that used to spark the old behavior. Once we identify the trigger we replace it something more appropriate such as focus and calmness. As a result the athlete gain greater control and flexibility of their behavior, which leads to great performance and winning.

Next steps…

is not solved by more analysis or thinking, but rather by learning how to think and feel differently.