Pre-Match Nerves
Handling our nerves and maintaining equilibrium
during performance is one thing, but what about that other perennial comment I
encounter, couched usually in terms like this.
match. How can I deal with them?”
In my book Mind How You Play,
I explore Equilibrium and where and how
the balance of our performance is arrived at, or how it is in being.
pre-match build-up then starting out in a state of equilibrium would be just a
matter of getting the motor running, heading out on the competition highway and
looking for adventure. And, to be honest, a lot of the pre-match work with
teams I am involved with on game days is about just that. Getting their motors
purring through not over revving-up, and feeling grounded in Mind through being
not wound up.
We are all prone to, and most of us get pre-match
nerves to some degree, but here’s the thing – Some of what we are feeling is
emotionally draining, scrambles our brain and is physically debilitating, and
some is just plain excitement and anticipation of the contest.
And if we only got the thrill, the anticipatory tingle, the frissant
of electricity that flashes around the body, then we would never describe any
of that as bad nerves.
us there is good and bad – some more useful and some less useful. It is the bad
nerves that do nothing positive for us at all – which is why it makes
sense for us to want to deal with them!
started
It starts with Equilibrium. Once we have an
understanding of Equilibrium, then we’ll realise that there needs to be zero
nerves – both good AND bad! Since nerves are a manifestation of our thinking,
then – in an ideal world – there needs to be a state of zero thinking.
what is the next step?
dealing with Bad Nerves – you can either
DO SOMETHING or DO NOTHING.
The do something approach
requires a strategy, while the do
nothing approach merely requires an understanding.
A strategy you will have to learn and carry out –
while an understanding is just a felt sense of knowing; what we might call
wisdom.
And in all honesty I coached the strategic approach
for years, after first applying to self
to judge how straightforward and beneficial things would be.
Some players do visualization, some play music on
headphones, some set up an inner calm
place beforehand and go there, some meditate. All these strategies for
pre-match nerves are designed to bring about one thing in common – a state of
reduced thinking, of feeling calm
and grounded.
And these are, on the face of it, quite sensible things to do!
(grounded calm) and we use these vehicles, these means of transport, to get us
there.
Now I’ll come back to feeling – for feeling,
in this regard, is the operative word.
Bad nerves – feeling bad – happens
when there is an apparent overload of Kinaesthetic experiences going on in the
foreground. And the more the overload, the worse the badness of feeling gets.
are all geared to turning down the Kinaesthetic experience by overloading more
Visual and Auditory sensual experience into the foreground. The trouble is
we’re using other overloads to deal with the first overload, and you know what
– the first overload is not actually reduced, it is just masked.
headache
We don’t take paracetamol
for a headache, we take it to mask the kinaesthetic perception of headache
pain. The cause of the headache is still there causing pain, yet we’ve changed
the balance of chemicals in the brain to ‘trick’ our perceptions. Of course we
are knowing and willing partners in this act of ‘trickery’, without really
knowing the precise details of what is going on for us – on the inside!
We can also take this subterfuge further, and
‘trick’ our perceptions, when a placebo is substituted for the paracetamol. It is important we don’t
know it’s a placebo however, for
obvious reasons – but we need to know what is going on in our heads when the
headache goes this time. In this instance the masking of the pain is done by
releasing some of our own neuro-chemicals, and the perceptual trigger for this
‘trick’ was that we THOUGHT we were taking paracetamol!
And because we “know” that paracetamol
deals with headache then the end result of our thinking is … no headache!
For some people there are certain “drugs of choice”
for nerves, from narcotics and alcohol across to beta-blockers. They all deal
with the feelings, the kinaesthetics, of the nerves and not the causes of those
feelings. I know some players who even use stimulating drinks to help them deal
with their nerves, which has to be about as bizarre as eating toothpaste to
combat gum disease!
clearing yet? Is the mask slipping – for you?
What is it that lies behind ALL our feelings? Thought.
the way we feel about those experiences has been generated by our perceptive
powers, our thought processes. How easy is it to imagine how exciting some
upcoming event is going to be? It is SO easy that we can experience a felt
sense of how it will be well in advance. Similarly, our perception of a
headache is driven by thought. And our bad nerves, too, are driven by our own
thinking.
feelings of bad nerves.
“I’m
worried about my performance; I’m worried whether I’ll play well or whether I’m
good enough; I don’t want to let others down so I’m worried about that; I’m
worried I’m carrying an injury; I always worry because I want to do things
right; What will people think of me if I don’t do well?;If I wasn’t worried one
particular day I’d probably be worried about that too.”
reasons – all sewn together by the word “I”!
Logically, your intellect tells you that all this worry is a bit pointless –
but your body is telling you something else. “I’ve still got the jitters, the butterflies, a tight, wrenching knot
in my gut,” you’ll be saying, as your heartbeat pounds fast, your breathing gets shallow and faster, your mind
seems to race or be spinning out of control, your palms get sweaty and your
mouth goes bone dry.
Get familiar with those feelings – whereabouts do
you feel them? Acknowledge them – because you remember what happened all the
other times you tried to make them go away by denying them, or overloading
them, or by ingesting something to mask them, or by just wishing and hoping.
Notice what is different this time, for out of the noticing will come your
understanding.
answer, curiously, is a particular pointer as to where you are ‘living your
life’.
It is as if those bad nerves, for each and every one of us, have a sixth sense as to
where we are most vulnerable!
straightforward for you to combat – while if you feel the nerves in your head,
it’s because you are living your life in your head, driven by a logical
perspective from your intellect.
‘In the head’ people don’t want to
feel grounded, they want to feel in control – and the control they want to feel
in control of is – at the end of the day – their thinking!
understanding of what is behind them, driving them, then you have made that
first shift towards the non-strategic approach – the do nothing approach. The realisation,
in the moment, that your nerves are a result of your reactions to your
thinking, is the quickest, surest and best long-term way of every future
dealing that you’ll have to make.
Me!
When you were at school, did anyone ever stick a
note on the back of your jacket saying “Kick Me”? It’s a very ‘old style’
practical joke!
blissfully unaware of being kicked –
that is, you began to wonder why you had a sore backside. You’d be sat on
that bruised posterior contemplating the source of the discomfort, racking your
brain for reasons why and yet never knowing!
Until,
that
is, the day you noticed someone in the act of kicking you there.
“Please don’t kick me there,” you’d
say. “It’s very sore for some reason or
other. I think I must have something wrong with me. Guess I need to visit the
doctor.” Even then, you still wouldn’t realise they were actually just
carrying out the instructions from the note on your back.
is, the day you went to the doctor and told him the story. “Take off your jacket,” says the doctor and then he shows you the note pinned there. “People have been kicking me – that explains
everything,” you’d then say.
Of course you’d still need to act upon the
knowledge, the realisation you’ve just encountered – for if you left the note
pinned to the jacket, people would still kick you. You’d then know WHY you
had a sore behind, however you WOULDN’T yet have actually taken any steps to change anything!
entirely yours, of course. You have all the ways and means of making your performance
a great one. However, if there is anything you’ve overlooked or left behind –
you may just feel something in that left behind!
