Continued

In addition to my last blogs I read more on the article and here’s what I took in.

Being a strong athlete doesn’t always translate to competition success. I know this from personal experience. After all of the hours of practice it can be frustrating not to see positive results when it counts. One theory to help an athlete improve is simulations of a competition environment. 
You can simulate everything that takes place in the competition environment. Such as in the physical environment, the behavior of coaches, and other athletes, stress, athletes imagery and athletes self talk. The thought behind this theory is if the athlete practices in a competition environment they will perform better on actual competition days. 
As a competitive figure skater I have tried this theory. This took some effort as it involved putting on a beaded figure skating dress, makeup and perfect competition day hair. Figure skaters are known for their grace and beauty on the ice, but the beautiful sparkly dresses are actually very heavy to wear, makeup is not fun to sweat in and do you know how many bobby pins a perfect bun takes? About 50. So it really takes dedication for an athlete to practice this way. 
Even though it may take more effort, I have found this theory can help improve performance. From a cognitive standpoint, it helps calm your nerves and your performance becomes a learned behavior that you’ve done several times before. If you’re an athlete struggling with performance anxiety, I recommend you try simulationing your competition environment to see if it helps. As my coaches tell me all the time, “you perform how you practice”.