Pleasure vs Pressure

Why do we play sports?
We play for the enjoyment we derive from the game, our fellow competitors, officials, the challenge, and the variety of competition. We also achieve great satisfaction from playing the game well, win or lose, as long as we are presented with a game played fair and equitable.
When you consider the time, we spend perfecting our skills, travel, cost, and competition, we must enjoy this game.
Enjoy the Game

• Playing well and winning is exhilarating!
  
• Playing well and losing is exhilarating!
  
• Regardless of the outcome, some amount of stress is to be expected.
  
• Amateur sports are about enhancing self-esteem, building social skills, and developing a sense of community. Above all, sports are about having fun.

​Pressure
So, if we enjoy this game, why do we feel so much pressure?
When you consider the daily grind of life, work, kids, family, provide us with more than enough pressure.
If we were to consider that the pressure we feel while competing is self-inflicted, do we place too many expectations on ourselves unwittingly by increasing the perceived pressure?
(Beilock, 2010). Wrote: Even sports psychologists and coaches regularly make the mistake of informing athletes about "managing pressure," when pressure is nothing more than a product of our imagination and a self-imposed experience that we create for ourselves.
Pressure relates to our fears of failure.

• Fear of disappointing others (coaches, parents, fans)
• Fear of feeling embarrassed if under-perform
• Fear of losing their place on the team if they under-perform
• Fear of not performing perfectly and of making mistakes

 
Let's, imagine your goal for your next game is to win.
Typically, you would think about how you will win in the days leading up to the event. It's fair to say you are feeling confident.
The game begins:

• The first three ends go as you planned; you are up 3-0, you are relaxed, and feeling good.
• On the fourth end, your first two deliveries are short. Your opponent is counting two, and the end finishes with you two down. Score 3-2. Still feeling OK.
• Fifth, end your opponent delivers a long jack. Not your favorite length. You lose the end 0-1. Score tied 3-3. That's fine; back to square one.
• In ends six and seven. You trade points. The score remains tied at 4-4.
• End eight has a short jack and your first three bowls are long, and your fourth bowl is short. Your opponent's three on the jack and one hit your short bowl. You are now down 4-7. Tension in your muscles begins to affect your delivery.
• In ends nine and ten. You trade points. The score is 5-8. You are running out of ends, your chest muscles are tightening, and you are beginning to make poor decisions. You start blaming the green (it's always the green's fault). Out of frustration, you try to speed up your game. You dwell on the shots you missed and the ends you lost.
• End eleven Your first three bowls are delivered short, while the opponent four are counting; under pressure, you deliver a driving shot to disrupt their bowls, but you miss. The score is 5-12. Three ends to play eight points to win, I will settle for a tie; I only need seven points.

Apart from a minor miracle, you are done and dusted by this time. 
So, what went wrong?
Since your only goal was to win the game, anything less than a win would increase the pressure on you as the opponent's game got better. The build-up of self-inflicted pressure affected your overall performance, your ability to make strategic game decisions, muscle tension affected your delivery performance. You could have also had shortness of breath, accelerated heartbeat, pain over the eyes, and backache.
 
By only having an outcome goal, you place all the pressure on yourself. 

Changing how we think about the pressure.
Changing how we think about pressure sensations can help us stay more on the pleasure side. The tighter chest muscles, your shoulders feeling closer to your ears and the feelings of frustration are your body’s way of sending messages to your brain. These signs are also telling you that your body is trying hard to help remind you that you want to get back to the pleasure side that you enjoyed at the beginning of the game (and all of us enjoy more pleasure). These signs or messages, are telling you that you need to slow down, take slower, deeper breathes, and loosen and soften the tight muscles.  Think back to the good shots you made earlier in the game and how good it felt to be doing well and focus on those messages. Move out of the negative thoughts and remember the great ones. It is amazing how positive thoughts can move you back to pleasure. Humans are geared to stay in the negative for survival because these negative thoughts keep you from harm. Here is an example, you (as a caveman or woman) coming out of your cave early one morning and you look to the right and see a beautiful sunrise and then you look left to see a hungry tiger. Which are you going to focus on?
Humans have to work harder to stay positive so have memories of a few positive shots and pleasurable sensations from doing well to think about when you are caught up more in the pressure side. You may have to practice this a little if it is new for you and sometimes, we need to fake it until we make it!!!
 
Next time we will talk about the three types of goals you can use to increase your enjoyment while playing and reduce the pressure.