Do you lack of confidence in your sport? Learn from our guest Mental coach expert, Gene Zanetti, “The Ways Athletes Improve Confidence“.
Coaches always tell you to just be confident and to just believe in yourself, but they never tell you actually how to do it. A lot of it is because they were not formally trained in how to do it themselves.
The first thing is to realize it is not something you have to have it or you don’t. You can learn it. Most people don’t realize that, yes, you can build confidence with the right exercises.
Now there are four major ways you can improve confidence. It is past performance, other people’s performance, motivational pep talks, and body language.
The first one is past performance. We all have past successes. If not in games, in practices. So become aware of those times when you were successful.
Highly athletic and competitive people, they tend to focus on the negative times. They tend to remember their bad performances or their mistakes or that they have to improve and get better. But confidence really suffers when all you focus on is the negativity and all the losses.
Make a list and put it down on paper of all your past successes, anytime you have done anything well related to the sport. Now when you look at this paper, you should really be looking at this paper four or five times a week at least. You are looking at it and saying, “I am a really good competitor. I am a very good athlete.” That is the mindset that you want to step into.
It is also your personal strengths. What are areas that make you strong as a competitor, as an athlete, and also as a person? Let’s say you are a very organized person. I would say that would probably carry over onto the field, that organization would be something you would list as one of your personal strengths.
Now me, I tend to wing things a lot, but maybe my ability to improvise is one of my strengths as an athlete. So that is something I would also put down on paper.
It is, yes, my past accomplishments: I won a county title; I won a region title; that type of thing. Those might be accomplishments, but also my personal strengths. It might be my ability to improvise.
The athletes just starting out that does not have success yet always have their personal strengths that can and will carry over onto the field of play. Also they probably, even though they may be competing for the first time, have practiced before and there has to be some indicators of success at some level.
As a wrestler, the worst thing that could happen is you get pinned – right? Maybe one of their successes is just that in practice they didn’t get pinned by someone that has wrestled for several years.
Go digging and dig deep down for anything that could be seen as a positive thing. We are very good, by the way, at picking something negative or a loss. We are very good at digging for a loss to tell ourselves why we are not good enough. We have to be equally good at digging for a personal strength or a past success.
The next way to build confidence is by other people’s performance. One of my favorite acronyms is hope – H.O.P.E. Hold on possibilities exist. There is another acronym with it. Here you get hope by hearing other people’s experiences.
If you succeed in a sport, then I say, “Wendy did it, I could probably do it too. But wait, it’s not just Wendy who has had success with it. It is also this person, that person, and another person.” Then all of a sudden it becomes a, “You know? I can do this.”
One of the things about “The Biggest Loser” on TV when you watch that is you see a lot of other people losing a lot of weight. When you see all those people lose all that weight, you say, “They are doing it. That person was heavier than me. This person is very similar to myself. I can relate to that person.”
You want to have a whole list of other people who have succeeded in something that you are doing. Even if it is something you are trying to do that no one else has done before, chances are someone has at least come close to doing what you are trying to do. Or maybe they have done that, but in a different field.
Maybe no one has gone undefeated in field hockey. So what about soccer? What about lacrosse? Try to pull from those other sports. Again, it is doing research, doing some digging, finding reasons why success is possible. 
So HOPE, hear other people’s experiences and you learn to hold on possibilities exist.
Another thing with other people’s performances is also each sport has its own tactical elements and specific skills. Often times there are different ways of succeeding. There is no one right way in wrestling to take down. There are several different take downs you can do. I would look at the skill I use most frequently and I would say, “Who else at a high level succeeds using this skill?”
Now with the perks of YouTube and all these other different sites, you can watch videos of people succeeding with the same techniques you use.
I am sure in hockey there are different ways you can take a shot. A wrist shot, a slap shot, all different ways. Well if you have a specific preference of how you shoot, watch someone else who shoots with the same preferences as you, so that builds confidence. Again, if they can succeed, you can too.
The third way we said is motivational pep talks. This does work, but a lot of people think this is the only way to improve confidence. You know if the coach gives the win-win speech and you go out there and you get it done like in the movies. There is something to it.
You want to surround yourself with people who will tell you positive things. You want to stay away from negative, small time thinkers. Figure out what kinds of things make you confident. Know what people, what movies, what songs, really have a good understanding of what your personal “on” button is.
What works for Wendy, doesn’t necessarily work for Gene. But you know what? I am going to ask what Wendy does, because maybe I can take some of that and maybe some of it will work for me.
Along the lines of these pep talks and motivations is your favorite inspiring quotes, movies, songs, and people. Surround yourself with that on a regular basis. Great athletes do this naturally all the time.
Finally the last thing to improve confidence is body language. The way that you act is the way you start to feel. First you have to understand what confidence looks like. Know what you look like when you are confident.
How do you walk? How do you talk? Where is your head? What do you do with your body? How do you move your body? Is it quick and fidgety or do you stay still? Do you move fast or do you move slow? All of that is really important to get a picture of what that looks like.
If you have some difficulty in what it looks like in yourself, then I say use other people. Look at other athletes that you see that you feel are very confident. See what kinds of things they do. Then start moving like that and you find as you move confidently, you feel more confident.
Also, during the competition, what would you look like if you really believed in yourself? What would you look like while you are competing? You see this all the time with some athletes.
When they are playing a “lessor” opponent, they have great swagger. They carry themselves real good. Then when they go against someone who is equally matched or maybe a little better than them, you don’t see that same swagger. And that is not good at all.
You should never be able to watch an athlete and know if they are playing someone “good” or “bad.” “Are they expected to win or are they expected to lose?” You should never know that by watching an athlete out there. They should look the same way. They should be carrying themselves with the same intensity, the same confidence, the same positivity all around.
To build confidence you have to do all four of those things. It is like Desert Storm. You are storming this whole confidence issue with past performances, other’s performances, your pep talks and motivations, and the body language. A full launch attack to improve your confidence. Not just doing one thing and hoping it is the magic pill.
I would just recommend, once you know those different four exercises for confidence, do it all the time. We get nervous. This is just human nature. When we get nervous, we always go back to our most rehearsed skill or most rehearsed thing.
Author : Gene Zannetti has a masters degree in Exercise Science & Sport Psychology. He was a Nationally Ranked, All-Ivy League Wrestler at the University of Pennsylvania. Gene calls himself a Peak Performance Specialist and is the Founder of Z-Fanatical Fitness.
Confidence starts from the mind. We have an intensive course tackling confidence! Know more about this effective confidence building course here: http://mentalstrengthacademy.com/confidence/category/welcome/