How To Overcome Anxiety Before A Little League Game

By Harold Green
Updated: May 18, 2021

Every athlete on all professional levels can still experience anxiety before participating in a sporting event. But it’s said that a little bit of nervousness can boost excitement and motivation leading to better game performance. However, if it’s perceived negatively, it may trigger the flight or fight response of an individual that can make it hard for them to achieve a relaxed and composed disposition during a game.

Racing thoughts, mental block, shaking legs, pounding heartbeat, and excessive sweating can be some of the common manifestations of extreme nervousness before a game. These may affect an athlete’s performance. Therefore, it’s important to find ways on how to overcome pre-game jitters.

Here are different ways that can help overcome anxiety before a little league game depending on what works well for the athlete:

1. Ensure that You’ve Practiced Enough

Practicing your skills is one of the critical factors to success. When you master your sport, the more that you can be confident in presenting yourself. From an expert point of view, if your goal is to be a professional baseball player, you wouldn’t only play or practice for the game if there are upcoming sports events, but you would engage in it even if it’s off-season. When it’s offseason, one of the problems encountered by athletes is finding facilities, trainers, or coaches who can give them assistance based on their training needs.

However, there are different online platforms like The Pro’s List that can provide top-notch assistance to budding and professional athletes. Platforms like them help in connecting an athlete to a specific sports service provider that can cater to the athlete’s age, skill level, and expectations. If you want to engage in playing baseball even in its off-season continuously, find a pro in your area with The Pro’s List and other online platforms to help you master the sport.

2. Develop a Game Day Routine

A pregame routine aims to make you physically and mentally prepared before a game commences. One of the reasons why players may experience pre-game jitters is because they’re too anxious about how their performance will go. Having a pre-established game day routine can somehow divert your attention to lessen the anxiousness that you feel.

You may do different stretching and warm-up drills, practice deep breathing exercises, eat a heavy meal a few hours before the game, or listen to good music. The optimum level of nervousness can help you exert the necessary effort to succeed, but too much of it may lead to anxiety that may interfere with your performance.

3. Focus on the Process and Not the Outcome

It’s essential to set a goal that you want to achieve because it’s a way to boost your motivation. However, this shouldn’t be your focus before the game. When you’re too focused on achieving your goal to win the competition, the idea of losing, making a mistake, or receiving criticism may trigger anxiety. Don’t focus on the outcome because it’s out of your control. Better yet, focus more on how you’ll act during the game that may lead you to success.

Focus on how you’ll execute the proper poses or baseball techniques that you’ve learned during your training, so you’ll be more concentrated on the sport itself and nothing else. It’s said that a way to have a relaxed aura during the game is to treat it as an ordinary game. The more you think that you’re engaged in a competition, you may become more nervous.

4. Visualization

It’s thought that an effective trick that may help prepare an athlete for the actual game is through mental rehearsal. If you’re bothered with the possible situations that’ll happenon the same day in the venue, imagine and picture yourself on how you’d make the moves to win. Ensure that what you’re visualizing is yourself on the actual scene and not from an observer’s point of view. Visualization can help in building confidence to improve performance and to manage sports anxiety better.

If you’re easily distracted by spectator noise, it’ll help if you can listen to an audio recording with crowd noises while you’re visualizing to make the experience more real. When you get used to the noise, there’s a possibility that it’d no longer add up to your worries during the main event.

Professional baseball player in action on grand arena

Final Thoughts

Participating in a little league game is a high-stress situation. It’s a given to sometimes feel anxious before the event. To keep these negative emotions in check while waiting for a major sporting event like a Little League Game, it’s your responsibility as an athlete to find ways to convert these into positive aspects of motivation and excitement.

You may overcome anxiety before the sporting event by practicing enough, being consistent in doing a game-day routine, visualizing, and focusing on the process and not the outcome.