Mental Blocks

Mental blocks are a wild thing in sports. They manifest themselves in different ways for everyone. Some athletes freeze, others cry, and some just throw in the towel. Every athlete encounters some sort of mental block at some point, but not every athlete struggles with it. I’ve trained and coached athletes who rarely face them, and if they did, it was very short-lived. On the other hand, I’ve seen athletes be dominated by them.

There are common triggers in mental blocks:

- Fear of losing

- Fear of letting down coaches, parents, teammates, etc.

- Fear of letting yourself down

- Fear of getting hurt

- Fear of not being good

Take, for example, worrying that your dad won’t be happy if you don’t score a goal or your mom will be mad if you don’t make a certain team. These thoughts can fester and cause you to get stuck.

Other mental blocks are more specific:

- Fear of a certain skill

- Fear of breaking your ankle again

Let’s say you wipe out on the beam during your series and can’t get yourself to connect it. We can pinpoint when it started and the trigger.

And then there are those mental blocks that come out of nowhere. Those are the tricky ones. You can’t pinpoint what started it. You’re not sure what triggers it. You just feel anxious and overwhelmed. These often stem from an outside source of anxiety that gets brought into the sport by accident.

Maybe your parents are getting divorced, and suddenly you can’t hit the ball right. That’s an example of an anxiety- or stress-driven mental block.

No matter what the block is or where it comes from, it shakes your confidence, holds you back, and prevents progress.

Now, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Mental blocks and how to deal with them are specific to each athlete. It takes getting to the root of the block, finding its trigger, and implementing strategies to overcome it. My goal here is to let you know that mental blocks are normal, you can control them, and yes, they can go away.