If you want to get better at anything you must do that thing over and over. So, the only way for athletes to improve how they manage anxiety and focus is through consistent mental skills training. However, just like learning to swim, you don’t just jump in the deep water on your first day.

Instead, there is a progression to learning these mental skills. Ironically, this mental skills progression is rather similar to the progression one needs to learn how to swim.

There are about 10 steps to going from a non-swimmer to jumping in deep water.

1. Breathing
2. Bobbing
3. Floating
4. Treading water
5. Gliding
6. Kicking
7. Arm cycling
8. Freestyle swimming
9. Freestyle swimming with breathing
10. Jumping in the deep water

Learning to perform at a high level when facing anxiety and a lack of focus requires a remarkably similar approach. Indeed, high anxiety and lacking focus are symptoms for being unable to cope with the pressure of swimming in the metaphorical deep water.

Mental Skills to Cope with the Pressure of Anxiety and Focus

Athletes who perform well under pressure practice performing in pressure filled situations that are just above where they’re comfortable. In those situations, they work on mental skills to help them control their anxiety and focus on what matters.

These mental skills include the process of learning 7 techniques:

1) Rhythmic Mindfulness Breathing

The process of taking deep inhales and exhales of breath using a 1:2 ratio. For example, inhale for a count of 5 and exhale for a count of 10. Often, finding a quiet place, sitting with erect posture, closing one’s eyes, counting each breath, and counting the time between inhales and exhales improves mindfulness during this process.

2) Reframing

Reframing is a mental skill that helps athletes change their perception of a situation. When an athlete changes their perception of a situation, they can change their emotions. Correspondingly, the ultimate goal of reframing is to change emotions that have a negative impact to emotions that have a positive impact.

3) Visualization

Using one’s mind to imagine a new experience by recalling or creating a similar experience and then shaping that experience into a positive memory. These imagined positive memories can then be used to rehearse how the details of future events will unfold.

4) Managing the Three Zones of Focus

Zone 1 is when you have the highest level of focus and are most intense. However, you can stay in this zone for the shortest amount of time due to the intensity it requires. Zone 2 is a medium level of focus right in between Zone 1 and Zone 3. To put it another way, it is a transitional zone. Zone 3 is the lowest level of focus so, only a tiny bit of focus still does exist. Athletes can be in this zone the longest amount of time; however, performance is the least effective in this zone.

The key is for athletes to learn triggers to quickly move between zones to help them be at their optimal level of intensity for the situation, for the right amount of time so they don’t burn themselves out or underperform.

5) Neutral Thinking

The process of focusing only on the facts of the situation. Facts that are not positive or negative, they just are. This allows athletes to focus on the reality of what they must do next without letting the negativity of the past or what they can’t control impact the reality of what they can control.

6) Inhibitory Control

The ability to keep oneself from choosing their default behavior when a better behavior is available.  An athlete who learns how to apply inhibitory control will choose a better, non-obvious course of action even though they are accustomed to doing it another obvious, less effective way.

There is always a temptation to select the obvious choice. Especially when you have done something a certain way multiple times in the past. Therefore, learning how to exhibit inhibitory control is the hardest of all the mental skills to master and takes the most amount of practice.

7) Goal Orientation

Learning to set goals without the ego. When goals are set with the ego then those goals focus on comparing oneself to others instead of focusing on personal improvement and learning. For example, measuring personal success against the accomplishments of peers or when an athlete’s primary source of happiness comes from outperforming others.

Instead, athletes must learn to orient their goals to focus on process and task goals that require proficient execution, effort, discipline, and persistence for success.