Chris Mance II - Mental Skills Coach

This may be obvious, but research suggest that athletes who prepare for stress in advance deal with stress better. However, although this is obvious, few coaches actually spend any time teaching coping mechanisms.

I would argue the main reason for this gap in the coaching community is knowledge. As the saying goes, you can only do better if you know better. So, here are the basics.

There are so many different sources of stress that there can be no one method for coping that works universally. However, research does show that although there are many stressors, only a small number show up repeatedly. Therefore, a coach can game plan for these repeat offenders by focusing on categories. Sport psychologist Adam Nicholls suggests the following:

Given that a small number of stressors recur over time, we suggest that practitioners teach athletes three or four effective coping strategies that include at least one problem-focused, emotion-focused and avoidance strategy. This way, when faced with controllable or uncontrollable stressors, athletes always have a relatively effective coping strategy to deploy.

Problem-Focused Coping Strategies

Problem focused coping strategies are likely what most athletes and coaches are comfortable with. These strategies include common techniques such as goal setting, social support, time management, skill progressions, and behavior modification.

For example, if the source of stress is a competition during exam week for a high school or college athlete, the coping strategy may focus only on time management or getting support from a tutor. Or, if the source of stress is an elite competitor who is favored to win, the focus may be on goal setting and skill progressions.

In short, to use a problem focused coping strategy:

1. The athlete must acknowledge they have stress.
2. Be able to identify the specific source of the stress.
3. Create a realistic plan to cope with that specific source of stress.

Emotion-Focused Coping Strategies

Emotion focused coping strategies are likely what most athletes and coaches least like to talk about and apply. These strategies include techniques with benefits that are harder to quantify and may be considered esoteric. For example, meditation, rhythmic breathing, reframing, and visualization to name a few.

Just because these techniques are not as widely accepted among the athletic coaching community, don’t ignore them. In particular, when a source of stress is completely out of one’s control such that using a problem-focused coping technique is impossible, these techniques are ideal.

Avoidance Strategy

This last method for coping with stress is to simply avoid dealing with the source. The athlete can do this by either mentally blocking out what’s causing the stress by distracting oneself or physically leaving the environment causing the stress.

This technique is usually just a band-aid and is only temporary at best. For example, if it’s a person causing the stress, asking that person to leave or avoiding that person may work for a short amount of time. If it’s an event, distracting oneself from thinking about the event could be an effective course of action until that distraction ends. In both situations, it’s likely that the athlete can’t avoid the stress forever. Therefore, this option should be a last resort.