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Managing Activation and Anxiety

Managing Activation and Anxiety

Managing Activation and Anxiety

Managing Activation and Anxiety

To be anxious as an athlete or a performer is to be activated. It’s both an autonomic, natural response to challenging circumstances and a positive sign that what you’re engaged in is important to you. If you’re anxious, you likely care about what’s in front of you, and your body is attempting to prepare you for it.

If we think about anxiety in these terms, our strategies for managing it become no different than our strategies for ramping up our activation levels when we’re feeling bored or flat: we reach within our autonomic circuitry and use what we can control to dial up, or dial back, our internal energy. That key controllable is our breathing.

We can’t will our hearts to beat slower or for our muscles to loosen, or make our palms stop sweating or our minds stop racing, but we can, in almost all circumstances, control our breathing. Our breathing is the one part of our autonomic nervous system that can be manipulated by our mind and our behavior. It is a doorway to managing our bodies’ natural reaction to stress. If we slow down our breathing, our bodies follow in kind. If we intensify or speed our breathing, our bodies speed up with us.

Slow Your Breathing

When you slow your breathing, it causes you to consume less oxygen and subsequently, decreases your heart rate. When blood pumps slower through your body, your blood pressure returns to normal and your muscles relax. As your heart rate slows and your muscles relax, your brain can realize that there is no threat, stop the release of stress hormones, and start normal functioning again. Most normal-sized adults need 5-7 breaths per minute to activate the parasympathetic nervous system and induce a physiological relaxation response in the body. In other words, for most adults, 5-7 slow, deep breaths will help diminish anxiety, normalize activation levels, and restore optimal brain and body function.

Ironically, the process works in the same manner for athletes looking to increase their activation levels. While short bursts of rapid, shallow breathing can temporarily stimulate the body and brain, slow, controlled breathing technique has a more sustained, normalizing impact, meaning it will lower activation for those who are over-activated, and increase activation for those who are under-activated and need a boost.

Belly Breathe

There are two kinds of breathing. You can breathe via your chest, which means your chest cavity expands to allow the lungs to inflate, or you can breathe via your belly, expanding your stomach as you inhale. We call this kind of “belly breathing” diaphragmatic breathing. When you allow your diaphragm to expand instead of your chest, you allow deep breathing to activate the vagus nerve. When the vagus nerve is activated, serotonin is secreted, which is the same neurotransmitter used in pharmaceutical anti-anxiety treatments.

If you’re able to get in the habit of practicing diaphragmatic deep breathing to manage your energy and anxiety, you will be able to calm your body naturally.

Diaphragmatic breathing is native to all of us, and easy to re-acquire if it’s been forgotten. Draw in your breath slowly through your nose and let your belly expand to capacity (your chest should not move). Exhale through your mouth, like you are slowly blowing up a balloon, and allow your belly to fall inward. Draw your belly button inward at the end of your exhale and tighten your abdominal muscles. Practice this for a few minutes each day.

Control your breath.

From time to time, a conscious effort to slow your breathing will be all that is required to induce relaxation or reduce activation and anxiety. In most instances, however, following one of the techniques below will speed this process, and make the management of your breathing easier and more efficient.

Experiment with each of these methods until you find the ones you like best. No one is better than the other, so trust your body and choose the techniques that feel the most natural and calming to you. Practice them at home/outside of competition in a peaceful environment. Once you have mastered the technique in a relaxed environment, practice it in a higher-pressure setting. Because these breathing techniques are quick and easy tools for managing anxiety, they can be used at any point before or during competition.

Measured Movement Breathing. This technique is a practical reminder to breathe diaphragmatically. Place one hand on your upper chest and the other on your lower abdomen. Note which hand moves more while you are breathing, and consciously control your breaths until the hand on your chest is entirely still and only the hand on your abdomen moves. You can easily bring this exercise into pre-performance and performance settings. A few controlled breaths is often all it takes to get your breathing in check.

Counted Breaths. Breathe any way you want (either with your stomach or chest), but count to at least four BETWEEN your breaths.

Inhale-exhale. 1…2…3…4.

Inhale-exhale. 1…2…3…4.

Do this for as long as it is comfortable, but target 2-3 minutes for optimal results.

3-3-3-3 Method or Box Breathing. Breathe in for three seconds. 1…2…3…Hold for three seconds. 1…2…3…Exhale for another three seconds. Hold for three seconds. 1….2…3…

The pattern will be: inhale, hold, exhale, hold. Repeat for as long as is comfortable. 30 seconds is adequate, and 2-3 minutes is ideal.