Getting Nervous For Lacrosse Season Is Great For Goalies

Getting nervous means that it’s getting close to lacrosse time for most of us and I’m starting to get a lot of emails from goalies who are “nervous” about the season.  I’ve written about this before but now is as good a time as any to touch on the idea…getting “nervous” is good!  Here’s why.

A Great Story About Nerves

First a story:  When I was training for the Olympics back in the day I worked with a great sports psychologist named Dr. Jerry Lynch.  I explained to him that I was “nervous” about the upcoming season and that it made me feel weird.  My arms would tingle.  My stomach would turn.  And my heart rate was sometimes through the roof and I wasn’t even playing!

I viewed it as a bad thing, but Jerry taught me to look at it in a different way and that is what I’m going to do today for you.

How To Reframe Those Nervous Feelings

You see, getting nervous is really a mechanism in your body to prepare it to perform at a higher level.  A level that it may not have ever performed at before.  What we feel going on in our body is weird.  Strange.  And sometimes debilitating.  It’s part of the “Flight of Fight” response that has been wired into our brain for thousands of years.  It’s that same mechanism that happens when your in the woods and you run into a bear.  Or you are a firefighter caught in a burning building.  Your brain sends a signal to your body by releasing adrenaline into your system.  This makes all of your senses more acute and your muscles now have more ability to contract more forcefully allowing you to run faster, jump higher, (or in our case) stop more lacrosse balls.

But this mechanism is all well and good if we have something to apply it to.  If we are in the cage, in a game, all of that adrenaline goes to good use.  Our senses are heightened, we are running faster, and moving quicker to the ball than we ever have.  So it’s a really good thing to have that nervous sensation in your body going into a game.

The Problem With Nerves

The problem lies when you are sitting in class thinking about lacrosse and you are getting nervous.  As we sit in history class thinking about the game our brain is envisioning playing but we’re not on the field yet.  You may have heard me mention before that the body doesn’t know the difference between what is real and what is imagined.  Dr. Jerry Lynch taught me that too.  But what can happen is that our brain can get so ramped up that the Fight or Flight mechanism gets triggered and that adrenalin starts to flow.  Our heart rate goes up.  Our excitement level peaks, ready to play, but we’re sitting in class getting bored as Mrs. Jones drones on about the Cretans!  With nowhere to spend that energy we can get tingly, and our stomach might even get upset.

So, what do you do?  Tone it down.  Get your mind off the game, or practice, or tryouts, whatever.  Start thinking about something or someone else.  At first you won’t be able to but over time you’ll be as good at focusing your brain as you will at stopping balls high stick side.

Embrace The Feeling Of Nervous

So that nervous feeling you have?  Embrace it.  It’s just your brain getting you ready to perform at a higher level.  When I learned these things from Dr. Jerry my whole life changed.  I looked forward to the nervous feelings.  When I applied it to my goaltending it changed the way I played.  I looked forward to the “nerves” because I knew I was ready.

I also embraced it as a way that I was going to break through a plateau.  Those nerves were going to help me play at a higher level.  How high?  I wasn’t sure, but I sure wasn’t going to stop myself.  Lot’s of goalies go into practices or games only thinking of how well they played there last game or practice and then limiting themselves to that level of performance in the next game.  Not me.  I was always ready to allow myself to play better.  (But that’s a whole ‘another blog post.)

Hope this blog post helps you.  Please leave your comments below.  It’s great discussion and it helps make this lacrosse goalie site one of the best in the nation by ranking higher in the search engines!  So comment away.  I appreciate it.

Jonathan – The Goalie Guru

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