Here's why performance anxiety before an Olympic event may not be a bad thing

Just moments before Mikaela Shiffrin, the world’s top-ranked women’s skier, clipped into her bindings today for the first run in her attempt to defend her Olympic gold medal in the slalom, she vomited. It was a dramatic physical reaction to the nerves that plague athletes at all levels of competition, but not so rare for Shiffrin. She has been open about the battle she is waging against those nerves with the help of sports psychologists.

In a TV interview between races today, Shiffrin suggested she might have caught a virus, but later acknowledged it was “just nerves again.”

Mikaela Shiffrin misses out on medal at women's slalom final

Sports psychologists say extreme performance anxiety like Shiffrin’s is more common than many people think among elite athletes.

What is performance anxiety?

“Performance anxiety is when the mind and the body says, ‘OK, it’s here, whatever we’ve done to prepare, there’s nothing else we can do now aside from try to be successful,” Dr. Neal Bowes, a former professional soccer player and sports psychologist who has prepared Olympians for the games, told ABC News. “And it’s more common than you think.” Think of it as the common “fight or flight” reaction.

Amy Baltzell, who competed in the 1992 Barcelona Games as a rower and is now the president of the Association of Applied Sports Psychology (AASP), agrees. “Most athletes feel performance anxiety and as you get better and the results get more uncertain, that anxiety goes up,” Baltzell said.

Source :- go