Anxiety and pressure

Hi!

So recently I played against someone who's at the top of my division in the league I play in and so far he'd only lost 1 match in the whole season, which was by me, so I knew I could beat him but it was the final day and I had to beat him to move up a division but I got tense and the pressure built up and I lost, 3-1 in games. Half way through I got anxious and made terrible mistakes, further losing my cool. How can I overcome this and how can I play under pressure? Thanks in advance!

P.S the junior trials where I'm from is starting in 2 weeks, any advice for that?

Hi Andre,

Firstly as I say a lot, this is completely normal.

The first thing is to recognise what is happening to you when you are getting anxious.  Take a look at the lesson we have in our Sports Psychology section on how to Recognise Your Feelings. We then also have a couple of other lessons there for Premium members that would be useful.

The main thing is to recognise the anxiety and then have some simple tools to be able to use to overcome this.  A simple deep breath can help and then turn your attention to the tactic you need to employ in the next point.

For your trials, go out there   and just work own playing your best Table Tennis.  Try to forget about the results or the consequences… even though this is difficult.  You can help to do this by focusing on each point as it comes.  The games and matches will look after themselves.