Athlete Tip: How to Come Back From Mistakes Faster

What's up athletes. Welcome to the raising and we competitors podcasts. I'm coach brief and elite performance coach for girl athletes and super excited that you're here. This is a special episode just for athletes all around some tips to help you come back from mistakes faster. Now, honestly, this is one of the number one questions that I get from athletes. And it is how do I get over a mistake faster? Right. I make a mistake. And then sometimes spiral from one mistake to the next, and then I'm sort of hesitating and then I'm not playing my game as well. And I'm getting in my own head and it just kinda like all goes from there. And so if we could just stop that before it starts and get over mistakes, things will be a lot easier. And so I'm going to go over a couple of tips that have been helpful for the athletes inside our program called the elite mental game, which I know will help you now, before I do, I do want to have a shout out an athlete from the elite mental game. Her name is Mika. She is a gymnast. And she recently. Started the program. And the first thing that athletes learn insider program is a snap back routine. This is actually a specific routine. That helps athletes come back from mistakes in five to 10 seconds or less. And so she said this the other day, she said, I used my snapback routine before my series on beam. It really helped clear my mind. So I'm not feeling as nervous. So Mika, awesome job. Keep using your setback routine because here's the deal when you use it before those situations, when you start to feel nervous, you start to feel like, Ooh, I don't know. If I'm gonna be able to perform how I want to perform, because I'm kind of feeling some feelings here and you have something to help ground. You get you in the present moment. Now you are able to perform with more of a clear mind and do your thing out there, right? Because you're already not just Mika you all that are listening to this. You have put in the work, you are doing the physical training, and oftentimes it's just getting in your own head that gets in the way. So let's get you out of your head. So here are your tips that I have for you on coming back from mistakes. First of all. I realize that mistakes are part of the game. A lot of times athletes fear mistakes, because they're like, oh, they're so bad. I'm you know, what are people going to think of me? I'm going to pull it out of the game and it's embarrassing. You're going to make mistakes. I want you to just accept that right now. It's not the mistake that matters. It's actually the response. And if you think about your sport, how long does your sport allow you to get over your mistake? Maybe you haven't considered that before, but if you play a sport like volleyball, the rally ends, and then the next service coming within about 20 seconds, if there's no timeout or anything or a sub in between, so you have 20 seconds to get over your mistake because the next ball is coming. And if it takes you three minutes to get over a mistake, then we potentially have gone through multiple rallies and we don't have you present playing your best. Now, if you play a sport like basketball, you potentially have less time depending on what's happening in the game. Like if you need to get back on defense, you're running down the court. You have hardly any time. If you're a swimmer, if you're a gymnast like Nika, you don't have a 10 time. Like you're in the pool. You're on the beam. And so you have to have skills to come back from your mistake or whatever is kind of throwing you off. Now, if you golf, maybe you have a little more time because you're walking to your next ball and you have maybe a couple of minutes to kind of get over. But in many cases, athletes that I talked to their mistakes are impacting them for a long time. Like minutes, hours. Sometimes people are thinking about mistakes even after the game or the next day. And if that's you that's okay. That's okay, because that's normal. You just haven't learned another way. So I'm going to teach you another way right now, in order for you to get over those mistakes first, realize that they're going to happen. So we don't need to be afraid of them. Continue to practice. And train hard so that you are doing your best physically, but you're still inevitably going to make a mistake. Here's the thing you need to have some sort of routine that you do after that mistake to help you get over it. I mentioned ours in our program that we teach is called the snapback routine. That's a combination of a deep breath. So nice deep inhale through your nose, filling your belly and lung. You're reset word. So athletes in our program come up with something called a reset word that helps them kind of get focused back in how they want to feel and how they want to perform. And they find that word through a specific activity where they're reminiscing and they're thinking about their best playing moments. So some reset words are present fun, grounded. Fire. Some reset words are kind of random, like one athletes at her reset words with sausage. Okay. So whatever the story was behind that, but that was something that kind of like helped her maybe bring a little humor into it and realize like, Hey, you know, this is okay. I'm here. This is just the game. I can do this. Right. It kind of helps kind of get them back in the moment, but whatever your reset word is, say that reset word at the top of that breath. And then on the exhale doing some sort of reset signal. So we have athletes. Pick from a variety of things that they can do. And a reset signal is something small that they can do in the moment. It could be like, snapping a finger, pressing a finger and your, middle finger, your thumb together, it could be like looking at something specific on the court or the field or wherever you play. Something that you do every time that helps you kind of get back into the moment. So athletes have developed, the snapback routine, they're practicing it, and then they have it for them to use in those moments where they need to come back from a mistake and athletes in the program are saying things like this helps me come back and. Seconds. And if you play a sport that you don't, maybe don't even have time to do some sort of reset signal. So, so you're in the pool and you're swimming just saying that reset word can be effective in those moments as well. So those are some tips for you to get going with, make sure, first of all, realizing that mistakes aren't going to happen. Like if you're an athlete, you're going to make mistakes. Okay. That's not actually the thing to be afraid of I think to be afraid of would be, I have no way to come back from that mistake. So your second part of this is have a way to come back from your mistakes that you have practiced ahead of time. If you want to try out the snapback routine. I gave you just a little piece of how you can get going with that. We go a lot deeper inside our program called the elite mental game for athletes. But that is a way that you can really come back to the present moment and start playing your best in those moments. All right, athletes, you got this. Remember everything you need is within you already. You got this. I'll see. In the next athlete episode of the raising elite competitors podcast.