As any soccer player can tell you, pressure to perform is a real thing. It might be ‘all in your head’ but it’s still absolutely real. So real that it can have a BIG impact on your game, and not usually in a positive way.
When we talk about pressure to perform, we’re talking about feeling the heavy weight of expectations to play well. And it can be extremely difficult to handle and even harder to overcome. Whether you are the one putting pressure on yourself or it is coming from somewhere else, performance pressure is a hard thing to navigate as it can feel almost impossible to stay calm, composed and play well when you are caught up in your racing thoughts and feelings of anxiety.
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Players feel pressure to perform in many situations, the high pressure ones ranging from trying to stand out soccer tryouts, to performing well in a championship match, to taking a penalty kick for your team. But even your standard Saturday afternoon league game has the potential to burden you with the heavy weight of performance pressure.
Preparation, both mental and physical, is the key to being able to handle high pressure situations and become a better soccer player. Mental preparation is what will help you regulate your focus and physical preparation is what will help you gain confidence in yourself and your ability to execute, regardless of the circumstance. Preparing on both fronts is how you help yourself be able to perform under pressure.
Elite performers can regulate attention & emotion. Under pressure. In any circumstance.
Pressure can have a major impact on performance – and particularly at the youth levels because players haven’t yet developed the mental performance skills that many professional players have spent years honing.
Here we dive into how pressure impacts performance on the soccer field and how to perform better under pressure, let’s go!
Grow your confidence through preparedness.
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Performance pressure is different for everyone
Pressure can come from many different places. It varies per player, but the one thing that remains consistent is how difficult it can be to work through and perform well under pressure. It is such a difficult thing to overcome that some soccer players can go their whole career and still not figure out how to conquer it and play their best soccer.
Internal & external pressure to perform
As a coach, I bring up pressure a lot and work to help give my players the mindset skills they need to help themselves overcome nerves on the soccer field (more on that below). Here are some common things I hear from my players when we talk about pressure to perform, and specifically pressure that they put on themselves:
“Pressure to me is to be at your best, essentially pressure to always be progressing. Pressure to perform comes mostly from myself, but also from healthy (& unhealthy) competition with my teammates.”
And another:
“Pressure to me is to not make mistakes, to make the right plays. I’m pressuring myself because I don’t want to let my teammates down, I want to pull my weight.”
Pressure to perform can also come from external sources such as coaches, parents or, in the case of the USWNT team this summer at the Tokyo Olympics, expectations from the world at large to live up to a your GOAT status. As we saw, even some of the best women’s soccer players in the world, can’t always handle the pressure to perform (they lost out in the semi-final round to Canada, who went on to win gold as the US women took bronze).
Responding to & coping with pressure to perform
When you are under a lot of pressure, it can manifest negatively as a physical reaction (feeling sick to your stomach), emotions (stress, anxiety, etc.) or self-defeating mentalities (overthinking, worrying about mistakes, etc.). With the right mindset though, pressure to perform has the potential to have a positive effect on soccer players by motivating them, but this typically only happens AFTER they’ve done the mental work and had some previous experience with how to handle pressure in sports. It’s like the evolved step of sports pressure.
Pressure is defined slightly differently be all players. It comes from different places as we mentioned already, it shows up differently and players cope differently too.
Soccer players struggling to perform under pressure don’t always have an answer for how to cope with it. The ‘hope it goes away’ method is quite common. Other reactions include becoming stressed out, shutting down, overthinking, being distracted and freaking out – none of which are helpful in terms of staying calm and composed during your moment of required focus.
Here’s the good thing to always remind yourself: pressure is temporary. It is created by your mind, and it can be controlled by you consciously choosing to not let it take over. With mental preparation you have a much stronger chance of staying in control and being able to regulate your emotions and thoughts so that you can stay focused on important things (aka the game, the penalty kick, etc.).
As a soccer coach, one of the best pieces of advice I can give my players who are struggling with how to perform better under pressure, is to start openly talking about it.
When you push something down and pretend it doesn’t exist, it grows in strength until it completely overtakes you. But when you have the self-awareness to acknowledge it and it’s problematic existence, that sheds light on it and it automatically loses some of its grip on you. When you start talking about things that are big, dark and scary, they lose their power as you normalize them and make a plan to conquer them.
The key to coping with and then overcoming performance pressure is preparation. So, how do you do that, how do you mentally & physically prepare? Let’s dive in.
Here's how to perform better under pressure
Growing your mental performance skills will help you stay calm and perform under pressure. Self-regulation is a very important mental performance skill for a soccer player, it is your ability to control your emotions and thoughts so that they don’t derail your performance and instead are good, useful and constructive. By learning this skill you are investing in yourself and your growth and development as a soccer player.
Stress, anxiety and nerves are common things for soccer players to experience as a result of feeling pressure to perform, all things that can cause you to lose composure and distract you from the game if you don’t have the tools to deal with it. Here are five simple, effective things you can do by yourself to work towards mastering emotional control and keeping your mind focused on constructive things during your next soccer game:
#1 - Start a daily meditation practice
Adding mediation into your daily routine is a game changer for soccer players. Mediation helps you to stay focused on what you CHOOSE to be focused on, it helps keep your mind from wandering or going off on tangents that you don’t want it to go on. In regards to managing performance pressure, mediation can help you say ‘no thank you’ when negative, self-defeating thoughts or feelings start to creep in.
One thing to note, it takes awhile for the effects of mediation to show up. So patience to persist is big here.
#2 - Build your confidence with individual training
Having confidence in yourself and faith in your ability to perform will help you stay composed in high pressure situations. You can grow your confidence by adequately preparing, which means spending the time to individually train and grow your skillset outside of team practice. Make a plan, set goals (download our free weekly planner here!) and put in the work.
This is where you step up for yourself and take responsibility for your development. If you TRULY want to improve at staying calm under pressure, you have to build your confidence in your play – which requires you to train more on your own.
#3 - Mentally prepare for each match with a pre-game routine
The number one thing you can do for yourself, to calm nerves and go into games or soccer tryouts focused and composed, is to have a solid pre-game routine. This routine can be anything from going for a long walk with your dog to listening to pump up music in the car on the way to the game. Whatever it is, your ultimate goal with a pre-game routine is to be focused and mentally fresh.
Choose something that works for YOU (it doesn’t have to be the same thing your teammates do) and then most importantly, KEEP IT CONSISTENT. This is really important because your mind will start to associate this activity with preparing for a game and the more you do it, the more comfort you will get from it – and the more comfortable and at ease you feel, the more calm and composed you will be heading into the soccer match.
#4 - Keep your self-talk constructive
In the moment, when playing, instructional self-talk is the most helpful way to stay calm and play well. Instructional self-talk is basically talking yourself through a set of ‘instructions’ about what you should be doing right now in the game. Use short phrases that are easy to remember and keep them on repeat in your head. Here’s an example: “check your shoulders, look for space, break lines.”
Instructional self-talk is hugely helpful in high pressure moments with build-up such as freekicks or penalty kicks where players can choke or fold under the weight of the task.
Self-talk helps you self-regulate by directing your attention away from your feelings of anxiety, stress, etc. and onto what you should be doing right now. It also helps you keep the self-defeating thoughts (replaying mistakes, worrying, overthinking) at bay by forcing your brain to focus on something else.
#5 - Use breath-work to regain control
If you feel your emotions or anxious thoughts start to surge, try breath-work as a way to quickly regain control. This can be used before or during a game, whenever you have a break in play and a second or two to reset. Breath-work helps you calm down and regain focus and control by tapping into a space where you are TAKING control of something that you typically don’t have control over (your breathing).
Try this: when waiting for someone to set up for a set piece, or collect the ball for a throw-in, just take one BIG inhale followed by one exhale. And don’t just take the breath, FEEL it. Do this enough and it will start to serve as a trigger to calm your body and mind, reminding yourself that you have control over what you choose to focus on.
Mastering the mental side of soccer
Pressure to perform is a huge factor for many soccer players. It can get in the way of maximizing their potential, it can take the joy and enthusiasm out of the game, and it can even contribute to burnout and lead to players dropping out of soccer.
The way to escape the grips of performance pressure is being able to self-regulate your focus when under a lot of pressure on the soccer field. Being self-aware that this is something that affects your game is huge, because only then can you take steps forward to work on changing it. This is not something you can master overnight, it takes years and years and even then still requires work. But you got this! Baby steps to start, then you can run.
You are in control; you CAN master this difficult mental piece of the beautiful game. And that folks is how you handle pressure in sports. You own the issue and then you work your butt off to overcome it.
Hi everyone! I’m Jenn and I create content to help female soccer players and coaches maximize individual and team potential by developing healthy mindset skills. Join other subscribers and sign up for the newsletter for all my best tips and advice!
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hi thank you for this piece of advice i am a young male footballer from africa