Sports Psychology By Terri Milner Tarquini
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all it the danger zone: The fourteen days before competition. Suddenly, in what is often this critical time, a skater can’t land a thing in their program, or they get stuck on one element that they’ve had consistent forever and now they “can’t do it.” Sound familiar? “Panic sets in because they are totally focused on the outcome and they let the ‘what ifs’ really flood them,” said Pomai Miyata, a certified mental coaching professional and PSA and U.S. Figure Skating member. “If coaches can get their students to switch gears sooner, before they reach the level of a full meltdown, everyone benefits.” Nerves happen. They can’t be eradicated, but they can be mitigated. Alleviating a skater’s panic can come in a single word: routine. “The more you can reduce the need for decision-making by the skater, the better,” Miyata said. “This minimizes potential distractions and improves their ability to refocus quickly on the task at
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hand, resulting in fewer freak-outs.” Panic often comes from feeling out of control—and figure skating is a sport where there is a fair amount of uncontrollables, which can often be a trigger to skaters staring down the barrel of competition. Things like a pre-determined off-ice warm-up and on-ice warm-up can re-center them back on familiar ground. “Routines help them be in control because it gives them something they know and are comfortable with,” Miyata said. “Competition is in the future, so having a routine they can go back to helps them focus on the now.” Miyata, a multi-sport athlete herself whose son is a competitive figure skater, has worked professionally with athletes for over 30 years. She specializes in taking mental toughness theories and translating them into concrete tools the skaters can implement and rely upon. As the two-week period before competition can be filled with anxiety and sudden self-doubt, nothing new should be
introduced during that time. It’s important to use the established routine and pull the skater back to it if they start to veer away. To keep the variables as much at bay as possible, the routine they go through in practice should also be the same routine they use at competition. “The routine is their go-to and it provides comfort because they know what to expect and what to do,” she said. “The more rote you can keep things, it takes decision-making out of the situation. That is a key component to keeping calm when emotions are running high.” Another part of the skater’s routine can be visualization, although the word itself often causes pushback from athletes. “I often hear from skaters that they’ve tried visualization and they can’t do it,” Miyata said. “I call it ‘imagining.’ It seems to be a word and a concept that kids can more easily grasp and get behind.” Part of the beauty of imagining is that is can be done anytime, anywhere. “You can only do so many repetitions
