Are you kidding me? What was that? Why does Coach even waste his time working with you? Is that really the best you can do? Maybe if you could stop sucking, you would be better at this! Obviously, you aren’t practicing enough.

Hundreds of thoughts rush through your head during a game, a meet, a performance, or pretty much any competition. Good thoughts, bad thoughts, ugly thoughts, they all happen seemingly at the same time. For some athletes, the bad thoughts win. They win over and over and over again to the point where you no longer see the good parts of that jump, that shot, that dive, that pass, or that hit. All you can think about is what you can do better.

Corrections from teammates and coaches don’t help because you are way ahead of them. You were critiquing yourself as soon as it happened. You could tell them exactly where everything went wrong. You can tell them exactly what you need to fix.

I know this because I do this. After every jump, every race, every start, every throw, I am critiquing it. My plant sucked, my takeoff was shaky, my start was slow. Sometimes it gets to the point where I just have to walk away because having anyone else tell me what I’m doing wrong could send me over the emotional, frustrated edge.

The good news is that there is hope. The hardest part about being an athlete is accepting the fact that a sport is a sport. You will wake up tomorrow and go to class and everything will be relatively normal. A bad performance sucks. I know. I’ve had plenty of them. The worst thing that you could possibly do is let one bad performance affect the rest of your performance or the other parts of your life.

You are not defined by your sport and you are not defined by your performances. Every athlete has their days. Every athlete has those seasons. Injuries happen, weather happens, people get inside of your head. It’s ok. Do what my friends use to tell me. Make like a duck and let it roll off. You won’t get better by letting those things get to you. Let it go and keep pushing forward because that’s what we do as athletes.

We push. We don’t stop until we get it right. So don’t stop.