When the lights are yellow, you have to attend to the intersection, check the rear view mirror for police officer. Make your decision. What the most of us do at yellow lights, we speed up. What the most of us do in athletic performance, when the garbage starts to occur? We speed up, we go faster, we try harder. We also have to recognize when the red lights are red and we have to stop. That's important. It's critical.
But to do that, you have to recognize internally what happens to you. What happens in the body? There was one thing when I participated as an athlete when I was younger, I wish I would have recognized that some of these things I was going through before a game where basic physiological reactions, those feelings of your heart rate increasing, your blood pressure going up, your heart, your respiration rate going up. Muscle tension in the neck, joint, shoulder, these are common physiological things that we experience in the body.
Also, blood flow to the extremities, gets constricted a little bit. That's why sometimes the hands feel sweaty. That's why sometimes we have those shaky knees, the bat doesn't feel right in our hands, the racket doesn't feel right, the field hockey stick doesn't feel like you did before. That's a common reaction. Blood flow to the digestive system is constricted somewhat. Our digestive tract is seven times our body's length. That's a long distance for that food to pass through.
But when we're feeling some of this pressure, blood flow shift from here. That's why before a game we have that feeling of butterflies in our stomach. We have that frequent urination. Sometimes, we just almost feel like, we're going to throw up at a times. These are some of the physiological things that happen to us, behaviorally what happens.
I remember one athlete, we were at Nationals and she qualified for individual finals. The spotlight was on here. Before she went when she was on deck, she was yawning, she was sleeping, she was tired, she could hardly stay away. Then she got up on that pain, saluted the judge, nailed her routine. But that was something she did all the time.
Because what she would do before a performance she would sort of withdraw from the group, she would get tired and she would remove herself, but then she knew herself well enough to know, this is what happens to me. She would stand up, she would be ready and she would go.
Other athletes, they get real anxious and keyed up, they bounce around, they're talking, they are moving around, they're anxious. So some of us, we sort of withdraw others, we get keyed up. So now we got the physiological stuff going on in the body. Then we got some of these behavioral things going on. The final area is, I thinking what happens of the thought process under pressure.
Some of us, if we need a narrow focus of attention, we have a broad focus of attention; we are all over the place. We need to focus on the target, we're into whose over here, whose in the stands, where are the officials? If we need the broad focus of attention like a quarter back coming out of the huddle, we are too narrowed in.
So our focus gets affected. We get into being critical of ourselves and other people. All of these are things and most importantly, we get into those negative voices that go on. As you saw earlier with some of those athletes, I always bring my friend this little monkey that chatters, sometimes when the garbage hits the fan, we get that monkey talking in our ear and we get all those distractions coming into play.
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