Pressure, Anxiety, Jitters, Shaking...Handling the Nerves

Ever feel like you have no control over your nerves when golf shots are on the line? It may be a 3 foot put to seal the deal for $5 or $5000. Whatever it is that makes you nervous before a shot, you're suddenly burdened by uncontrollable anxiety and jitters. Your heart starts pounding and all you can think about is, "don't mess up!" Its incredibly stressful. The answer to dealing with the nerves is easier than you think. Some may have an easier time learning this than others, but if a nervous wreck like myself can handle pressure packed situations with a smile and steady hands, you may want to try what I'm about to share.

Before my trip out to Japan, I played in the Long Beach Open and I was nervous. There really was no reason for it, but I didn't want to play bad. I was doing great in practice but once I set foot in the tournament, my heart started pounding, my body was twitching, I was hyperventilating and I couldn't control my swing. This wasn't the way I wanted to prepare for my trip to Japan. Then for the second round, I found my old self. But it took some practice in...BREATHING.

Yes, BREATHING. The way you breath can affect the chemical balance of your body. When you become nervous, many things happen in your mind that cause problems in your blood/oxygen as well as the chemicals being mixed around.

First off, when you begin to have fear, you get nervous and your body begins to adapt by preparing to fight. Adrenaline gets pumped through your blood stream and your heart begins to race. Now you're twitching and shaking like you just took 10 shots of espresso. You get so nervous in fact, that you may even begin to hyperventilate and your mouth gets dry. Feel tense with butterflies in your stomach too? You start taking deep breaths but its not helping.

Well, its the way you're breathing that's causing the problems. When you start to feel that adrenaline swell in your heart, you need to immediately slow the flow of blood to supply the adrenaline to the body and slow the heart rate down. This will keep you calm and collected.

Here's how...if you have a panic attack, take a deep breath and hold it for a few seconds...then let it out very slowly. Here's the key, don't breath out too fast or shallow. Take a normal deep breath in, but exhale very SLOWLY (preferably longer than your inhale) and exhale FULLY. I say fully because you don't want excess oxygen in your system or else the mixture of blood/oxygen will not be stable. You need to fully release oxygen to fully replenish it back into the system. See if you can do this and FEEL your heartbeat slow down. Do it a couple times to see if you feel it slow down. You may even feel a heartbeat skip when you're doing this...its perfectly natural...you won't die. Now once you have your heartbeat somewhat normal, concentrate on controlling your breaths. Preferably about 2 seconds in and 2 seconds out. You want to regulate your breaths because you never notice how imbalanced your breathing becomes when you're nervous...its the last thing you think about.

Hyperventilating? Just means you're taking waaaaaay too many breaths in and not exhaling enough. Your blood stream is filled with oxygen and you feel like you can't catch your breath. Usually people use a paper bag but on the course, you can just cup your hands. Basically, you want to take a deep breath in and let it out fully into your hands and start breathing in the carbon dioxide from your exhales. Eventually, you may feel a bit light headed and overly relaxed. Move your hands and start breathing normally and the blood/oxygen levels will regulate by themselves. Still, remember to control your breaths.

The more you can do these exercises, you can regulate how your heart beats and decrease the flow of adrenaline filled blood as well as decreasing the release of adrenaline at all. When your body is chemically balanced (like when you're not nervous in practice), you'll be able to control your body and the swing much better.

If this doesn't work, pick up another sport or stay away from stressing things all together.