How Breathing, Meditation And Focus Can Help With Peak Performance For Athletes

Athletes aspire to give every game their best shot. Performance is what makes and breaks careers. Every game is a new start with pressure mounting to emerge victoriously. 

Peak performance for athletes is about giving absolute best at the right time. Not only physical skills, but the mental focus is also of immense value for every athlete. The life of these people can be quite stressful. Pressure, expectations, and results can lead to stress and anxiety. This can lead to focus being lost. This is why athletes’ meditation technique to reduce stress is highly preferred.

Importance For Peak Performance For Athletes

The thing is, for athletes, timing and focus are invaluable. They spend years on training. They might have performed superbly in the previous games. Yet, if they fail to be at their best in the finals, all is lost. 

Every athlete endeavors to get into a flow and zone before a big game. The zone is the mental space wherein all their focus and attention is on their performance. They lose perception of time. Everything else fades away. All they can think about is the game at hand and their conduct. A lack of focus can significantly impact peak performance for athletes. 

You would often notice most athletes do breathing exercises to enhance their focus right before the big game. Using athletes’ meditation technique to reduce stress is quite common as well. Why? How do these tactics help their performance?

Athletes usually have a small ritual of sorts before their games, commenced with a deep breathing exercise. This technique improves their focus and concentration and makes them more self-aware. It also reduces the anxiety that is likely to develop before any big game due to the mounting pressure. 

Athletes use various types of breathing techniques. Some examples include;

• Abdominal breathing
• Long exhale breathing 
• Pursed lips breathing
• Humming bee breathing 
• Mr Activated Breathing

Role Of Athletes’ Meditation Techniques To Reduce Stress

It is well established that meditation calms nerves. It enables you to recollect your thoughts. It has quite a tranquilizing effect. 

Athletes are seldom able to sleep before the night of a big game. They spend the time going over their tactics, plan of action, and what they hope to achieve. All this wears their mind down. A fatigued mind cannot be expected to help deliver excellent performance. 

Breathing exercises and meditation can help evade such situations. These practices remind the athletes that their only goal is to win the game. It gives them a tunnel vision where everything else is obscured, and their attention is limited to the game at hand and their performance.

All the stress and anxiety wash away. There is no place in the mind for anything else. When the focus is entirely on the game, peak performance for athletes is within reach. Taking excessive pressure before any game has never helped anyone. 

Indeed, performances are known to suffer because the players were too stressed out with everything. Breathing exercises and meditation can help build focus, enabling one to deliver the best performance.