Pressure

Outside:

It's a beautiful day in April.  Crisp, the sun is out.  Not too windy.  You're at a grassy soccer complex a few hours outside the nearest city, with no loud noises and no spectators.  It's just you and other players, maybe a handful of alumni and friends.

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Inside - 1:

You didn't sleep well last night and your stomach aches this morning.  That hotel sucked.  You ate a balanced pre-Sunday breakfast, but you didn't really have an appetite and you barely tasted the food.  Your breathing is short and inconsistent, your palms are extra sweaty and you just can't seem to grip the disc well today.  Maybe you feel like you want to throw up.  Food poisoning?  Your body feels sore from the day before and you are struggling to get moving.  Legs feel like lead, hamstrings are toast, shoulder aches.

The upcoming day of ultimate is the culmination of 5 years of work for you.  Your mind is racing.  This is it, your last chance, your legacy.  All written in one day.  Success or failure simplified down into this single moment.  Maybe you feel a sinking feeling in your stomach.  Maybe you drop a pass in a warmup drill and it really gets under your skin, starts a fire in your dojo.

Maybe your mind is a whirlwind of thoughts.  Agonizing all the little pitfalls throughout the year, all the pebbles in your team's shoes thus far.

You're afraid of failure.  Maybe you are afraid that your team isn't ready.  Maybe you're afraid that you won't be able to be the pillar the team needs today.  Maybe you are wallowing in that fear.

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Inside - 2:

You didn't sleep well last night.  You were too excited to lay the beat down on some unsuspecting chumps today.  You crushed some eggs and coffee this morning.  You were a little tired, but the coffee took care of that.  3 hours of sleep would have been plenty.  Today's the day!

Your body feels a bit sore, but nothing you haven't experienced before.  You're mostly fired up to bring the pain today.  You know what you're capable of, what your teammates are capable of, and you love the battle.  It gives you energy and drives you.  Rip the disc out of the sky, layout some unsuspecting underclassman cutting under, bomb it 40 yards the other way, who cares.  You're here to kick some ass.  Today's the DAY!

This might be the final day of your ultimate career.  Time to step up.  Write your story.  Fulfill your destiny.  Win or go home, but you have plenty to say about that and you aren't afraid to say it.  Maybe you love the big game, and this is the biggest one of them all.

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Inside - 3:

You slept fine last night.  Maybe you got up early and had a nice leisurely breakfast at Bob Evans.  Border scramble omelette.  The morning was undramatic and quiet.  You arrived at the fields 4 minutes before everyone else with the guys in your car.  No big deal.  You knew what field you were on so you headed over and started cleating up.

You feel pretty good.  You know your body will take a bit extra to warmup today, so you make sure to get that done, too.  All is well.  The team is present, on time, and spirits are high.  The weather is nice.  You feel confident in your preparation and your abilities.  You are the master of the internal.  Your dojo walls are sturdy and tall.  No fires will be started there, today.

It could be the last day of your college ultimate career.  You feel some sadness at this, but mostly feel proud of the road that has lead you to this moment.  The path has been long, but worthwhile.  No matter how the dice fall today, that won't change.  You would like to extend your final season, to spend more time with your brothers and achieve success, however you defined it.  So, you will be all that you can be, today.

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Some thoughts:

I think people handle pressure very differently.  Some people are crushed by it, some people are fueled by it, and others are unaffected by it.  I think there's a full range of reactions people will have to different kinds of pressure.  I also think an individual's reaction to pressure is flexible over time.  A player can learn to handle pressure in a different way.  I think all good players (and good teams) must have an effective way to handle pressure constructively.  Be that getting up for big games/playing better under pressure, ignoring the pressure/tuning it out, or some other method.

I also think pressure is almost entirely self-imposed.  No one outside of your team will care or even know how your college ultimate club team did on a random Sunday in April.  Even if your team is contending for a national title, only a few thousand people will even know about it.  I think recognition that the source of pressure is within yourself is a key piece to helping players understand how they react to pressure and if it is an issue that needs to be addressed.

Intra-team pressure is a bit different I think.  This ties into the responsibility process, will vary from team to team.  Seems to me like additional pressure can either help or hurt your team, depending on how your team handles pressure as a unit.  Note: I think how a team handles pressure as a unit is related to how individuals on that team handle pressure, but is not always that simple.  E.g. the ability to handle pressure can be greater (or less than) the sum of the parts.

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I think ranges exist for each of the above numbered cases.  There can be strengths and weaknesses to any approach depending on how a player interprets things.  For example, if we were to describe a possible power and possible flaw of each of the above 3, it might look like:

#     Power   -   Flaw
1.      Fueled by Fear   -   Paralyzed by Fear
2.     Competitive     -     Overconfident
3.     Steadfast     -     Indifferent

I also think individuals can land anywhere in these ranges.  It gets trickier, since there are a lot of other ways to deal with pressure that I'm not mentioning here.  I think the goal should be to attempt to understand how players handle pressure and figure out an effective way to make it constructive.