How to Stay Calm Under Pressure in Sports
Big moments do not have to rattle you. Learning how to stay calm under pressure is a trainable part of mental performance, just like improving physical skills.
Techniques like breathwork and positive self-talk can help student-athletes perform their best when the stakes are high. And that means composure can be practiced before the big game arrives. A simple routine can help you respond calmly and effectively in crucial moments.
“One thing that I learned at IMG Academy is imagining myself succeeding before I get on the court,” one IMG Academy basketball alumnus said. “Specifically within a certain task, if I'm trying to make my free throws, I always like to imagine in my head, spinning the ball, doing my routine. One, two, three, letting it fly off the laces. Holding my follow through. Imagining my acts before the game helps me perform.”
Read on to learn more about handling pressure in sports, including why nerves get the best of us, tools for keeping calm and how IMG Academy coaches train student-athletes to keep a level head in high-pressure moments.
Key Takeaways
Learning how to stay calm under pressure starts with treating composure as a skill you can practice.
Slow, controlled breathing can help regulate your physical response during stressful moments.
A short between-plays reset can help you leave the last play behind and refocus on your next responsibility.
Focused self-talk gives your attention a clear job instead of letting worries dominate.
Visualization can help you rehearse skills and competitive situations before they happen.
Pre-game relaxation practice can help student-athletes manage competition anxiety.
Mental skills work best when you practice them regularly, not just when you're nervous on game day.
Game-Day Nerves: What’s Happening Inside
Ever feel like you struggle to perform the skills you’ve practiced extensively on game day? The good news is you didn’t suddenly forget how to play. But there is another skill you must develop: Performing under pressure – and harnessing your anxiety for good.
Research on wavering under pressure points to two possible ways pressure can disrupt performance: student-athletes may focus too closely on the mechanics of a skill they normally perform automatically, or their attention may be pulled toward performance worries. In other words, pressure can change where your attention goes.
Think about a basketball free throw. In practice, you may simply see the rim, settle into your routine and shoot. In a close game, your mind may jump ahead: What if I miss? What will my teammates think? What if we lose?
That extra mental noise can make a familiar skill feel unfamiliar and even interfere with a student-athlete’s ability to perform a critical motor skill they’ve mastered.
Telling yourself to stop being nervous is not a useful response. Nerves are a normal reaction to a situation that matters. Instead, ask yourself: What can I do with that energy?
Notice that you're nervous, then give your attention a job: find your assignment, see the target, make the next pass or get into position.
Tools Athletes Can Use to Stay Calm in the Moment
You can train your mental game just as you train your physical skills. Practicing certain techniques can help you manage pressure during competition. These skills can even help you reset after a mistake. IMG Academy Softball Coach, Sara Haefeli offers this tip for staying calm after something goes wrong: “You can say [to yourself] loose is fast,” she said. “That reminds you to stay loose because loose is fast.”
Another one she recommends is “so what, next play?” or “next play best play”. “This helps you lock back in and get ready for the next pitch.”
Breathing Techniques to Lower Arousal
Breathing techniques are practical tools you can use when you want to settle your body and refocus.
A recent paper on Competitive Performance Anxiety in young athletes discusses a case that shows how mindful breathing can improve performance: A 13-year-old catcher developed the yips. His arm would freeze mid-throw, and he could not get the ball back to the pitcher. His body was so tense he could barely take a full breath.
His treatment team taught him a simple pattern: breathe in through the nose while cocking the arm, then breathe out through the mouth while releasing the throw. He practiced it daily with towel drills, and within three weeks, his tension eased and his throwing came back.
Here are some breathing techniques you can start practicing now, so when game day comes around, they feel like second nature:
Box breathing:
Inhale through your nose for 4 seconds.
Hold your breath for 4 seconds.
Exhale through your mouth for 4 seconds.
Hold empty for 4 seconds.
The physiological sigh:
Inhale through your nose until your lungs feel full.
Take one more quick, sharp breath in to fully inflate the lungs.
Exhale slowly through your mouth.
4-4-6-2 deep breathing:
Inhale through your nose for 4 seconds.
Hold your breath at the top for 4 seconds.
Exhale for 6 seconds.
Hold empty for 2 seconds.
Try cycling through each technique three to four times to see which one(s) calm you down the most. Learn more about box breathing from IMG Academy Essentials.
A Between-Plays Reset Routine
One bad play can bleed into the next one if you let it. A missed shot, a dropped pass, or a bad call from the ref can pull your focus away from what's actually in front of you. That's where a reset routine helps. It gives you a mindfulness practice you can use in real time, so you can process what just happened and get your attention back on the game.
A good reset should be short enough to use without losing your intensity. Try this four-step sequence:
Cue: Use one consistent physical signal to mark the moment, like a deep breath or a tap of your glove.
Example: A point guard drives the lane and her shot is blocked. As she gets back on defense, she taps her jersey twice, her signal that the play is over.
Release: Acknowledge what just happened, then let it go.
Example: She thinks, "Blocked shot, that's done," and lets the frustration pass instead of replaying it in her head.
Focus: Identify the one thing you can control right now.
Example: She reminds herself to find her mark and get low in her defensive stance for the possession that's about to start.
Go: Commit fully to the next play.
Example: She calls out the opponent's play as it develops, fully locked into defense instead of thinking about the block.
Practiced enough, this routine becomes second nature. It separates one play from the next, so a mistake stays a mistake instead of turning into a slump.
Focused Self-Talk
Your internal dialogue can influence where you direct your attention during competition.
As sports psychologist Kelli Moran-Miller writes in the Stanford Report, “When they’re at their best, athletes are focused on just being in the moment and executing their job. They’re not worrying about outcomes, how important a particular moment is, or what could go wrong.”
A task-focused cue can help bring your attention back to what you need to do next.
A useful cue can be short, specific and connected to the task. Instead of “don't miss again,” try “finish strong” or “eyes on the target.” Instead of, “we have to win,” try “defend this possession.”
Imagine a soccer midfielder who gives the ball away late in a close match. Thinking, “I can't make another mistake,” may keep the student-athlete focused on the consequences of the previous error. A task-focused cue such as “find the open player” gives the student-athlete something specific to focus on for the next objective.
Self-talk and cognitive reframing are core mental performance skills IMG Academy coaches build with student-athletes, helping shift internal dialogue toward focus and confidence.
“You are the most consistent voice you will ever hear, and the voice is either working for you or working against you,” adds Cat Lutz, Director of Mental Performance at IMG Academy. “Self-talk shapes confidence, focus, and how quickly you recover from mistakes or adversity. Elite athletes don’t leave their inner dialogue to chance. They train it the same way they train their physical skills! The words you choose are not just noise; they’re instructions your mind and body follow in real time. Listen to your inner coach, and not your inner critic!”
For more examples, see positive self-talk for athletes.
Visualizing What You Can Control
Visualization gives you a chance to mentally prepare before the pressure arrives. When you picture a movement in detail, your brain activates many of the same pathways it would use if you were actually performing that movement. That's why visualizing your routines may help you execute them with more consistency once the big moment arrives.
“Visualization allows you to mentally rehearse a skill, a routine, or a competitive moment, without expending physical effort,” said Lutz. “What that does is allow for neural pathways to be strengthened, the same pathways being built when physically performing a skill, while also managing workload. It isn’t wishful thinking! It is deliberate practice you can do anywhere, at any time, that will prime your mind and body to positively execute during competition.”
To do this, use imagery to rehearse situations you may face in competition. Picture yourself taking the free throw: the bounce, the breath, the release. A swimmer might visualize the exact feel of the water on the final turn before a race. A gymnast might mentally walk through a routine step by step, including the landing.
Visualization works best when it includes more than just the outcome. Picture the setting, the sounds around you and the way your body feels as you move through the task. The more real the mental image feels, the more useful the rehearsal becomes.
You can also mentally rehearse how you want to respond after a mistake, such as resetting your focus and returning to your next task. Rehearsing the recovery is just as valuable as rehearsing the success, since it prepares you for the moments that don't go as planned.
Building Calm Before the Game
Learning how to calm nerves before a game starts with building a routine you can trust.
Build a short pre-game routine to help manage competition anxiety. Before competition, visualize what success looks like, and also the situations that may test your composure so you can decide how you want to respond.
On game day, give yourself time to settle in and complete your normal preparation. You might run through some breathing techniques to calm your nerves and lock in before shifting your attention to sport-specific preparation.
In a small study of 24 collegiate track-and-field student-athletes, progressive relaxation training was associated with higher pre-competition self-confidence and positive sports-performance outcomes. The athletes completed 30-minute sessions twice a week for one month.
The study doesn't establish that the same effects will occur for every student-athlete, but it offers a practical lesson: relaxation is a skill worth practicing before competition, not something to tackle when your nerves are already high.
Can Staying Calm Be Trained?
Yes. Composure is not a personality trait reserved for a few naturally composed student-athletes. It's a skill, and like any skill, it improves with repetition.
Here are three steps IMG Academy mental performance coach Emily Wright recommends to build composure:
Step 1: Build awareness. You can’t manage what you don’t notice. Learn to recognize what it looks and feels like when you’re in control.
Use the Stoplight Analogy:
🟢 Green: In control, composed, confident
🟡 Yellow: Starting to lose control—frustrated, doubtful, distracted
🔴 Red: Out of control—angry, negative, unfocused
Step 2: Know your triggers. Identify the situations that tend to push you toward yellow or red.
Step 3: Become a GREAT RESPONDER. You can’t control every feeling, but you can control how you respond to it.
The techniques covered in this article (reset routines, breathing patterns, self-talk and visualization) are also trainable pieces of a bigger mental performance skill set. None of them work by accident. Each one gets sharper the more a student-athlete practices it, in the same way a jump shot or a swing gets more reliable with reps.
Instead of thinking, "I'm bad under pressure," ask, "Which skill do I need to train?"
Maybe you need a stronger reset routine to refocus your attention after a mistake. Maybe your breathing gets rushed right before a big moment. Maybe your self-talk turns negative the second something goes wrong. Pick one skill and practice it during training sessions, then gradually use it in more competitive situations.
Confidence can grow through that process, which will help you feel less nervous overall as an athlete.
How IMG Academy Trains Composure
Mental performance is part of the holistic student-athlete development approach offered through IMG Academy.
Student athletes can take advantage of mental performance training and personalized coaching so they’re performing at the highest level, mentally and physically.
“There has been a big shift in the acceptance of mental training across the board,” Taryn Morgan, vice president of athletic and personal development at IMG Academy told the Sports Business Journal. “[Student athletes] also have a broader viewpoint of the world, which allows them to understand these skills.”
Our coaching is designed around the individual student-athlete's goals, with personalized development planning, goal setting, accountability and ongoing progress reviews.
Speed and agility are just one piece of a successful athlete's puzzle. Your mental game matters just as much, which is why we give athletes the tools to remain calm and focused during game day.
Conclusion: Practice Calm Before You Need It
Learning how to stay calm under pressure is less about never feeling nervous and more about knowing what to do when nerves show up.
Practice your breathing. Build a between-plays reset. Choose a self-talk cue that brings your attention back to the task.
You do not have to wait for a high-pressure game to start training composure. Rehearse those skills before competition so they are available in those critical moments.
If you’re in search of more in-depth or hands-on mental performance coaching, check out IMG Academy Essentials and IMG Academy Personal Coach. These programs include expert-led video lessons on visualization, focus and mindset, along with priority access to 1:1 coaching.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why do I play great in practice but tighten up when it matters?
Pressure can change where your attention goes. Instead of simply performing a skill, you may start thinking about the mechanics of the movement or worrying about the outcome. That extra mental noise can make a familiar skill feel unfamiliar. Learning how to handle pressure in sports means recognizing that response and redirecting your attention toward something you can control, such as your next assignment, movement, or decision.
What can I do when my nerves spike during a game?
Start with a short reset. Take one deliberate breath, acknowledge what just happened, identify your next controllable action and commit to it. You can also use a short, task-focused self-talk cue such as “see the target” or “simple pass”. These tools give your attention somewhere specific to go instead of allowing one mistake or stressful moment to dominate the next play.
How can I calm down before a game?
Learning how to calm down before a game starts with building a routine you can trust. Before competition, visualize the best and worst situations you could encounter during the game and how you would react. You can also practice techniques like box breathing and the physiological sigh to ground yourself before doing more sport-specific preparation.
Is feeling nervous before competition a bad sign?
Not necessarily. Nerves are a normal reaction to situations that matter, especially when the outcome feels important. Instead of trying to eliminate every nervous feeling, focus on what you can do with that energy. Breathing, a between-plays reset and focused self-talk can help you redirect your attention toward the task in front of you. Learning how to stay calm under pressure is less about never feeling nervous and more about knowing how to redirect that nervous energy into productive action.
Can staying calm under pressure be trained?
Yes. Composure can be developed through consistent practice, just like other athletic skills. Practice the techniques from this article during training, before bed and when you encounter stressful situations at school or work. Then, they will come more naturally when you need to use them on the field.
How do I stop one mistake from affecting the rest of the game?
Give yourself a consistent reset routine between plays. Use a physical cue, acknowledge the previous play and let it go, identify your next controllable action and commit to it. A short self-talk cue can also give your attention a clear job. Recognize your mistake, learn from it and then direct your attention toward what you can control next.
