How to Cut Performance Anxiety by 60% in 14 Days

Championship moments are won or lost minutes before stepping onto the field.

Performance anxiety can steal your edge before the whistle blows and the game starts.

It hijacks your focus, disrupts your execution, and breaks your confidence. It turns all your hard work into a mental tug-of-war at the worst possible moment—when you need your mind out of the way and to get into flow.

But here’s the truth: pre-game anxiety is not a permanent obstacle. It’s a solvable problem.

With the right tools, you can calm your nerves, regain your focus, and compete feeling clear-headed and ready to perform.

I’ll show you a science-backed, 14-day protocol to cut pre-game anxiety by up to 60% (as reported by the athletes I’ve used it with).

This step-by-step approach guides you through an evidence-based process from nervous system regulation to attention training to cognitive strategies. It will help you regulate your physiology, sharpen your focus, and shift your mindset to perform at your best.

I love this framework because I’ve seen these tools transform anxiety into confidence. By the end, you’ll have a clear plan to do the same.

Step 1: Calm Your Nervous System (Days 1–5)

Anxiety starts in the body.

When your heart races and your muscles tense up, it’s nearly impossible to focus. This is your nervous system in fight-or-flight mode, and it’s the first thing to address. Without control over our nervous system, any later strategies become near-impossible to use to their full effect.

Here’s how to calm it down:

• Box Breathing: Inhale for 4 counts, hold for 4, exhale for 4, and hold for 4. Do this for 5 minutes, twice daily.
• Progressive Muscle Relaxation: Spend 10 minutes tensing and relaxing muscle groups, starting from your toes and moving upward.
• Move Your Body: Daily light exercise, like walking or stretching, helps burn off excess adrenaline.
• Long exhale breathing.Exhaling longer than inhaling drives your heart rate down (Castle et al., 2024). This practice helps you control your arousal and gives you a technique for when you feel out of control. Do this 2-3x daily, for 3-5 minutes.

These techniques signal safety to your nervous system, helping you feel calm and in control.

A study with collegiate basketball players found that controlled breathing techniques reduced performance anxiety and improved focus under pressure (Paul & Garg, 2012).

A calm body creates the foundation for a calm mind. We need to be present and think to confront performance anxiety, which is nearly impossible under high arousal conditions.

Start with these practices. Once your body feels under control, you’ll be ready to train your focus for peak performance.

Step 2: Train Your Attention to Stay Present (Days 6–10)

Anxiety thrives on distraction.

When your mind worries about the past and fears the future, you lose the ability to stay present in the moment that matters most.

Anxiety is mostly a series of what-ifs. What if I miss this shot? What if I let the team down? What if I don’t sleep well tonight, how will that impact me tomorrow?

The antidote to “what if” is “what now.” If we can be here, taking the next best step, we can get closer to peak performance. In the case of performance anxiety, answering what now gives you a meaningful place to channel your energy for the performance.

Here’s how to break the cycle and get to what now:

• Mindfulness Practice: Spend 12 minutes observing your breath. When distracted, gently refocus on your breathing.
• WIN: Use a focal cue, like “What’s important now?”, to bring your mind back to the moment.
• Set Micro-Goals: Break performance into small chunks, like focusing on one play or shot at a time, rather than the whole game. Research suggests this approach creates more enjoyment, making it easier to be present (Kingston & Hardy, 1997; Locke & Latham, 2019).
• Stick with the process. Adjacent to micro-goals are process goals, or small steps to take now for great performance.

These strategies train your brain to focus on what’s right in front of you, no matter the pressure.

For example, LeBron James regularly practices mindfulness to stay focused during critical games. Research shows that athletes who train in mindfulness not only perform better under pressure but also recover faster from mistakes (Josefsson et al., 2017).

Attention is a great weapon against anxiety. Control it to stay composed and execute when it counts.

Now that your focus is locked in, it’s time to address the mental narrative fueling anxiety.

Step 3: Reframe Your Thoughts (Days 11–14)

Unchecked anxiety turns to self-doubt.

It tells you you’re not ready, not good enough, and that failure is inevitable. If you don’t fight back, these thoughts will control your performance.

Here’s how to change the story:

• Identify Negative Thoughts: Write down recurring fears, like “What if I fail?” These thoughts need to be challenged, reframed, tested, or accepted.
• Reframe: Reframing is about seeing the same thought in a new light. Once you’ve identified a thought to reframe, actively search for an alternative view. For example, the thought “What if I fail?” could be reframed to “What will I learn?” Shifts like this can decrease negativity and train your mind to see benefits instead of pain.
• Challenge: When self-doubt creeps in, negative thoughts shift from fear to self-criticism (or worse). This criticism is an unfounded over-extension of the truth. You’ll spot it with words like “never,” “always,” “should,” and “must.” To defeat these thoughts, challenge them directly. Is it always or never? What’s a more accurate way to think? What does the data say?
• Test: If you’re unsure how to challenge or the data is unclear, move to test. Treat your thought like a hypothesis. What must be true for this thought to be true?
• Accept: When there’s no alternative - when reframing hasn’t worked or the data is unfavorable, you still have one tool left. Acceptance is acknowledging the discomfort, and doing it anyway. Instead of resisting, you let it be and redirect your attention (using phase 2 techniques) back to something more productive.
• Keep Perspective: Remember that most games you’re anxious for don’t matter. That doesn’t mean they aren’t important - just that the odds of this single game redefining your life is small. Keeping perspective helps you zoom out and see the game for what it is instead of the threat it could be.
• Pre-Game Self-Talk: You can proactively talk to yourself in ways that boostyour confidence and reduce anxiety. Here’s what it looks like from the pros:

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These techniques help replace fear with confidence and self-doubt with determination.

Take Roger Federer. Early in his career, he struggled with self-doubt during key matches. By reframing his negative thoughts, he focused on improvement and embraced challenges, becoming one of the most mentally resilient players in tennis history.

Your thoughts shape your reality. When you control your inner dialogue, you control your confidence, energy, and performance.

With a calm body, sharp attention, and an empowered mindset, you’re ready to transform pre-game anxiety into confidence.

Conclusion: Take Control of Your Mental Game

Pre-game anxiety doesn’t have to be your story.

In 14 days, this protocol equips you to calm your body, focus your mind, and reframe your thoughts. These are the foundational skills of a mentally tough athlete—skills you’ll carry into every competition for the rest of your career. Of course, you’d do well to practice for much longer than 2 weeks - but with intentional execution over 14 days, you can make real progress.

Imagine stepping onto the field, court, or track feeling calm, clear, and ready to perform. Imagine executing with confidence and joy, earning the trust of your teammates and coaches, and rediscovering your love for the game.

That future starts today.

Call to Action

Your next step is simple: implement one practice from this protocol today. Whether it’s five minutes of box breathing, a mindfulness session, or reframing one negative thought, take the first step.

Stay consistent, and you’ll feel the difference before your next competition. Let me know how it’s working—I’d love to hear your progress.