Effects of confidence and resilience on athletics

Resilience and confidence are important in all aspects of everyday life, as discussed in the previous blogs of this series. However, they are key to a good athlete. Beat The Streets has multiple athletics and wrestling programs, and puts energy into growing confidence, resilience, and other social-emotional skills in the children and youth. This blog will focus on how resilience and confidence affect training and competition for sports.

Why confidence and resilience are important in sports

Confidence and resilience are known to be crucial in sports: Our thoughts and mindset have a huge influence on our actions. 

Confidence means you will trust your skills and give your all to your performance without letting doubts hinder you. 

Resilience means that you will continue working hard and giving your all even if you are losing. 

Negative thoughts can result in a decrease in confidence and a poor performance; while believing in your abilities and strengths can increase your self-esteem and improve your performance.

Effects On Training

Training is a big part of sports. Only those who train and persevere through challenges achieve great results. Even those who are not looking to become professional athletes need to train. However, it is often challenging to maintain a good training schedule without falling into laziness or a sense of staleness. Here are some ways that will help maintain a training schedule:

• Setting goals

  • It is a lot easier to convince yourself to train if you’re working towards a goal, confidence allows you to believe in yourself and that the goals you want to achieve really are attainable.

• Not giving up in face of setbacks

  • Resilience makes one more willing to continue despite challenges

  • More willing to fail in training because it means learning

• Putting your all into training

  • Putting your all into it, no matter if you’re a beginner or not

  • Knowing you’re here to learn, remembering that you can’t do something yet

Effects on Competition

Competition is often something athletes anticipate. It is a measure of one’s skills against others, and a measure of yourself. It can be very discouraging to lose a competition and feel like you don’t match up, and maybe never will. Resilience and confidence help the person know that a loss does not define them.

• Loss does not mean failure

  • Look at a last place not as a forever type of thing, not think failing a competition defines them

  • Be confident that you are able to improve

  • Be resilient, do not let the setback define you

• Loss is an opportunity to learn: think of a loss as a learning experience

  • “Success sits on a mountain of mistakes” - Bangambiki Habyarimana. When you lose a competition, you are learning.

  • Look at failures as a learning experience: do not let the lose overshadow everything you are as a person, be resilient

Conclusion

Resilience and confidence have a great impact on athletes. Check out the other blogs in the series, such as How To Train Resilience, to improve your skills. Good luck in your athletic journey!