Transcribed from video:
– How do we get it? Well, firstly, you guys need to know when you’re in an imperfect state, when you’re hyper aroused or under aroused. So, you need to be able to recognise the signs of this in yourself, and inherently, you will know a lot of this already, but let’s go through them. If you’re under aroused, from a physical point of view, you’re moving slowly. So, you can see someone who’s, like you’re walking through honey. You’re moving slowly. You’re mind is wandering, which again, comes down to the focus and concentration. So you’re not focused on the task at hand. You’re probably not overly concerned about your performance. So, this lack of concern about performance is where people sort of go, and you’ve probably seen this, like at school carnivals when you’re a kid, you’d race someone and say, “Oh, I wasn’t racing.” So, it’s like a form of self-handicapping. But, if you don’t really care about your performance, your arousal levels aren’t right. It tells you that you’re too under aroused with that. When I’m working with athletes, and they get angry at themselves ’cause they’ve missed a lift or they’ve done something that they feel like they should be able to do, I quite often- yeah, show of hands, who is hard on themselves, okay? To an extent, I don’t mind that, because it tells me it means something to you. If you do something wrong and you go, “Ah, doesn’t matter”, it tells me that it doesn’t mean anything to you. So I want that, but then don’t dwell on it. It can’t consume you. So, I’ll say to people, “I give you permission “to be angry with yourself for five or 10 seconds.” Boom and then bang, learn from it, back to work, how do we address that, how do we change it? Lack of anticipation or enthusiasm. So, if you’re a little bit nervous, it’s a good thing. And feeling heavy or no balance. Does everyone, like, know what that feels like? You’re just really sluggish and your body weighs a couple of kilos more than it really should. How about signs of over arousal, because a lot of people will be under aroused and will later psych themselves up a little bit more. This is the common one. But also some signs of not being psyched up enough. As you guys just experienced, awkward, uncoordinated, jerky type movements, where your muscles are fighting each other. Your flexors and extensors are all contracting so you can’t create good, efficient movement. Too much muscle tension. So, everyone relax their shoulders. And you didn’t realise you were actually tightening them, did you, until I said to relax. So, that awareness of the tension that you’re holding in your body. If you’re a little bit more relaxed, then it’s going to help you to bring the arousal levels down. Obviously, negative thoughts. If the thoughts are negative about your performance, either performance at the time or an upcoming performance, it tells us that maybe you’re too invested. You’re starting to get down towards the path of anxiety where you’re pushing this way on the graph, on the graph too much. And then, just your breathing rate. If you’re breathing really fast and you’re like, “Hang on, I haven’t actually started exercising”, a little bit of that is normal, but too much, and it starts to fatigue you, starts to exhaust you.
