Coping with Pre-Workout Anxiety: Mental Strategies for Endurance Athletes

Sometimes the hardest part of a workout is getting yourself to start.

You know what you're supposed to do. You have your training plan. You have the time set aside. But when it's time to actually get started, you find yourself thinking about everything that could go wrong. Maybe you start comparing yourself to other athletes. Maybe you're worried about what your teammates will think. Or maybe you suddenly decide that the dishes really do need to be washed before you leave the house.

In this episode of The Mentally Fit Athlete, Lidia Garcia and I talk about a question from a coach whose athlete was experiencing anxiety before workouts. We discuss some of the things that can contribute to pre-workout anxiety, including social comparison, performance expectations, getting stuck in your head, and tying too much of your identity to your performance.

We also talk about some practical ways athletes can work through that anxiety and get back to actually experiencing their sport.

When Your Workout Becomes a Performance

One of the things that came up in our conversation was Strava.

Strava can be a great tool. It's popular with runners, cyclists, and other endurance athletes because it allows you to track your workouts, discover new routes, and connect with other people. You can give your friends kudos. They can give you kudos. It can be motivating to see what other people are doing.

But there's another side to it.

If you're someone who is already anxious about your performance, seeing everyone's times and having your own workouts available for other people to see can add another layer of pressure. Now you're not just doing a workout. You're potentially performing for an audience.

You might start thinking, What are people going to think if I run slower today?

Or, Am I still the athlete I used to be if my times aren't what they were five years ago?

That's when something that was supposed to be useful and fun can become another source of anxiety.

Of course, you don't need Strava for this to happen. I've worked with athletes who perform really well when they're by themselves but struggle when other people are watching. A baseball player might be completely comfortable in the batting cages alone and then suddenly have difficulty when teammates or coaches are watching.

Sometimes that anxiety can even contribute to something like the yips, where an athlete has difficulty performing a basic skill that they've successfully performed thousands of times before. The skill hasn't suddenly disappeared. Anxiety has gotten in the way of accessing it.

Today's Workout Isn't Ten Years Ago

Another thing that can contribute to workout anxiety is comparing your current performance to your past performance.

This can be especially relevant for adult athletes. Our bodies change as we get older. Recovery changes. Our schedules change. Other responsibilities come into our lives.

Maybe you ran a certain time when you were 22. Now you're 40 or 45, and you're expecting yourself to hit the same number.

That's probably not going to be a particularly helpful comparison.

That doesn't mean you can't set goals or challenge yourself. It just means that today's workout needs to be evaluated in the context of today's athlete.

What can you do today?

What can you learn today?

What does your body need today?

Those questions bring you back to the present instead of asking you to compete against a version of yourself from years ago.

Practice Your Mental Skills During Practice

One of the resources I recommend to athletes is Heads-Up Baseball, particularly Heads-Up Baseball 2.0 by Ken Ravizza and Tom Hanson.

One of the ideas in the book that I really like is that mental skills need to be practiced during practice. You don't wait until the biggest game of the season to try out a mental skill for the first time and expect it to work perfectly.

If you want to learn how to refocus, stay present, manage your thoughts, or respond differently to mistakes, practice those skills when you're training.

Then, when you get into a more stressful situation, you're not trying to figure everything out for the first time.

That's also one of the reasons that mental skills work can overlap with therapy. If anxiety is significantly interfering with your ability to train or compete, approaches such as CBT and exposure therapy can help you understand what's maintaining that anxiety and gradually change your response to it.

Want to hear the full conversation?
Listen to the episode on Spotify.

Don't Just Track Your Workout. Track Your Experience.

Lydia had another recommendation that I really liked: keep a journal.

Athletes are already pretty good at tracking numbers.

How far did I run?

How fast?

How much did I lift?

How many reps?

Those numbers can be useful, but they don't tell you everything.

What if you also tracked how you felt?

Maybe you were really anxious about a workout and spent an hour and a half finding reasons not to leave the house. You needed to wash the dishes. Then you needed to vacuum. Then there was suddenly something else that absolutely had to be done before you could possibly go exercise.

Eventually, you get out the door.

The workout feels terrible. Your legs feel like they're made of lead. Your chest feels tight. Your lungs are burning.

But you finish.

That's important information.

And maybe the next time you have that workout, it only takes you 30 minutes to get out the door. Maybe the workout still feels difficult, but you notice that your legs have a little more bounce in them.

If you're only looking at your pace or your finishing time, you might miss that progress.

A journal gives you somewhere to record it.

Over time, you can look back and say, Oh. I actually am doing better than I was a month ago.

You can also start to figure out what works for you. Which strategies helped? What made things worse? What happened when you were anxious but did the workout anyway?

That's learning.

And learning is how you become a better athlete.

What Is Your Why?

Sometimes workout anxiety goes deeper than the workout itself.

An athlete might start to connect their performance with their identity or self-worth. They're no longer simply trying to run, lift, swim, play, or compete well. Their performance has started to mean something about who they are.

That can create a tremendous amount of pressure.

In Heads-Up Baseball 2.0, Ravizza talks about knowing your “why” and having a mission. He also discusses the possibility that athletes can have what we might call a hidden mission.

You may consciously believe that your mission is to perform your best.

But maybe there's something else underneath that.

Maybe you're trying to prove somebody wrong.

Maybe you're trying to prove that you belong.

Maybe you're trying to prove something to your parents.

Maybe you're trying to prove something to yourself.

Or maybe you're afraid of what it would mean if you actually succeeded.

Sometimes we know exactly what we're supposed to be doing, but we just aren't doing it. That's when it can be useful to take a closer look at what else might be going on.

And this doesn't only apply to athletes.

Parents can have hidden missions, too. A parent might have an idea of what they want their child to accomplish in a sport, even if that isn't what the child actually wants. That can create a lot of pressure and make it difficult for a young athlete to figure out what their own why is.

So it can be helpful to ask:

Why am I doing this?

What do I want my experience of this sport to be?

What would I enjoy about this if I wasn't using it to prove something?

Those aren't always easy questions to answer. But sometimes figuring out the answer can be pretty freeing.

You're Allowed to Enjoy Your Sport

This might be the most important part.

You are allowed to enjoy your sport.

You don't have to earn the right to enjoy it by hitting a certain time, winning a certain number of games, or reaching a particular ranking.

Practice is a place where you're supposed to make mistakes. That's how you learn.

And your performance doesn't have to carry your entire sense of who you are.

If you're experiencing anxiety before workouts, start by noticing what's happening. Write it down. Pay attention to your thoughts. Notice what you're afraid might happen. Look at what you do when you feel anxious. See whether your anxiety changes when you stop trying to fight it and instead focus on what you actually want to do.

You might discover that the anxiety is mostly about the workout.

You might also discover that it's about something much bigger.

Either way, that's useful information.

When Workout Anxiety Becomes a Bigger Problem

Some pre-workout nerves are normal. But if anxiety is consistently keeping you from training, causing you to avoid workouts, interfering with your performance, or taking away the enjoyment you used to get from your sport, it may be worth taking a closer look.

Sometimes there's a mental skills issue that you can work on through practice.

Sometimes there's a deeper pattern involving anxiety, perfectionism, OCD, self-worth, or identity that may benefit from therapy.

There's no shame in getting some help with that.

I work with athletes throughout California using clinical sport psychology approaches, including CBT and exposure-based strategies, to help athletes understand anxiety, get unstuck from unhelpful patterns, and perform under pressure while staying connected to what matters to them.

If you're an athlete in the Los Angeles area and anxiety or other mental barriers are getting in the way of your training or performance, you can learn more about clinical sport psychology for athletes in Los Angeles or schedule a consultation.

The goal isn't to never feel anxious before a workout.

Sometimes the goal is to notice the anxiety, understand what's driving it, and learn that you can still do what matters to you.

And maybe, along the way, you can start enjoying the sport again.