What techniques do pro sportmen use to keep their confidence high when playing badly?

Question

I feel like I am pretty good at sport. However, I am often beaten by my own lack of self belief when things start to go wrong. Are there any proven mental techniques to help overcome this?

Answer 1

I used to be a pro-kickboxer a few years back, so as you can understand, facing another person can be pretty intense, especially if that person was anything up to twice my weight.

You have to go into any sport being modest, at the end of the day, it's only a sport, you're not going to be killed if you lose or anything, so you go in, saying "I've trained hard, I respect the other people competing, and realise that they have trained hard, and no matter what the outcome, I will be pleased with the results, I will do my best, and if I win, I will know that my hard work and dedication helped me earn that victory."

Also, if you do lose, analyise why you lost, but don't eat yourself up about it, in my case, I looked at what sort of attacks were inflicted upon myself, and vice versa, as well as stats of all combatants, and the rules, and just studied them for a few hours, then just moved on.