Help your kids not freeze during a race

Studying the nervous system can help parents and young athletes better understand some of the feelings they experience, especially before important meets and competitions.

Our nervous system's job is to protect us. Think of it as an early warning system, like an alarm system.

When the nervous system feels in danger, it reacts and do his job by resistance, flight or freeze response.

If we imagine that we are walking in the forest and suddenly meet a bear.

We can fight, run or freeze. When we freeze, our body doesn't work.

Generally, the nervous system makes children alert before a game or competition and they feel nervous. But that's not necessarily a bad thing.

This nervous energy can increase children's focus, energy and strength.

When athletes enter a competition, they may say, 'My stomach hurts, my legs feel like jelly, I'm out of control. ' Parents need to recognize that this is a normal response."

Generally, when the game starts, the nervous feelings recede.

Sometimes, however, athletes go into freeze mode. They can do this if they lose the ball at a crucial moment, for example.

When this happens, athletes lose access to their muscle memory and process don't happen automatically. Then they start to think.

It's hard to get out of the freeze mode once they're in it.

Parents and coaches can help kids avoid going into freeze mode by identifying during practice what causes them to freeze.

Children should identify their first signs of activation of freeze mode. To say, for example, that a half in football applies not to losing the ball at the beginning of the game. He should begin to calm down after these thoughts enter his mind and focus on staying in the moment.

Being in the moment is important. The whole idea is that the nervous system is activated because the thoughts are in the future or the past, not in the present moment.