It isn’t easy being a professional athlete. Not only are the physical demands greater than most people could handle, athletes also face intense psychological pressure during competition.
This is something 18-year-old British tennis player Emma Raducanu wrote about on social media following her retirement from Wimbledon. Though the young player had been doing well in the tournament, she began having difficulty regulating her breathing and heart rate during a match, which she later chalked up to “the accumulation of the excitement and the buzz.”
She isn’t the first athlete to experience the physical effects of stress, with English footballer Marcus Rashford revealing he’d also had a similar experience in the past.
There are many reasons why stress can cause such powerful bodily reactions. But with training, this response can be changed so that a person reacts positively under pressure.
It happened to me playing for the national team in U16s against Wales. I…