Over Pressure

Get tough. Don’t work under pressure. Work over pressure. 

There is something to be said for reliable handlers. It is an art within handling to handle pressure well. You may survive, get lucky, get by, but when faced with pressure tackling it straight on is the only sure way to overcome it. However, as with all exercises, the more often you tackle pressure the easier it becomes. A full-fledged attack on your insecurities soon becomes the ability to get over the pressure before the pressure gets you down. But as with everything I suggest, this is not a quick fix. No one goes from crumbling under pressure to soaring over it in a day, or even a week. 

You must be brave. You must take failure.You must learn, and try again. When it gets tough, know you can put down a clean run. You cannot tell yourself you’ll nail it, "as long as you don’t mess up." These are mental lapses that tell us negative things like “Don’t do that” and “Not to do this." This is setting yourself up for a nasty fall, a negative mind trap circling your inner most thoughts around unavoidable failure. Stand on the start line of any course and know subconsciously that you’ve got this. One voice, one message, and one goal: You’ve got this. Not the course or the win, but you have jump one. You have jump two. You have that cross after jump five. You have every step, from start to finish- you’ve got this. It’s not over till the leash is on the dog.

True courage is stepping to the line ready to take on every step. Handling pressure with grace is handling with ease, keeping calm when all hell breaks loose on a run. Strong mental game does not mean perfection is guaranteed…far from. Things go wrong, you’ll make mistakes. But learning to save runs, to not let go, to hang on to every foot of every run is just as important as knowing how to run clean in the first place. Mistakes are only fatal if we give up as they are happening. Pressure cannot only build our doubts, but replace our goals with low expectations. It’s easy to handle pressure thinking you’ve already lost. We associate pressure with eminent failure. This is not the case. Pressure only produces failure when we are already ready to quit. We see ourselves fall under pressure, as if it can stop us. Use pressure to push yourself to be tougher, to be braver, to go higher. Work with the pressure as motivation to keep going up. When the going gets tough, get tougher.

You’ve got this.

Courage is grace under pressure.

          ^over