Episode 188: Mental Skills for Competition
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We are entering the thick of dance competition season where dancers start to feel more pressure and there are some big wins and some very hard days. If you want to be more resilient in the hard days and enjoy the wins along the way, mental skills can help.
Hi, and welcome to Passion for Dance! I'm your host, Dr. Chelsea. I'm on a mission to create happier, more successful dancers through positive mental skills, and dancers who train those mental skills are able to not only increase their chances of success onstage but also use those mental skills to help reach the demands of your training schedule. Today, I'm going to share six mental skills that will help you prepare for competition because mental skills don't just show up for you on competition day. Just like you train your battements and pirouettes and your hip-hop style, you have to train your mental skills on a regular basis. If you plan to train those mental skills, even just a few weeks before competition, you'll see a positive result. So here are six mental skills you can use to prepare for competition!
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Hi, I'm Dr. Chelsea, a former professional dancer and mental performance coach. I know what it feels like to be a passionate dance teacher who cares about your dancers, but you want to challenge them and help them be their best, and I also recognize that some traditions and teaching practices in the dance world are harmful. So I'm on a mission to change our dance industry by creating happier, more successful dancers using positive mental skills.
When you understand how to help your dancers with their confidence, how to find their own motivation, work together as a team and more, your dancers will unlock new levels of competitive success and happiness. And it's not just about them; you deserve the same. So we'll talk about how dance teachers can use positive mental skills to be more confident, resilient, and motivated as well.
Be sure to hit “subscribe” wherever you listen to podcasts. There are new episodes every Thursday, and each week you'll hear from me and my guests with advice and actionable tips for building mental toughness, covering topics about mindset, motivation, resilience, and building a community. Passion for Dance is a show designed to help dance educators like you have a positive impact on every dancer you teach.
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Competition Mental Skill #1: Set Good Goals – 3:34
The first mental skill is to set good goals that are motivating and in your control. Goal setting can help you stay focused during long rehearsals, pick you back up after a routine doesn't go so well onstage, and help you celebrate growth all season. But it matters what type of goal you set.
Many dancers make the mistake of only setting outcome goals or competition goals, like getting a scholarship at convention, beating a certain studio, placing in the top ten. Those goals are okay if they're meaningful to you, but you can't stop there. The goals that will be truly helpful are goals that are about the short-term, weekly milestones of progress that show your own growth. You want to focus on goals about getting better than you were before or goals that focus on how you will get to that end goal.
Say, for example, at your last convention, you were tired all weekend and had a hard time performing well in class because you kept losing focus. A goal for this convention could be to prepare a few quick, healthy snacks the night before so that you eat better during the crazy convention day schedule and to set the intention of being present and focused in each class. That would come with a process goal (or it's the “how” goal), that you would take one minute on the side of the room before class, close your eyes, take a deep breath, say a positive personal mantra with the intention of staying present during that next class. Those two goals are in your control and will help you perform better all weekend.
Goal setting is so much more valuable than just setting these big-picture goals. Setting the right goals for competition can change your awareness, focus, and even happiness during the event because it changes your sense of success. For more on goal setting, you can check out episode 161. I go into lots of details about it there.
Competition Mental Skill #2: Visualize Success – 5:19
The second mental skill you can use for competition is to visualize success. Visualization or imagery is where you close your eyes and picture yourself in a specific situation. Dancers usually do this when we rehearse a routine in our minds, which is great. And you can also use visualization to image yourself being successful. You can imagine yourself stepping out onstage in your new costume, feeling your shoes on your feet, noticing the lights, hearing the first bar of your music. You can visualize yourself doing your whole routine exactly as you want to perform it. But it's not just seeing the choreography, it's seeing everything: the stage, the lights, the costume, the judges. Set the scene and feel the audience's applause.
Visualization can actually reinforce neural pathways that help you remember choreography and execute your skills, and the strongest visualizations will include all of your senses and be in your control. So practice just visualizing a few eight counts and see how vivid you can make it. Then work up to a whole routine in a competition setting. The more you practice visualizing, the stronger the image will be and the more that mental rehearsal will help you.
Competition Mental Skill #3: Optimize Your Emotions – 6:33
The third mental skill is the ability to optimize your emotions. As dancers, we perform with our emotions. We can't stuff them down or pretend like we aren't feeling anything. Rather, we need to tap into a range of emotions and perform with just the right level of expression. The challenge comes at competitions when dancers might be feeling sad or upset, but you have to go perform a fun, sassy jazz or a huge-energy hip-hop. Dancers have to not only understand our emotions but optimize them for the performance, and that might change one routine to the next.
Usually, there is an emotional rollercoaster as you even prepare to compete. There's excitement, anxiety, pressure. Many dancers I talked to will acknowledge that they feel stressed or scared, but they just decide to power through and perform. And instead, you can use your mental skills to intentionally manage your emotions to make sure you're in a good place to compete. That could mean breathing exercises to calm your nerves or reframing stress as energy, which I talked about recently in episode 186.
Your body will be activated when you're competing, meaning your heart is racing, you have that buzzing energy throughout your body, but you get to decide if that feeling is scary or a sign of anxiety or helpful and a sign that you're excited and ready. Don't let those butterflies in your stomach throw you off. You get to decide that those butterflies are a sign that you care and you're ready. So you take a deep breath, visualize those butterflies flying in formation, and you're ready to take the stage with calm confidence.
Competition Mental Skill #4: Maintain Your Motivation – 8:09
The next mental skill is maintaining your motivation. Staying motivated during the long competition season is a challenge for even the most passionate dancers. Rather than just hoping you can hang on or deciding you'll sleep in July, you can use your mental skills to stay motivated and take better care of yourself all season.
One way to stay motivated throughout the season is to stay aware of your progress. When we get into the season of drilling choreography over and over again, or those really detail-oriented cleaning sessions, it can be hard to stay positive.
One strategy is journaling, and it can help you stay motivated and notice your progress. After practice each day, or even once a week, taking the time to journal about the progress you've made, the growth you've noticed, or even what challenges you've faced can help you stay committed during the busy season. It's easy to get lost in the monotony and only notice what you're struggling with, so intentionally noticing and writing down small wins and areas of growth can give you the discipline to keep showing up.
You can write down daily affirmations in your journal if that helps or simply write a stream of consciousness like a diary. Either way, taking the time to process what's going on during the whirlwind of the season, noticing your growth, praising your own effort, and taking the time to pause can all help you stay consistent and show up so that you can give your all in every class.
Competition Mental Skill #5: Simulate Your Performance – 9:31
The fifth mental skill that can help you prepare for competition is to do whatever you can
to simulate what your performance will be like. Dancers are familiar with dress rehearsal. That's what I'm getting at, and that's one great way to do this. Practice in your costume, use the same shoes if you wear them, have your hair how you plan to have it, all of the things. But it's more than that. You can also simulate the darkness you'll experience when you take the stage or simulate that the routine before you is onstage by blasting some random song while you wait in the wings. Then you're announced, you take the stage, calmly take your first formation, practice the breath control and positive self-talk you plan to use when you hit that first pose.
You can simulate by facing away from the mirrors, using the same floor when you can. Anything you can do to simulate the performance will help you feel more comfortable and confident when you get there, especially if you're new to this competition or have never seen this venue before. Do your homework to know what to expect and practice it exactly like it will be that day to the best of your ability.
Competition Mental Skill #6: Maintain Balance Outside of Dance – 10:35
Finally, you can help prepare yourself for competition by maintaining balance outside of dance. Self-care is an important part of preventing burnout, and we know that small, consistent efforts in self-care are much more effective than going crazy hard for months and then taking a vacation.
Now, keep the vacation, but when it comes to preventing burnout, you are much better off working for balance every day or every week. Things like nutrition, sleep, recovery routines, spending time with friends and family, and healthy activities that are not on a screen like walking, baking, reading, arts and crafts, they can all help.
Now, I know a lot of this comes down to time, but what I know from talking with thousands of dancers (and my own busy life) is that we are often too tired to do anything if we don't have a plan. So we just doomscroll for hours or spend time doing something that we think will help us relax, but it actually doesn't help. So, during your busy competition season, use what little downtime you have in an intentionally-healthy, mentally-supportive activity that will allow you to relax.
Each of these six mental skills are skills you can work on every day in small ways, and you will see the positive benefits shine through at competition. If you want more confident performances, more joy onstage, remember these skills: setting process goals you can control, visualizing your success, practice managing emotions during rehearsals and backstage, use a journal to stay motivated, simulate your performances as best you can, and intentionally take care of yourself in what little downtime you have. These are small actions that you can do in a few minutes a week, and what matters is intentionally choosing to practice your mental skills as you prepare for competition.
If you have any questions about mentally preparing for competition, please leave me a message at . I'll have the link below wherever you're listening. I'd love to answer your questions and help every dancer be better prepared for more success this season. Thank you for listening, and keep sharing your passion for dance with the world!
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Thank you for listening to Passion for Dance! You can find all episode resources at www.chelseapierotti.com/podcast, and be sure to follow me on Instagram for more high-performance tips at @dr.chelsea.pierotti. This podcast is for passionate dance teachers and coaches who are ready to change the dance industry by creating happier, more successful dancers. I'm Dr. Chelsea, and keep sharing your passion for dance with the world!
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