Hi Reader,
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Fall has officially arrived in Minnesota. The mornings are crisp, the leaves are showing off their beautiful colors, and half the athletes we know are deep in peak race season while the other half are side-eyeing their off-season plan. 🍁
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Which means we’re seeing a lot of the same thing walk and roll through our (virtual) door right now: athletes who train beautifully all week, and then race like a completely different person.
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If you’ve been there, as the athlete, the coach, or the parent in the bleachers, you know how disorienting it is. The warmup looks fine. The fitness is there. And somewhere around the moment that matters, everything tightens.
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It’s tempting to call it a bad day. But when it becomes a pattern, the culprit is often performance anxiety. Here are the three signs we look for:
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​1️⃣ The gap between training and race day keeps growing. When an athlete can execute under zero stakes but falls apart when the outcome counts, anxiety has pulled the controlling part of the brain into a job it was never meant to do.
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2️⃣ The body sounds the alarm before the race starts. The nausea on the start line. The fifth trip to the porta-potty. Legs that feel heavy before the start. These physical symptoms peak right around the start, and athletes often read them as proof something is wrong, which creates more of the symptom.
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3️⃣ One mistake snowballs into the whole race. Anxious athletes rarely make just one error. They make one, then spend the next ten minutes playing defense against their own brain.

So what actually helps? Reassurance bounces off. You already know this if you’ve ever told a spiraling athlete they’re going to do great. What works is skills-based support: pre-performance routines that give attention a job, process-focused feedback, and physiological tools that calm the nervous system directly, like slow, low breathing.
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We break down all three signs (plus the research and the full toolkit) in this month’s blog post:

And if you’re seeing these signs across your whole team, we run evidence-based workshops for coaches, parents, and teams built around exactly these skills.

🎙️Podcast Catch-Up: Is Stress Wrecking Your Training?
​I recently joined the Endurance Eats podcast to dig into a question we hear constantly: what is all this stress actually doing to your training? We got into what the data says, why your body keeps score even when your training log looks perfect, and what to do about it. Perfect listening for a long fall ride or the drive to your next race.

🎧 Listen here: Is Stress Wrecking Your Training? What the Data Says​

💚 One last thing: October 10 was World Mental Health Day.​

For athletes, mental health isn’t a side project to support your performance. It IS your performance. The same mind that pushes through mile 20 deserves the same care and attention as the body carrying it.
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So consider this your reminder: checking in on your mental health is an important part of the work, and if you’ve been waiting for the “right time” to reach out, this is it.
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Til next time,
Dr. A

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