How to recover from mistakes in your sport faster

Recover faster from mistakes

How to recover from mistakes in your sport faster comes down to creating strategies so that you have a plan in place to be able to recover from a mistake when it occurs. Mistakes happen often and frequently in sports. That is the nature of it. Sports happen at such a high intensity of speed that requires athletes to make good and accurate decisions fast. Most things in life don’t happen as fast as sports do. You generally have more time to think things over. Sports you don’t, and if you look at a professional game of any sport, there are mistakes occurring all the time. The difference between the good and great athletes is how one responds to the mistakes they make. If you are unfazed and keep doing what you need to be doing and staying present on the game, you can recover from the mistake, whether right away or by later doing something to "make up" for it, like scoring a goal.

People often don’t think about how they will react to a mistake before it occurs, then they are caught off guard and struggle to bring them selves back to where their focus needs to be. You don’t know when and how you will make a mistake, but you do know at some point you will. When you make a plan for how you will rebound from mistakes you have a go to approach to think about and implement in the moment. When you have a strategy you don’t have to think you just have to do. When there is no strategy then you have to think about recovering and then you are in trouble because now you are thinking and can get caught up in worrying about the mistake you made, or making another one.

Sports are about being in the moment and having your focus external. When you create strategies that bring your focus back to where it needs to be you stay in the game mentally and keep from really getting impacted by the mistake. It is not the mistake that is the problem but how you react to it that can become problematic. Obviously there are things to do to try and lessen the number of mistakes you make, which is another topic of discussion, but no matter how prepared you are, or how skilled you are, you will make mistakes and you need to know how to deal with them when they do occur.

Want more help on how to refocus check out my book Fortitude: The Essential Guide to Building and Sustaining Mental Toughness. Available on Amazon.

If you wish to ask me any questions please contact me here.