There's no shortage of stressors in competition - crowd noise, your coach yelling at you from the sidelines, and judges waiting for you to make a mistake are some of the most common ones we've witnessed as CrossFit coaches.
Yet there are some athletes who seem to perform at their best regardless of their environment. These are usually the same athletes who are found at the top of the rankings in any category.
The stifling of competition among athletes
Then there is the other end of the spectrum. Have you ever noticed that some athletes are great at training and practice, but seem to choke in competition?
You may have experienced this as an athlete: a skill you master perfectly in training falls apart in competition, or your performance is worse than what you achieved in training.
What differentiates top athletes from others?
High-performance athletes have mastered the control of their emotional state. They know how to manage their arousal levels so that they rarely experience the anxiety, stress, and fear that tend to hamper the performance of other athletes who are physically equally capable and talented.
In 1908, psychologists Robert M. Yerkes and John Dodson established an empirical relationship between arousal and performance, now known as the Yerkes-Dodson law.
Simply put, too high or too low an arousal level results in poor performance. If arousal is too low, the athlete is too relaxed or laid back. If arousal is too high, the athlete becomes anxious, panicked, or stressed. The optimal level is right in the middle, where the athlete is “in the zone.”

Optimal arousal level for optimal performance
Different skills require different levels of arousal for optimal performance.
If the movement is complex and requires fine motor skills, the optimal level of arousal will be lower compared to relatively simple gross motor skills. For example, performing a muscle-up does not require you to be "motivated" as you would be for a single-rep deadlift.
Finding Your Optimal Arousal Level for Competition
Optimal arousal levels also vary among athletes. That's why one athlete might prefer to warm up listening to Mozart and Vivaldi, while another prefers Pantera and Megadeath, or vice versa.
For these same reasons, one athlete may prefer the frenetic energy of competition, while another finds himself overstimulated and performs poorly.
Fortunately, there are ways to manage your arousal levels to optimize your performance.
Managing arousal levels to optimize performance
In our CrossFit programs , we cover arousal control along with the other pillars of mental toughness. We provide some simple techniques you can implement into your training regimen to optimize your arousal level and achieve peak performance.
Check out the site for more tips on this and many other topics to improve your mental game.