Squeeze your balls to manage pressure
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The Super Bowl is one of the most watched events on the planet. With high stakes comes high pressure. Athletes on both teams will have to overcome anxiety and control their emotions to perform their best individually and as a team. These athletes will try to manage their emotional and mental states before and during competition by using strategies such as self-talk, thought manipulation, imagery and other relaxation and activation techniques.
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One powerful but unfamiliar strategy to help manage pressure is to squeeze your balls.
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We often feel anxious when under pressure, which is triggered by a desire to do well and a heightened fear of failure. These emotions boost activity in the language areas of the left hemisphere of the brain - where self focus and self consciousness come from. It’s where your inner critic resides. Choking happens when the left hemisphere is dialled up, and this activity interferes with the right side of the brain. Skills that would normally be performed effortlessly misfire. Squeezing a ball with your left hand can help us manage this.
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The explanation is that closing the left hand over a soft ball primes and activates the right hemisphere of the brain, the part associated with fluent, automatic, and largely unconscious neural pathways controlling a skill. This also tends to suppress the left hemisphere, and therefore tone down our thoughts about success and failure, quietening the inner critic and our sense of self. So the next time you’re in a pressure moment, clench your left fist, or get yourself a little ball and squeeze it.

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