How to Calm Pre-Game Nerves, Before Games and Tryouts

Feeling nervous before a game, a race, or a tryout is normal. It is your body getting ready to compete. The goal isn't to make nerves disappear. It is to keep them from taking over, and athletes do that with three trainable tools: slow breathing, a different story about what the nerves mean, and a routine that gives busy hands and busy minds a job.

Key takeaways

• Nerves are arousal, not weakness. The same energy that makes you feel sick can sharpen you once it has somewhere to go.
• Slow breathing (about six breaths a minute) shifts the nervous system toward calm and is one of the fastest tools an athlete can use.
• Saying "I'm excited" outperforms trying to force calm: reframing arousal as excitement improved performance across tasks in a well-known study.
• A consistent pre-game routine shrinks the unknowns that feed anxiety.

Why do athletes get nervous before games?

Because the body treats a big game like a big event: adrenaline rises, the heart speeds up, the stomach tightens. That response is automatic and useful. It becomes a problem only when an athlete reads it as a signal that something is wrong. The butterflies, the restless legs, even feeling sick before tryouts, all of it is a normal stress response to something that matters.

What settles the body fastest?

Slow, controlled breathing. Research on paced breathing shows that slowing the breath to roughly six breaths per minute increases heart rate variability and shifts the autonomic nervous system toward its calming, parasympathetic side (Russo et al., 2017). In practice: breathe in for about four counts, out for about six, for a minute or two. The long exhale is what does the work, and it is available in a locker room, on a start line, or in the car before tryouts.

Should you try to calm down, or get excited?

Get excited. Anxiety and excitement are nearly identical in the body, so it is easier to relabel arousal than to erase it. In a series of experiments, people who said "I am excited" before performing outperformed those who tried to calm down (Brooks, 2014). Athletes can practice the same shift: the pounding heart isn't dread, it is fuel arriving on time.

What does a good pre-game routine look like?

Consistent and boring, on purpose. Same warmup, same music, same breathing, same first rep. A routine gives the nervous energy a track to run on and crowds out the what-if spiral. Pair it with prepared self-talk, which has a moderate, well-documented effect on performance, and the first minutes of the game stop feeling like a cliff.

What about nerves so strong they feel like getting sick?

Strong pre-game nerves are still usually performance nerves, and the tools above work on them. Two flags worth respecting: nerves that show up days early and steal sleep, or dread that follows an athlete outside of sport. That pattern is bigger than a pre-game routine, and it deserves real support. Koomba helps families find licensed clinical care when that is the right fit.

How do athletes make this automatic?

Reps, before it matters. Breathing and reframing work best when they are practiced in training, not invented in the tunnel. A Koomba coach builds the routine with the athlete, rehearses it, and adjusts it through the season. See mental performance coaching, and for what happens after a mistake in the game itself, read our post on composure under pressure.

Common questions

Are pre-game nerves a sign an athlete isn't ready? No. They are a sign the athlete cares. Preparation determines readiness; nerves just mean the body noticed the stakes.

Do nerves before tryouts work the same way? Yes. Tryouts add the feeling of being judged, which makes the routine and the excited reframe even more useful.

How long until these tools work? Slow breathing helps the first time you use it. The reframe and routine get stronger over a few weeks of practice.