It is useful to understand what is happening to you….

When you experience stress or danger, the body releases a cocktail of hormones into your system including Adrenaline and Cortisol – generally known as the two key ‘stress hormones’.

This is a natural response mechanism which has evolved to prepare the body for a stressful event, intended for ‘fight or flight’, or in this case – competition.

Adrenaline works on the short term, whilst Cortisol has greater momentum and works on the longer term.

Adrenaline

As unusually high levels of stress hormones build in your system the sensation of ‘butterflies’ can sometimes be felt in the stomach, trembling and a cold clammy sensation in the hands. Do not be concerned about or fight this feeling. If you learn to welcome the sensation it can actually feel quite pleasant and will, oddly enough, reduce the feeling of tension. The fact it is happening confirms the presence of an essential component – your excitement about the forthcoming event.

It is however something you should learn to control. Overexcitement or intense anticipation will over-stimulate the release which varies in level between individuals.

Adrenalin (a hormone secreted by the adrenal glands situated on the kidneys) is a neurotransmitter, affecting specific parts of your body.

• Senses become more acute

• heart rate and blood circulation increases

• Glucose and energy reserves are mobilized

• Muscle activity is stimulated, often causing tightening

This can all be quite useful if your sport requires speed and strength (a boxer, sprinter or weightlifter might rely on it), but if your sport requires you to stay physically relaxed and/or demands concentration over prolonged periods it can become a problem if you fail to control it properly.

Your mood will affect levels of Adrenalin released into your system. This is why it’s important to be in control of your emotions.

If you are prone to getting cross when things don’t work out, you get stressed. You have probably heard the saying ‘don’t get up tight’. Getting ‘up tight’ refers to stress causing a burst of Adrenalin being released into your system resulting in muscles becoming tight. Too much is obviously not a good thing if your sport demands you stay physically relaxed! (Ways to relax when you are stressed)

Cortisol

Cortisol is also released into your system from the Adrenal Cortex at the same time as Adrenaline.

Just as your levels of adrenaline start coming down, so rises the amount of cortisol flowing through your veins. Cortisol has a much greater momentum than adrenaline, which means that even though it builds up slowly, levels take a long time to go back to normal. Should you constantly engage in activities which require adrenaline, your levels of cortisol increase proportionally. You could think of the amount of cortisol in your system as an average of your recent levels of adrenaline.

Together with the rise of cortisol and the decrease of adrenaline, comes the potential for the nasty side-effects of the stress hormones. Depression, anxiousness, and negativity are symptoms that may be experienced. This is perhaps one of the significant features of stress which flies against common sense – you only feel its bad aspects when your body is stressing down and progressing towards a more relaxed state. When you are building up on adrenaline, in effect stressing up, you might even be feeling good! This explains what is popularly known as the adrenaline rush and the consequent adrenaline crash.

Higher and more prolonged levels of Cortisol in the bloodstream can have other undesirable effects.

Having too much cortisol flowing through your veins has another nasty side-effect: the recovery time from any adrenaline surge increases. In a sense, the relationship between adrenaline and cortisol goes both ways: the adrenaline curve influences the cortisol curve, and vice-versa.

Chronic over-secretion of stress hormones adversely affects brain function, especially memory. Too much cortisol can prevent the brain from laying down a new memory, or from accessing those that already exist.

Excessive cortisol can make it difficult to think or retrieve long-term memories. That's why people get befuddled and confused in a severe crisis. Their mind goes blank because "the lines are down." They can't remember where the fire exit is, for example.

An exam or quiz might be considered another useful illustration of this effect. Ever been into the exam hall to find your mind has suddenly gone blank? This is likely to be the effect of a high level of stress. Worry about how well you will do or a desperation to pass has caused an oversecretion of hormones resulting in difficulty accessing memory.

How often have you watched a quiz show on TV and heard a contestant say "...I can answer all the questions when I watch the program at home, but it's so much more difficult in real life". In reality it is only the way the contestant perceives the event that has changed. At home it really doesn't matter if you blurt out the wrong answer, so an air of relaxation prevails. In the studio the goal posts seem to move. This is it, the real deal, your chance to show the nation how smart you are and run off with the big cash prize. The contestant is now under scrutiny and fun gives way to competitive tension. When asked a question a competitor can have worked themselves up so much that every day common knowledge like "What K would you boil water in?" (answer: Kettle) can come out as Saucepan! The brain has become unable to compute the question and retrieve a known fact from memory.

Stress hormones divert blood glucose to exercising muscles, therefore the amount of glucose – hence energy – that reaches the brain’s hippocampus is diminished. This creates the energy crisis in the hippocampus which compromises its ability to create new memories or access the old. This could be why getting cross (stressed) after a bad shot is a stupid idea. If the brain is unable to generate any meaningful memory of the event, how can you analyse the cause or avoid making the same mistake again? This could be one reason for making ‘stupid’ or repetitive mistakes.

An example might be leaving home in a hurry because you are late. Being late is a common cause of stress. Have you ever been rushing around, to find when you arrive at your destination you have forgotten something you meant to take? Stress hormones, and their ability to seriously affect the creation of, or access to memory, may have either prevented you from creating or recalling the thing you wanted to remember.

The consequence of long-term stress is maintained exposure to high levels of Cortisol in your system. This results in long-term damage to brain cells and impaired ability to create or retrieve memory. This is why short-term memory is usually the first casualty of age-related memory loss resulting from a lifetime of stress, and has been associated with Alzheimer's disease and Dementia.

Another symptom of chronic stress is suppression of the immune system. Sufferers are more prone to sickness than a relaxed person. Symptoms may include:

§         Higher blood pressure

§         Suppressed thyroid function

§         Blood sugar imbalance

§         Lowered immunity and other health consequences

§         Impaired mental and physical performance

Tiredness

As mentioned, glucose and energy reserves are mobilised when Adrenaline is released into your system. It therefore follows that unless you learn to control this release by controlling your mental state you will also be burning energy unnecessarily. The effect of wasting energy will only become apparent later in your day.

Tiredness demands adrenaline, but as your adrenaline and energy levels run low you feel more tired. You enter a vicious circle.

Physical tiredness affects our ability to think clearly.

• When you fail to think clearly you make mistakes

• When you make mistakes you can get stressed or cross

• When you get cross you waste more energy.

You may see how tiredness can cause you to ‘self-destruct’ as you begin the downward spiral.

A relationship exists between fitness and the mental game. A physically fit person will not tire as quickly and therefore has the capacity to think more effectively for longer.

Tiredness is a big problem to the sportsperson. Whilst you can train to become physically stronger and fitter, this can be negated if you unwittingly burn up energy through poor control of your emotions.

Concentration has been likened to a bottle of water in another section. Consider your reserves of Adrenalin and energy in much the same way. Drink sensibly so you’re not dry before the end of the day!

Consider

A pilot of an aircraft commits to achieving take-off and applies full trust. Shortly after take-off, when optimum cruising airspeed is achieved, throttle settings are backed-off to conserve fuel and prevent engine overheat. The Pilot knows if he maintains full throttle not only will he cause damage to his engines, will burn fuel inefficiently and might also run out of fuel before the destination.

Like the fuel on the aircraft, Adrenaline is a limited resource in your body. Whilst you need it to get you up to a heightened state, you need to be able to throttle back to prevent burnout once optimum height has been achieved.

A poignant example:

Tiredness can be used as a primary instrument during interrogation. Captured soldiers under interrogation are deprived of sleep – sometimes for days at a time. Their resolve to withhold information is gradually weakened as their energy levels fall and their thought processes become impaired through stress. Whilst a somewhat extreme example, you might appreciate how difficult it is to function with a tired mind.

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