How do you get over your tournament nerves?

[Courageous Baka]

So I've been playing competitively since the end of August. I think I've gotten better since then, but I'm still lacking in a lot of areas.

Now, one of the problems I feel like I've always had is just playing the game. I'm pretty much never feeling confident about myself before I play. I'm always worried about playing REALLY REALLY bad and embarrassing myself with my performances. I feel like this a lot outside of Smash, too. It's not the only thing keeping me from winning, my fundamentals are still lacking. But lately I think it's been weighing me down a lot and I'm kinda afraid to keep going to tournaments, too.

If you've had these type of nerves before, how did you combat them? And do you yourself have any advice you can give? Anything is appreciated, even criticism.

 

[GhostM]

I feel like being nervous in the competitive scene is normal, so you shouldn’t be hard on yourself. Doing that will make it even harder for you to actually combat it. Everyone including the pro players has experienced that feeling before, even ZeRo himself, the man who had a 56 tournament win streak.

Some tips to keep calm is to practice breathing correctly. It might sound like a dumb idea, but your breathing influences your heartbeat, which also influences in this case, how well you perform in a tourney like setting. By breathing in a constant rhythm, it allows you to calm yourself down so that your movements feel relaxed, rather than stressed, and will help you focus more on your match. Usually when you are nervous and stressed, you tend to perform jittery and sloppy movements, which can influence how well you play. It’s the biggest factor that helps influence your concentration and a state of mind without stress. It might be a little difficult to pull this off especially if you play in a tournament with huge crowds for the first time, so practicing this technique will help you focus more instead of feeling stressed.

Another tip I would suggest is to break away from that lack of confidence you feel. I can see that it’s placing a negative mindset on yourself, where you believe that you aren’t performing well when that isn’t true. You say that you’re lacking in the fundamentals to win games, but that’s normal. Most people who play in the competitive scene are there to have fun and improve their play, despite the competition. I would suggest not to place high expectations on your performance when you play an opponent, since that will only serve to frustrate/upset you. Losing is something that everyone experiences, so try not to be so harsh on yourself. You might not be happy with the results that you are getting, but try to understand that losing does not reflect your true abilities as a player, since an opponent can sometimes outplay you. Taking it as a learning experience will help get you comfortable on where your strengths and weaknesses are, which should help make you feel less anxious overtime when you play against people. Even if you’re up against an opponent who’s ranked higher than you, you can still relax, and have fun and improve as a player regardless of the results.

 

[Ben Holt]

I'd tell ya, but SmashBoards doesn't allow talk of such substances.

 

[AEMehr]

The best way to deal with tournament nerves, is to not mentally treat your games like tournament matches.

If you look at the game like you're just playing casually you'll do way better, trust me on this. It's important to be mindful of options and play safe while in bracket, but those thoughts can also force you to overthink / doubt yourself a lot too.

The most important thing you can do to improve your play is to make playing the game as enjoyable as possible. If you're too worried about looking foolish, just remember you're still trying to grow! It's alright to make mistakes here and there.

 

[Sean²]

Care about winning as little as possible going in. Assume you're gonna go 0-2, but don't autopilot like you want to go 0-2, just try to play intelligently and learn from the better players. When you don't feel the pressure, you can more easily look for habits to exploit and play unpredictably yourself.

Source: I entered a local fairly recently expecting to go 2-2 at best. No expectations at all, just wanted to have some fun against some people I've never played before. I ended up winning the whole thing from winners' side. Blew me away. Nerves always got to me before but I stayed calm and it greatly helped my performance. Some of the other players said they even felt a bit more pressure due to how calm I seemed while I was beating them. I was just treating them like friendlies or quickplay matches.

I'd tell ya, but SmashBoards doesn't allow talk of such substances.

This is bad advice. Whether it just be playful hinting or otherwise. Awful way to cope with tournament nerves, especially running the risk of impairing yourself in other ways in a game that requires focus and good hand-eye coordination. OP should learn to learn to get over them without said substances.

 

[Kewkky]

I have a good suggestion: get to know as many people as you can in your locals. The more you get along with people, the less ashamed you feel when you lose. Play friendlies and compliment the other players without looking for compliments yourself. You'd be very pleasantly surprised how positive people's impressions of you are when you're someone they enjoy playing with. Once you get to this point, playing with them in friendlies and tournaments won't feel like you're being tested and judged by strangers.

Obviously bigger tournaments like nationals are a different story, but if you start implementing this mindset in smaller locals, by the time you're good enough to worry about doing good on giant tournaments, your reasons to feel nervous will almost be completely gone. At that point, you're basically only nervous because it's such a huge and impressing event.

EDIT: This goes for anyone looking for advice regarding the matter, not just for OP. Even if the previous post was in February and we currently have no offline tourneys due to COVID, I think it was worth posting this.

 

[Rᴀᴍᴇɴ]

Tbh, you can never get rid of tourney nerves. You will always be nervous when playing in a tourney so you really just have to deal with it. I suggest playing in a lot of tourneys will help you learn how to deal with these nerves. I think adapting the mindset of playing to improve rather than to win will also help you ease your nerves since you won't get caught up on winning.

Something that I like to do is take deep breaths during, between, and after games. In a match, if I lose a stock, I take a deep breathe in my nose and exhale out my mouth. If I take a stock, I take a deep breath in and out. After a game, I take a deep breath in and out. Before I start my next game, I breathe in and out. I feel that this helps clear your mind and makes you focus on the game. I also like to drink water in between games, preferably water that's cold, but not too cold because you never wanna play with cold hands.

I hope I was able to provide helpful advice for ya!

 

[Janx_uwu]

I started back in March last year, and this also something I’m currently working on. What I try to do is practice my tech the day before, then get to the tournament an hour early for friendlies. It’s not solved yet though, it’s honestly the biggest issue I’ve faced in Smash. I think over time your nerves will die down much more as you’ll be used to the tourney experience, plus you’ll be better at Smash over time.

 

[TCT~Phantom]

One of the most important things is physically taking care of yourself.

If you are not physically taking care of yourself, you are gonna burn out and get more anxious than you would have before. Eat well the day before the tournament, get plenty of exercise, get eight hours of sleep, make sure you are in a good headspace the day before. It won't matter if you practiced tech for a week beforehand if your body is going to give out on you. Taking natural steps to make yourself less anxious and overall healthier is paramount.

That being said, practice the day beforehand. Train with people above your skill level. Watch your replays and note what mistakes you could be making or what you do right. Keep trying and everything works out.

 

[Courageous Baka]

How do I know if I possess the potential required to be good at Smash? Like, which skills do I need to clearly demonstrate in my play, and how fast does my growth have to be in order to show that I DO possess potential?

 

[Rᴀᴍᴇɴ]

Everyone has the potential to be good at Smash. It's all about the hard work you put in.

Skills? I guess I can say that you having a good understanding of advantage, disadvantage, and neutral state can show that you're a good player.

The rate of progress is different for everyone. As long as you're improving, it doesn't matter how fast you improve.

 

[Courageous Baka]

But does that still mean I have a big disadvantage compared to other people?

 

[Tosty]

In my experience, there are a few ways to overcome tournament nerves. The first thing I will say is that there is no "trick" that will allow you to overcome these nerves immediately, but there are a few strategies to help you overcome them more quickly.

The best way to overcome the nerves is to simply enter more tournaments. The more you put yourself in an uncomfortable position, the more you will learn to overcome it and feel more comfortable.

The mindset/strategy I use to feel less nervous is I tell myself "I have done all I can to prepare for this set, there is no amount of worrying or thinking that I can do that will matter now, if I am nervous I will only perform worse". Basically, once you have sat down at the setup for the match, you have done everything you can to prepare, win or lose it's already done, now it's time to show the progress you have made and the skills that you have. After the set, you can think about what you could have done better.

Also, I find it helpful that on average nobody cares who you lose to or what you did wrong until you are a high-level player, so take advantage of this and don't put unnecessary pressure on yourself.

 

[sebaseba]

My suggestion is simple: Don't think about it as something huge.
I learned this thing when I was visiting my psychotherapist. Here is what you need to know: if you don't control your emotions, they control you. Whenever something happens that gets you nervous or mad, try to calm down and to analyze why you felt this or another feeling, what caused it and what you should do the next time to prevent it. I had the same problem and maybe worse. After the emotional explosion, I was sick of SSBU. For example, I used to follow news about SSBU tournaments. And if I were in this state of mind and accidentally opened this page, I would go furious. It happened because the game meant to me much. My psychotherapist recommended that I not focus on the game so much and always remember that I have more important things in my life: family, friends, girlfriend, and finally myself. This knowledge always keeps me calm.

 

[Kirijo Nyte]

How do I know if I possess the potential required to be good at Smash? Like, which skills do I need to clearly demonstrate in my play, and how fast does my growth have to be in order to show that I DO possess potential?

This is a very vague question in a sense. In order to be good at smash you need to have some physical capability, (and even then, there are those who do very well with a lot less physical mechanical ability) that would with a combination of other factors result in good play, skills like thinking, (for decision making, judgements and adaptation, reading habits, awareness) knowledge and determination to keep playing.

What is 'good' to you? Top 60% of the playerbase? 30%? 1%? We could quantify, and I don't mean to sound terse or subjective, or nit picky, but this is a pivotal part of your question because your talent and time being spent towards this end relates to the answer, if you mean to ask if you have the talent to, say, within a year be on the caliber of top 10, that's a different territory and question than "could I be good enough to beat most non-competitive smashers?" This requires an answer from you.

How do you know? Well, you'd have to have a truthful understanding of the skill of smash and your own skill and potential, and how do you know that without being committed for at least a little while before? How do we know? We don't, and you probably don't either. It'd be convenient in a lot of ways if we had a very accurate skill-meter to measure anyone's talent along with potential, how long it'd take them, on any given activity, but we don't. But that's essentially what you're asking. Your growth doesn't have to be fast, but if someone is talented usually they'd have a lot faster growth.

I do believe talent exists, and I do think the evidence strongly supports that, but people are also generally talented, so we tend to have a gift for being good at multiple things if only we would put our time and effort towards it. In a more technical, literal sense we may say truthfully that everyone must have some smidgen of talent to use or do anything in that one thing. But not all talent is the same, some are more talented than others. How would we know that with a glance or without knowing anything? I'm sure in history, there have been those that have had immense talents, but never went into their talented field or work, and also those that didn't particularly like what they were talented in.

But does that still mean I have a big disadvantage compared to other people?

It could, but we don't know what your 'talent' is and it's also compulsory to ask the compounding question; does it matter? How much does it matter? Should it matter? Do you have fun playing this game? Is your objective in this game or activity to have fun, or simply win? Is it both? To what extent? Suppose hypothetically we knew you were less talented and at a big disadvantage compared to others, if so, what then?

People have all sorts of talents and traits. Some have better reaction times, speed, better eyesight, better hand-eye coordination, endurance, whatever the case might be. I'll quote Qui Gon in the last Jedi "There's always a bigger fish."

 

[Hippieslayer]

try to remember that it doesnt ****ing matter if you lose, it has no bearing on you as a person whatsoever, there should be no pressure, this is hard as a top player but for someone whos just starting out this is a mindset you can realistically achieve, you should never bet your own self esteem on whether or not youre gonna win

also if you just feel like ****, like you know youre gonna lose, and you cant shake that feeling then just roll with it and assume youre gonna lose and just try to make it as painful for the opponent as possible to achieve that