Youth Launchpad Project

The stressors of competitive fencing, performance anxiety and motivation, are pervasive especially in student athletes. Balancing school with high demand athletic extracaricular while traveling for tournaments and trying to build knowledge and skills for future career, sounds as a very complicated schedule. Understanding brain functions can help youth fencers and their families unlock solutions — from nutrition and sleep to mindfulness and breaks — for mental challenges. It is important to understand and remember that experiencing mental challenges does not imply that you are at fault, that something is wrong with you, or that you have no potential in the sport. Your brain produces automatic responses to your environment; even though these are out of your control, you can retrain your brain to react differently.