How To Overcome Pressure

Hello everyone, 

Thank you for reading the following blog post!
I'm Kota Suzuki from Japan. I've been practicing kendo since I was seven years old in Japan－I am currently 3rd Dan. Right now, I am studying abroad in the United States and regularly practice at the university kendo club here.

Today, we have a special guest, Masho! He also practices kendo in Japan. He makes youtube videos about kendo and write some blogs as well. This article is about how to overcome anxiety and pressure before kendo matches and dan tests. I hope this article helps you improve your kendo and be successful for in kendo matches and tests.

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Hello, thanks for reading this article! My name is Masho. I usually post kendo videos on YouTube. I got a chance to write this article with Kota this time. Thanks for giving me an opportunity to write this blog. And, thank you for every foreign kendoka reading this article.

Today, I'm going to write about how to get over anxiety and pressure before kendo matches and dan tests. Before move on the topic, let me introduce myself briefly.

Who Is Masho?

 I started practicing kendo when I was a 5th elementary school student since one of my friends who is older one year than me invited me to practice kendo. At that time, I was very shy and not good at seeing and talking to people even though I was curious about a lot of things. I was weak mentally, so I often cried by arguing with my older sister.

That's why my mother was worrying whether I keep practicing kendo for a long time. However, I have been practicing kendo for five years from I was a 5th elementary school student to a 3rd junior high school student.

I stopped doing kendo after that and I went to a music school to become a singer, but I gave up following the dream and failed. I had been at home every day since the failure made me weak mentally and I was thinking "Why don't I do well whatever I tried?"  I didn't like to meet my friends at the time and my life was really dark.

However, I came to read many books because I had nothing to do at home that was very lucky. Then, I learned a lot of things by reading books and tried to think about what I really wanted to do. The first thing that came up in my mind was kendo that I had been practicing before.

Then, I started to practice kendo again. Now, I meet many people through doing kendo and post videos of how I develop with these people on youtube, such as going abroad for practicing kendo, teaching kendo to a foreigner who I came across at the airport and practicing kendo with my kendo teacher of the junior high school. In addition, I give some useful information through reading books on youtube because I was able to change myself by reading books.

As you can see, I was not strong mentally for a while. I was depressed easily and feeling anxious. Actually, I took a genetic testing a few days ago and the result shows that my genetic characteristic is quite bad, being in the worst condition mentally.

However, I don't feel anxious and pressure now. That's because I learned information from books by the world researches and scientists, using these methods to improve. 70-80 percent of human actions and characteristics are determines by the inheritance. That means 20-30 percent can be changed by our efforts and actions by ourselves.

So, I hope this article helps people who can't avoid feeling anxiety and pressure before matches and tests get an opportunity to get over this weakness.

How To Deal With Anxiety?

First of all, why do anxiety and pressure strike us? That's because human brain send a sign that is force to pay attention for something important to the body. That means feeling anxiety and pressure is not originally bad at all. In fact, many researches show that people can work well because of anxiety and pressure. However, you don't want to stick by feeling anxious too much as well as you don't want to luck the power by relaxing too much.

So, what should we do? The answer is "pressure motivation" which means thinking of presssure as a helpful tool. In fact, the research targeted at 194 German students, 270 German journalists and 159 Polish students at Malaga University asked them two questions below.

1. Does the pressure of deadlines help you finish your work in time?
2. Does the pressure of the goals help you focus on something?

To put it shortly, "Do participants think whether anxiety is helpful or not?" The researchers found that the students who think anxiety is helpful get good grades and the journalists who think anxiety is helpful have a high degree of thier works' satisfaction. 

Another research of Harbad University business school shows that taking a deep breath to relax has a negative effect because the process to make you relax actually make you feel anxious more and more. What you need to do is that you believe this anxiety is a sign that sent from your body for something happen from now on. 

For example, "Dragon Ball", which is a famous Japanese cartoon, have a character who makes a loud voice and releace the special power when they focus on. Therefore, it is important to believe that " I'm preparing for the battles, feeling stress and pressure!"

When you feel anxious and pressure before kendo mathes, you should think that your body is preparing for the important mathes now, and you will work and performe well.

Since I noticed this thought, I feel much better for sure. I had a stomach before the performance in the past, but now, I don't. The perfomance of kendo matches dramatically developed after knowing this method, so I recommend you think anxiety in this way.

Finally, this article will finish, but I want to tell you one thing at last. That is trying what you learned today. You cannot change at all even if you have much knowledge. You can change when you try and use the knowledge. People who take an action from the knowledge get a chance to success.

I know you feel anxious and fearful when you take an action and you need courage. But, you're ready because you read this article and knew how to deal with anxiety and pressure. The only thing you need to do is just taking an action. I hope this article gave you an opportunity to take an action and you change in the future.

I'm looking forward to seeing you and practicing kendo together. 

Work hard each other until the day. Good luck.

Masho

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Thanks for reading the article! I hope Masho's article helps you overcome pressure before kendo matches and dan tests! If you have any questions, feel free to ask me!

Masho posts many kendo videos on his youtube channel, so I recommend you enjoy watching his videos! If you have questions to Masho, please contact him through his twitter!

Masho

#kendo #剣道 #Masho #頑張れ剣道