Have you ever made a mistake in a game and then spent the next 60 seconds replaying the error in your mind, rather than staying focused in the moment? By the time you’re present again, the game has moved on without you. Don’t let a single mistake cost you multiple points. And don’t let one mistake drain your confidence. Learning how to recover from mistakes in sports is a skill you can train.
Karch Kiraly, 3x Olympic Gold Medalist and current Head Coach of the USA Men’s Volleyball Team, likes to remind his athletes that volleyball is a game of mistakes. Coach Kiraly has been quoted many times saying that he loves watching his athletes struggle and make mistakes because it is the path to learning and improving.
The truth is that basketball is a game of mistakes too. So is golf, baseball, softball, and pretty much every sport that exists. Mistakes aren’t the exception in competition, they’re the norm. Even the greatest athletes of all time make errors. If you don’t believe me, take it from Michael Jordan who has talked about missing more than 9,000 shots in his career. Performance errors and setbacks are a part of every sport, for every athlete, at every level. Most of us understand this concept and yet still demand perfection from ourselves. If you find yourself worrying about the future or dwelling on past mistakes, consider this.
Why Your Brain Wants to Replay the Mistake
When something goes wrong under pressure in competition, your brain does what brains do: it replays the moment, searching for what happened and why. That instinct isn’t the problem. It is natural to want to identify the cause so you can solve the problem.
The damage happens when a mental replay turns into rumination over a mistake. A mental loop with self-talk that says “I don’t belong here” or “I’ll never be good enough” keeps you stuck in the past. Instead, the goal is to make a quick correction: you see what went wrong, you file the fix, and you move on to the next play.
Errors do not have to be catastrophic. It’s not realistic to expect a perfect performance from yourself. The goal is to recover from mistakes in sports faster and move on to the next play. It’s about shortening the distance between the mistake and your recovery from it. As sport psychology expert Dr. Vince Lodato puts it, the question that matters most in competition is “how quickly do you move from an emotion focus to a problem-solving focus?” (Lodato, 2022). Don’t let yourself get caught up in an emotional narrative because of a simple mistake. Learn what you need to in the moment and move on. This isn’t just a mindset platitude, it’s backed by real data on how athletes actually perform under pressure.
What the Research Actually Shows About Recovering From Mistakes in Sports
A meta-analysis of 32 studies on self-talk and sport performance found that practicing deliberate self-talk, especially instructional self-talk, where you briefly coach yourself through a skill or correction, produced significantly better performance than not using a self-talk strategy (Hatzigeorgiadis, Zourbanos, Galanis, & Theodorakis, 2011). In other words, the words you say to yourself in the ten seconds after a mistake can make a big impact on your performance. They actively shape what happens next.
A separate 2019 study asked athletes to recall a past sport failure while researchers measured their physiological stress response. Athletes with higher self-compassion showed greater parasympathetic activity (the “calm down” branch of the nervous system) while reliving the failure. They also reported fewer self-critical thoughts, less negative emotion, and more constructive responses about what to do next (Ceccarelli, Giuliano, Glazebrook, & Strachan, 2019). This shows that athletes who are kinder to themselves tend to recover from mistakes faster.
3 Ways to Recover From Mistakes in Sports Faster
Here are a few examples of practical and tangible strategies to embody the “fix-it” mentality and mentally move on to the next play.
1. Build a reset routine. Pick one small, repeatable action you do immediately after a mistake: maybe it’s stepping off the baseline, engaging in a controlled breathwork pattern like box breathing, or reciting a personal mantra. The content of the routine matters less than the consistency of it. Over time, your body learns to treat the routine as a signal to let go of the last play and reset for the next one.
2. Swap the negative self-talk for an instruction. Instead of running the mental highlight reel of what went wrong and beating yourself up about it, give yourself one short, specific correction. Not “don’t mess up again,” but something technical or tactical and specific: “eyes on the ball,” “drive your knees,” “extend your follow through,” or “high hands.” Instructional self-talk beats both silence and self-criticism when it comes to actually improving your next attempt (Hatzigeorgiadis et al., 2011).
3. Increase your self-compassion. Increasing your self-compassion is another helpful way to recover from mistakes in sports under pressure.The words and tone you use with yourself after a mistake changes how fast your body and mind recover, not just how you feel about it. Your nervous system responds to that shift in tone whether you believe it will or not (Ceccarelli et al., 2019). Learn more about how to deconstruct perfectionism and increase your self-compassion here.
Ready to Build Your Own Fix-It Routine?
Mentally fixing the error will prepare you for the next play and help you return to focusing on the present moment. This “fix-it” and “play forward” mentality encourages athletes to control their reaction to error by redirecting attention towards the next play. Rather than responding to a mistake with a barrage of negative self-talk, try correcting the error in your mind and returning to the present moment in preparation for the next play.
Here at Headstrong Mindset, Dr. Brooke Rundle works with athletes and coaches on exactly this: building the mental recovery skills that keep one bad play from turning into a bad game. As an AASP Certified Mental Performance Consultant and licensed sports counselor in Denver, Colorado, she blends clinical training with sport performance psychology to help you compete with your next play, not your last one, in mind.
- Schedule your complimentary 15-minute consultation today.
- Learn how mental performance coaching can help you mentally recover from mistakes faster and improve your self-confidence.
- Start training the skill that separates athletes who spiral from athletes who reset.
References
Ceccarelli, L. A., Giuliano, R. J., Glazebrook, C. M., & Strachan, S. M. (2019). Self-compassion and psycho-physiological recovery from recalled sport failure. Frontiers in Psychology, 10, 1564. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01564
Hatzigeorgiadis, A., Zourbanos, N., Galanis, E., & Theodorakis, Y. (2011). Self-talk and sports performance: A meta-analysis. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 6(4), 348-356. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691611413136
Lodato, V.A. (2022). Imagery and Visualization Week 7 [PowerPoint slides]. Sport Performance & Psychology, University of Western States.
Lodato, V.A. (2022). Handling Competitive Stress [Handout]. Sport Performance & Psychology, University of Western States.