Ever seen teams train their butts off all season, only to hit Nationals and completely fall apart? They’re not just underperforming, they’re stressed and miserable when they should be celebrating all their hard work. To avoid this fate, make sure you are building your confidence and not your expectations.

Confidence Boost vs. Expectation Bust

Confidence is that rock-solid belief in your ability to nail a dive. It’s built on hours of training, preparation, and past successes. It’s the feeling you get when you visualize a perfect exit, smooth execution, and a clean jump. It’s lining up at the door knowing you’re about to crush it.
Expectation? That’s a whole different beast. It’s the strict demands you put on yourself—hit a certain average, win gold, beat that rival team, never mess up. While it’s normal to want to excel, rigid expectations pile on the pressure and can wreck your confidence if things don’t go exactly as planned. 

When Expectations Backfire: The Downward Spiral

When you approach a dive with rigid expectations, you’re setting yourself up for a win-or-lose scenario. If you don’t meet those expectations, it’s easy to start doubting yourself and lose focus. This creates a nasty cycle of self-doubt that sabotages your performance instead of boosting it.
How does this work in the real world? Need a 15-point average? One low score can ruin your whole meet. If the “team you should beat” is ahead, you feel like your entire season is on the line. Instead of showing your best, you’re terrified and beating yourself up. You are a ball of negative emotions, and it is anything but fun.

When your only goal is under threat, it triggers a downward spiral. The negativity bleeds into the next round, and you start skydiving scared—avoiding mistakes instead of going for it. For some practical strategies on handling this kind of competition stress, read How to Calm Down.

If you’re confident, you know you’ll rock the jump because you trust your training. You’re skydiving to do your absolute best. A bad round is just part of the experience, easy to shake off and move on from. If you need help recovering mentally after a rough jump, see Bounce Back Mentally After a Bad Jump for some great tips.

Fixing it: Small Wins, Big Vibes

Instead of obsessing over results or strict standards, shift your focus to process goals—the small, manageable objectives that add up to a successful jump.
Think:

• Make those final walkthroughs feel amazing
• Have killer visual communication
• Keep the skydives small
• Focus on being a fun loving team
• Nail your pre-jump prep
• Ignore those unimportant meet distractions

For more on setting realistic daily goals that prevent the pressure of perfectionism, check out Is Your 4-way Team Playing Mistake Whack-a-Mole? Fix It with Better Daily Goals.

With several smaller goals, success isn’t so black and white. A jump doesn’t have to be perfect to be good. Mistakes are just opportunities to improve on the next round. Your attention stays on the small, achievable actions that you can control. And if you execute those, you’ll perform your best and increase your chances of getting the outcomes you want.

Conclusion

Understanding the difference between confidence and rigid expectations can completely change how you approach competition. By focusing on setting process goals, you’ll not only perform better, but you’ll also actually enjoy the experience.
So, gear up, take a deep breath, and remember: it’s not about the outcome, it’s about the journey and the joy of skydiving!

Expectations are so last season. Get more coaching from Christy Frikken at Furycoaching.com.

Hear from Christy about Fury Coaching's latest articles, news, and events!

Email Address

First Name

Last Name

You are almost there! Look for an optin confirmation in your email. Once you complete that you will start getting great tips and help from Fury Coaching!