A single moment can sometimes begin to influence what happens next: a missed penalty, a fall, a bad competition, a coach's comment, an injury, or the feeling of freezing when it mattered most.
EMDR Sports is built around three different needs: Ground. Clear. Build. Here are practical examples of how an athlete might use each one.
Ground: settle yourself before you perform
Ground is for moments when you simply need to become calmer, more present and more connected to what you are doing. Here are some examples based on our pilot study on EMDR App in athletes and clinical work.
Example 1: Before a competition
A pool billiards player is waiting to enter the table.
Her heart is beating faster than usual. She keeps thinking about who is watching, whether she will play well and what losing might mean. Nothing particularly bad has happened. Her nervous system is simply activated before competition. She used Ground for a few minutes before the match to bring her attention back to the present. The goal is not to make her completely relaxed. She is about to compete. Some activation is useful. The aim is to move from over-activated to ready.
Example 2: After making a mistake
A football player makes a poor pass early in a match and immediately becomes frustrated with himself. Instead of mentally replaying the mistake for the whole match, he briefly grounded himself at halftime. I am here now. The next situation matters. Ground helped to create a psychological reset.
Example 3: Returning after an injury
A runner was about to do her first demanding training session after recovering from an injury. She notices that she was scanning her body constantly: Does that hurt? Is something wrong? What if it happens again? Before training, Ground helped her to notice the difference between what is happening now and the fear generated by what happened before.
Clear: when a previous experience is still affecting you
In Clear, there is something from the past that continues to carry emotional charge in the present. In my clinical work with athletes, I have repeatedly seen that performance problems are not always about lack of skill. Sometimes an athlete knows perfectly well how to perform the movement, but a previous experience has become attached to fear, shame, disappointment or self-doubt.
Example 1: The movement you suddenly cannot do
A gymnast who has performed a movement hundreds of times did something wrong during training. She lost control of the movement and landed badly. She was not seriously injured but afterwards, every time she prepared to perform the same movement, her body froze. She knew rationally: I can do this. But her body seemed to say: This is dangerous. Clear can be used to work with this type of specific memory.
Example 2: The mistake you keep replaying
A goalkeeper lets in an easy goal in an important match. Days later, the image still comes back: the ball, the mistake, the reaction of the crowd, the opponent celebrating. When thinking about it, the goalkeeper notices the thought: I let everyone down. Even at the next match, the previous mistake remains somewhere in the background.
With using Clear the purpose is not to forget what happened. The goalkeeper should remember the mistake and learn from it. But the memory does not need to continue producing the same emotional reaction every time it is activated.
Example 3: A coach's comment that stayed with you
Not all sporting memories involve competition. A young athlete is repeatedly told by a coach: You're too slow. You're too heavy. You're mentally weak. Years later, the athlete has changed coaches and developed significantly, but the old words remain. Before important performances the same thought appears: Maybe I'm not good enough.
My clinical work has included athletes whose early experiences of criticism and body-related comments remained active many years later. A memory can continue shaping self-perception long after the original situation has ended. For a manageable individual experience, Clear may help the athlete separate: what someone once said about me from who I am now.
Build: strengthen what you want to bring into performance
Build turns the direction around. Instead of asking: What is holding me back? you ask: What do I want more of?
This part of EMDR Sports is particularly useful for performance preparation. One way of doing this is to use a resource memory: a real situation in which you already had the quality you now want to strengthen.
Example 1: Build confidence from something you have already done
A dancer was nervous about an upcoming competition. Instead of trying to convince herself: I should be confident, she remembered a training session in which the movement felt effortless. She remembered: the physical sensation, the rhythm, the landing, the feeling immediately afterwards. The relevant thought was: I know how to do this. That memory became the resource for Build.
In my clinical work with a world-level athlete, we use exactly this principle: we retrieve a memory in which the athlete had successfully performed the movement, strengthened the associated sense of capability, and then connected that resource to the forthcoming championship situation.
Example 2: Build calm under pressure
A basketball player wanted to remain composed when shooting free throws at the end of a close game. He remembered another situation in which the arena was loud, the pressure was high, and yet everything became surprisingly quiet in his mind. That is the memory to use. His Build quality might be: Calm. Or: I stay with my routine.
Example 3: Build courage
A downhill skier was technically ready to increase speed but noticed herself holding back. She remembered a previous competition where she felt decisive, committed and fearless without becoming reckless. Her desired quality was not: No fear. It was instead: Courage with control. That distinction matters. The goal was not to remove useful fear. It was to strengthen the mental state that allowed skilled action despite it.
One situation may involve all three
Imagine an alpine skier who crashed during competition and is now preparing to race again. She might use:
- Ground before training to settle her nervous system.
- Clear for the memory of the crash if it still creates an unnecessary fear response.
- Build using the memory of a previous confident run to strengthen readiness for the next race.
The three sections are not competing techniques. They answer different psychological needs.
Ask yourself three questions
If you are unsure which section to choose, ask:
- Do I need to settle myself right now? Choose Ground.
- Is something that happened before still affecting me? Consider Clear.
- Is there a quality or mental state I want to strengthen? Choose Build.
Sometimes the answer will be obvious. And sometimes you may use all three at different points in the same week.
Your sport will give you the targets
The examples are almost endless.
- A snooker player might Ground nervousness before the match.
- A top athlete might Ground anger after losing and before going into an interview.
- A figure skater might Ground bodily tension before going to perform.
- A tennis player might Clear a double fault at match point.
- A footballer might Clear a missed penalty shot.
- A climber might Clear a frightening fall.
- A golfer might Build the calmness of a previous great round.
- A runner might Build determination from the final kilometer of a race where she refused to give up.
- A gymnast might Build the bodily confidence of a movement performed perfectly in training.
The question is not: What should an athlete process?
A better question is:
What experience from the past is affecting what I do now, and what mental state would help me move forward?
That is the idea behind EMDR Sports:
- ●Ground for now.
- ●Clear what remains from before.
- ●Build what you want to take into what comes next.