A young swimmer in a cap with a towel over the shoulders, shaking out their arms with eyes down before a race

Mindset

Nervous or excited? Same body, different story

June 17, 2026 · 5 min read

Idea in Brief

  • Nervous and excited are the same body — racing heart, adrenaline, butterflies; the only difference is the label your kid puts on it.
  • Don’t fight the feeling, rename it — “calm down” rarely works (you can’t flip high arousal to low on command); “I’m excited” does, because it keeps the energy and changes the story.
  • Nerves are fuel, and a sign they care — reframe them as the body getting ready, not as something going wrong.

Behind the blocks before a big race, your kid goes quiet and a little pale. Heart pounding, hands cold, stomach in knots. “I’m so nervous,” they say — and every cell in your body wants to fix it with the most natural words in the world: just relax. Calm down. You’ve got this. It almost never works. And there’s a good reason why, plus a small switch that works far better.

Here’s the problem with “calm down.” Nervousness is a high-energy state — pounding heart, adrenaline, that buzzing alertness. Calm is a low-energy state. Asking a wired kid to leap from one to the other in the thirty seconds before a race is asking for a near-impossible U-turn, and when they can’t do it, they get one more thing to feel bad about: now they’re nervous and failing to calm down. You’ve doubled the load with the best of intentions.

So try the other direction. Because here’s the secret hiding in plain sight: nervousness and excitement are, physically, the same thing. Same racing heart, same adrenaline, same butterflies. The body does one thing — it revs up — and the brain slaps a label on it. “Nervous” is the scared label. “Excited” is the ready one. Same fuel, two stories. And the story is the part you can actually change. Psychologist Alison Wood Brooks found that people who simply told themselves “I’m excited” before a high-pressure moment performed better than those who tried to calm down — because, as the broader research on emotion shows, the feeling follows the label, not the other way around.

It helps to know what the feeling actually is. Those nerves aren’t a warning that something’s wrong; they’re the body handing your kid a tank of energy for the race it’s about to swim. The pounding heart is delivering oxygen. The buzz is focus. Even the knot in the stomach is just the system coming online. Nerves also mean they care — nobody gets butterflies about something they’re indifferent to. Reframed that way, the feeling stops being an enemy to suppress and becomes proof they’re ready and it matters.

What does that look like from a parent? Skip “relax.” Start by normalizing the feeling — “of course you’ve got butterflies, this is a big one” — so they don’t think something’s broken. Then hand them the relabel: “that’s your body getting you ready to go fast. Let’s call it excited.” Small, almost silly, said out loud — and far more useful than any attempt to talk them down. And mind your own state while you’re at it: nerves are catching, and a tense parent on the deck is one more thing for a swimmer to absorb. Your steady, almost cheerful energy is itself part of the reframe.

Like any tool, it works best rehearsed before it’s needed. Practice the relabel at small, low-stakes meets so it’s automatic by the one that counts, and pair it with your swimmer knowing their race plan — energy is far easier to call “excitement” when it has somewhere to go. (And if nerves ever tip into something bigger — dread that ruins the days before a meet, or real distress — that’s worth a gentle conversation with the coach, and sometimes more help than a relabel. Most race-day jitters aren’t that. They’re just fuel waiting for a better name.)

The body was always going to buzz before a race. The only question is what your swimmer calls it — and you can teach them to call it excitement.

Share it with your swimmer

How you hand over the reframe shifts as they grow:

  • Under 12 (you’re driving). Keep it concrete and kind: “those butterflies mean your body’s getting ready to go fast.” Name the feeling as a helper, not a problem. At this age the whole goal is just that nerves don’t scare them.
  • 12–15 (sharing the wheel). Teach the actual relabel as a tool they own — behind the blocks, “I’m not nervous, I’m excited,” said on purpose. Have them practice it at small meets so it’s automatic by the big ones, and pair it with knowing their race plan so the energy has a job.
  • 16+ (they’re driving). They can go deeper — the feeling is just arousal, neutral until they label it, and the relabel is theirs to deploy. Mostly, don’t add your nerves to theirs; your steadiness is the reframe they catch.

Stay aligned with your coach

Coaches own the race-day routine and warm-up that channel nervous energy — reinforce it, don’t introduce competing instructions on the deck. If your swimmer genuinely struggles with nerves, tell the coach (they’ve seen it a thousand times and have real tools) rather than trying to coach it from the stands. Your job on race day is a calm presence and the relabel, not last-minute technical advice.

Keep exploring

Go deeper with the experts

  • SwimPros Performance Academy — Olympian David Karasek’s coaching teaches the nervousness relabel and the idea that thoughts and feelings are interpretations, not facts.
  • “Get Excited,” Alison Wood Brooks (2014) — the study showing that reappraising anxiety as excitement beats trying to calm down.
  • Cognitive appraisal theory, Richard Lazarus — the research that emotions follow from how we interpret a situation, so reinterpreting it changes the feeling.

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