An Athlete’s Secret Weapon: The Neurofeedback Method Helping Athletes Beat Performance Anxiety

Whether it’s a pickup soccer game in the park, or the NFL playoffs, sports can be a source of excitement and fun for many of us. Sports can also be a major source of stress and negative emotion, especially for professional and school athletes. That’s what prompted researchers at The University of Oberta De Catalunya to find a solution that could help every kind of athlete better manage their stress and perform at their best.

Researchers Lourdes Carrascón and Mercè Boixadós at UOC wanted to better understand how emotional dysregulation–difficulty managing difficult emotions like fear and stress impacted sports performance. They also wanted to develop a program to train athletes to handle the stress of performing in order to compete at their best. They opted to use a form of neurofeedback to “gamify” this mental training.

The experiment involved teaching 60 athletes to control alpha waves in the brain. Alpha is an important frequency in the brain that is associated with relaxation and stress reduction. By utilizing the learning principles of neurofeedback, the researchers were able to turn the learning process into a game that the athletes were quickly able to master. Athletes learned to control their alpha waves and as a result, significantly improved their performance when playing sports.

For athletes struggling with performance anxiety, neurofeedback can be tremendously helpful in reducing stress and improving emotional regulation. Brain training can unlock the key to better mental health and better performance, not just in sports, but also at work and in our relationships. When we can manage our stress, we can show up at our best in all areas of life. 

Reference Article: “Using neurofeedback for training in emotional self-control can improve sports performance” by Cristina Sáez and Roser Montserrat: https://www.uoc.edu/en/news/2025/mental-training-anxiety-sport