How To Get Confidence Before Getting On Stage

If you are getting ready to go on stage as an athlete/performer, having confidence is critical. Before you even step onto that stage, feeling comfortable and confident in your skills, your material, and your delivery will help prevent the dreaded stage fright that can paralyze your performance. Even the most seasoned performers struggle with this but having confidence on stage is something you can work to improve.

Here are five tips and techniques on How to get confidence before getting on stage

Practice. Practice. Practice.

Repeating an activity increases your familiarity with it. This is the simple concept behind practicing a performance. With familiarity comes comfort and confidence in knowing that when you are on stage, you’ll perform your best. 

High-level performers spend many hours practicing until they know their material by heart. This will not only help you perform well in front of your audience, but you’ll be able to recover quickly from mistakes and get right back into the flow of your routine. Practicing your posing for a minimum of 10-12 weeks before the competition will prepare you to be successful on stage. If you don’t feel like you are getting to posing down correct, reach out to one of the posing coaches from our approved list.

Observe yourself

Practicing by yourself in private can be valuable if you can observe your own performance.

Practicing in a quiet room in front of a mirror is a simple way to do this. Even better, record your performances—whether via audio, video, or ideally both—and analyze your onstage movements and actions. Being critical and giving yourself an honest evaluation will help you identify areas where you can improve, grow, and feel more confident.

Study the best

Watch your IFBB Pro athlete on stage to learn how to get confidence before getting on stage. Closely observe what they do, and how they do it. Then use this information to create your own performance/posing routine.

Don’t think of this as “copying” someone else. Even by imitating someone else’s performance, you’ll never be able to mimic it exactly, and the differences that emerge will be where your style shines through. Over time, you’ll fully develop your own unique style, and this will give you confidence as you take the stage.

Eye contact with your audience

Don’t stare off into the distance like a zombie, or be a “naval gazer,” constantly looking down at your feel. Your audience is there to be entertained by you, so make eye contact with them.

Eye contact will help you connect and communicate with your audience, which will lead to a strong stage presence. Eye contact also helps you show emotion to your audience, which conveys authenticity to them while helping you control your nerves by believing in yourself and your skills and material. 

Control your breathing

It’s been shown that proper breathing can help improve performance in many activities. Breathing exercises can control nerves and anxiety, while also increasing your lung’s oxygen capacity, enhancing your physical and mental performance capabilities. 

Learn how to consciously focus and slow your breathing before you go on stage. Various methods such as box breathing, yoga, and pilates all include methods to help with breathing control.

The bottom line

As a performer, being on stage at a bodybuilding show should be a fun experience in which you entertain your audience with the skills and material you’ve learned and practiced. Even if you make mistakes, learning from them is part of the process, so use the above tips to help gain confidence before you step on stage and you’ll continue to improve and grow into the best performer you can be. 

Once you get on stage for the first time, i’m confident that you will want to turn it into your side hustle or make it a full time gig. Check out the physique business podcast for more information on how to make that a reality. We hope you enjoyed this article on “How to get confidence before getting on stage” ! If you found value from it please share it on social media or with someone else that you think will gain value from it as well.