How Athletes Build Nervous System Flexibility: Tools for Athletic Performance, Recovery, and Stress Regulation
What Is Nervous System Flexibility? (Part 3 of the Series)
This blog is part 3 of a series called The Athlete’s Guide to Nervous System Training for Performance, Recovery & Regulation, where we break down how the autonomic nervous system shapes athletic performance, recovery, and long-term well-being in a way that is practical and relevant to sport. You can read Part 2 HERE where I break down how chronic nervous system dysregulation and stress impact athlete recovery and performance.
In sport, we’ve often treated the “mental” and physical as separate. But in reality, the mind and body do not operate separately, and the autonomic nervous system is a critical part of an athlete’s performance, recovery, and long-term durability.
When we build nervous system flexibility, we are directly supporting an athlete’s ability to perform under pressure, recover between sessions, adapt to training demands, and sustain peak performance over time.
The nervous system has become quite a hot topic on social media. We need to acknowledge that the nervous system, and building nervous system flexibility, is complex. I often see messaging like:
“If you struggle with X it means your nervous system is dysregulated”
“Try this hack to regulate your nervous system”
“This 1 thing will regulate your nervous system instantly”
Nervous system flexibility and regulation are so much more than a tool, quick fix, or hack. At a foundational level, this is about developing a relationship with self and for athletes, that relationship directly impacts consistency, confidence, and performance output.
A flexible or regulated nervous system is not about being calm, relaxed, or unbothered all the time in training or competition. It’s also not about eliminating pressure, discomfort, fatigue, or uncomfortable emotional experiences like performance anxiety.
The goal isn’t to never be dysregulated or activated in competition or life. The goal is to build a nervous system that has the capacity and flexibility to meet the demands of training and performance and return to balance afterward.
What a Flexible Nervous System Can Feel Like in Athletes in life and sport
When we have a flexible nervous system, we might experience things like:
“I feel balanced and at my best mentally, emotionally, physically, and socially on a consistent basis, both in life and in sport”
“I have consistent energy throughout the day and feel physically supported in both training and recovery”
“My sleep is stable and I wake up feeling rested and restored”
“My thinking feels clearer and more focused, especially under stress or performance pressure”
“I experience more positive emotions like joy, ease, and confidence, and my self-worth feels more stable”
“I have greater capacity to handle stress, setbacks, and difficult emotional states like anxiety, overthinking, perfectionism, or sadness without getting overwhelmed”
“I recover well between training sessions and feel less physically run down over time, including fewer injuries, less inflammation, and improved resilience”
“I can stay present and perform at a high level in training and competition, and I understand what supports that performance”
“I am kinder and more compassionate with myself when I make mistakes or experience failure”
What a Flexible Nervous System Looks Like in Athletes
This is incredibly complex and nuanced, but here are the foundational areas I want athletes to begin thinking about:
1. Learn how your nervous system operates
We cannot regulate or navigate what we don’t understand. This is about building a relationship to self, because thoughts, feelings, actions, and interactions are influenced by the nervous system state you’re in, and this directly impacts performance consistency.
While there are shared human patterns, we all experience our nervous system in a slightly different way. This is where building awareness of your own nervous system states becomes essential. It’s important to understand how your thoughts, feelings, actions, and interactions shift depending on your internal state, especially in training and competition.
What are your personal cues of safety (regulation) and threat (dysregulation)? How does dysregulation show up for you specifically, and how might it be impacting your performance, decision-making, recovery, or consistency.
2. Acute tools and skills to support nervous system regulation in real time
We need tools, skills, and practices to support the nervous system in real time as stress or challenge in life or sport arises. This is not about calming down as quickly as possible. It is not about fixing, solving, or eliminating the nervous system response. Too many athletes experience dysregulation and immediately try to get rid of it. Instead, it’s about recognizing: “my nervous system has shifted into protection” and learning to work with what is happening. Sometimes this means allowing the protective response to complete (anger, activation, expression). Sometimes it means supporting the system to settle. This often includes body-based or “somatic” practices because the nervous system does not respond to verbal reasoning alone. We have to learn to work with the body in addition to the mind.
3. Daily routines, habits, and lifestyle for nervous system regulation
We also need to move beyond quick fixes and toward daily routines and ways of living that support regulation and nervous system flexibility over time, which directly impacts training capacity, recovery, and performance consistency.
Schedule, work or school load
Sleep, rest, recovery
Training load
Adequate nutrition and hydration
Relationships and social connection
These are the foundations that either support or compound the load on your nervous system over time and ultimately how sustainable your performance will be. A critical component of this will be recovery for an athlete. You can read more about that in my blog ( )
4. The importance of co-regulation for athletes
Our nervous systems don’t regulate in isolation. They regulate relationships with others. This is co-regulation. This begins in infancy and continues throughout life and co-regulation is often what helps us learn how to self-regulate as we move through life. Who are the people in your life where you can access safety, connection, and grounding? And just as importantly, who contributes to possibly dysregulation or lack of safety?
5. The impact of sport culture and larger systems
We cannot talk about regulation without acknowledging the systems that impact it.
Too often we focus on the individual, when the reality is dysregulation is also shaped by sport culture, environment, access, pressure, identity, and larger systems athletes exist within. Although we don’t always have full control over these factors, they directly influence performance capacity and nervous system load. For athletes, sport culture or your sport environment plays a role here.
The question then becomes: how do we work with what is within our control to support performance, recovery, and long-term sustainability?
Final Thoughts on Nervous System Training for Athletes
At the end of the day, nervous system flexibility is not just a wellness concept, it is a performance foundation. It shows up in an athlete’s ability to train consistently, recover fully, compete under pressure, and sustain their body and mind over the long term.
When we understand the nervous system, we stop trying to override it and instead learn how to work with it.
This is where performance actually becomes more sustainable: not through forcing or pushing harder, but through greater awareness, adaptability, and capacity. When an athlete builds nervous system flexibility, they are not just improving how they feel, they are building the internal system that supports how they perform, how they recover, and how they last in sport.
In Part 4 of this Blog series we’ll dive into all things athlete recovery.
Training, Lineage & Acknowledgements
I acknowledge that this work is informed by formal clinical training, ongoing professional education, lived experience, and integrative healing traditions. The concepts in this series reflect a synthesis of multiple lineages of knowledge, including trauma-informed care, somatic psychology, and mindfulness-based practice. Many foundational principles of nervous system regulation and embodied healing also have roots in Indigenous traditions and ancient Eastern healing systems, which continue to inform and shape contemporary clinical approaches today.
Polyvagal Theory (originated in the 1970s) developed by Dr. Stephen Porges
Polyvagal Clinical Training with Deb Dana, LCSW
Level I and II, Advanced Trauma Training, The Ferentz Institute
Polyvagal Yoga and Complex Trauma Training, Dr. Arielle Schwartz, PhD
The Hakomi Method, Manuela Mischke-Reeds LA, LMFT, CHT
Help for the Helpers, 2023, Babette Rothschild
Trauma Sensitive Mindfulness, 2018, David Treleaven