Crowds: Interesting things start to happen when you go to perform in front of a crowd. Movements that you do easily and comfortably alone suddenly become problematic – indeed, You may not even attempt these movements. Why? What is it about the presence of the crowd? It's the feeling and the fear of being JUDGED and found wanting by the audience. We all deeply care about other peoples perceptions of us and the thought of being judged poorly by a mass of people – even people we don't know and have no interaction with – is hard to take. In this sense a professional athlete must become something more than just an athlete and become a PERFORMER in the same way a musician, an actor, a circus acrobat, an orator or anyone else who makes a living in front of a crowd must do. Interestingly in my experience a small crowd can be just as intimidating as a big crowd because it's more personal – you see individual faces and people, hear conversation and words more clearly. Getting comfortable with the idea of being judged en masse by a group of strangers is essential to a competitive athlete and indeed, all of us, since it can happen repeatedly on a smaller scale in your everyday life at any time. Everyone has to find their own way to get around it – I've never seen any one size fits all approach that works for everyone – but get around it you must, whether it be by competing so often you just get used to it over time, or some psychological insight, for if you don't get around it, you'll never perform in your heaviest moments as well as you do in your lightest moments
