s3/e46 Conquering Performance Anxiety with Dr. Leah Avery, DPT
The Running Explained Podcast
Running Explained
4.6 • 534 Ratings
🗓️ 21 December 2023
⏱️ 64 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Are you derailed by performance anxiety? Are you pinning your self-worth & whether your training cycle was "worth it" on if you PR'd or not? Dr. Leah Avery, DPT, joins the show today to talk about her experience in healing from debilitating performance anxiety and her relationship with athletic performance. Leah was a D1 All-American swimmer and competed at the Olympic Trials, but her relationship with sport and performance was anything but healthy; when she started running during her graduate work, she found herself stuck in a cycle of performance anxiety that culminated in panic attacks during not one, but two, different marathons. Determined to make a change in her relationship with performance, sport, and running, Leah has spent the past few years intentionally freeing herself from the expectations of performing in a certain way and re-finding her love of running and sport! Leah has been a practicing PT for nearly a decade which is also when she began here running career. Prior to that she was a competitive swimmer starting at the age of 8 and retired her senior year of college. During her career she was a D1 All-American and competed at the Olympic Trials. Leah’s athletic career was anything but linear and she faced many hardships which originally lead her to a career in physical therapy. However, after starting her running journey, it was clear she had an unhealthy relationship with athletics. Her mission is to help runners reach their potential in a healthy manner by treating the person, not just the runner. And help them understand that running adds value to our lives but it is not what makes us valuable.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Running Explain podcast. I'm your host, Elizabeth. I'm a marathoner, coach, and answer seeker. |
| 0:07.3 | When I first started running at the age of 29, I had so many questions and what felt like nowhere to turn to for answers. |
| 0:14.1 | And now I'm here to answer all your running questions about anything that you might want to know. |
| 0:18.2 | If you're a new runner or you've been doing this for a long time, |
| 0:20.9 | there's always something more to learn about running. So let's get started. My guest this week |
| 0:26.3 | is physical therapist Dr. Leah Avery. Leah has been a practicing PT for nearly a decade, which is also |
| 0:32.1 | as long as she's been a runner. Prior to that, she was a competitive swimmer since the age of eight |
| 0:36.4 | and swam as a D1 All-American swimmer competed at the Olympic trials. |
| 0:40.3 | Leah's relationship with running was heavily influenced by her experience as a competitive swimmer, |
| 0:44.3 | where she would obsess over fear of failure and be paralyzed by the expectations she was putting on herself in races and in training. |
| 0:52.3 | After a series of panic attacks and not just one but two marathons, |
| 0:56.0 | Leah realized that her relationship with running and the expectations she was putting on herself |
| 1:00.8 | were not healthy. And that performance anxiety and how she conquered it is what we're talking about |
| 1:06.8 | today. But before our conversation gets started, just a couple procedural notes as we are |
| 1:11.5 | reaching the end of this calendar year. Thank you so much for listening to the Running Explained |
| 1:15.4 | podcast in 2023. This is the second to last episode of the year. The final episode of 2020 |
| 1:21.4 | will be airing next Thursday, December 28th, will be off for one week. and then the first episode of season four of the |
| 1:29.6 | Running Explained podcast will debut on Thursday, January 11th. Leah, welcome to the show. I'm excited |
| 1:35.9 | to have you here. Thank you so much for having me. This is great. So you are a physical therapist, |
| 1:42.2 | but that is not going to be the focus of our conversation |
| 1:45.1 | today. But before we dive into the meat of our talk, tell us a bit about yourself, how you |
| 1:50.8 | became a PT and how you became a runner. Yeah. So basically I was a swimmer growing up, |
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