"I've been working on my mental health"- Tara Davis-Woodhall opens up about her therapist's advice to deal with nervousness before competing

Tara Davis-Woodhall opened up about her therapist's advice, which helped her deal with nervousness before competing. The athlete recently concluded her season after competing at the Rome Diamond League.

After competing at the Paris Olympics, the long jumper is in her off-season and is busy training for the upcoming track season. Along with this, she has also spent her downtime vacationing and attending interviews and podcasts.

Davis-Woodhall shared a clip of an interview on Instagram, speaking about her therapist's advice for handling nervousness before competing. When asked about what her thoughts are when she goes down the runway, she said:

"Well, it's sometimes good things, sometimes its bad things. Sometimes I'm worried about what I'm going to eat after this. Other times, I'm worried about what my coach had just told me, and it's usually just a cue. But this year, I've been working on my mental health, and I've learned that you don't have to worry about what coach says. You've done the training, you've got this. So now it's, I'm hyping my mind up and when I was at one of my competitions, it was one of the most stressful competitions. It was Olympic trials," said Davis-Woodhall.

She added:

"Scratched two jumps, and I was just in therapy, literally hours before going to compete and she was like I want you to do this exercise when you are not on the runway, or when you're feeling stressed, inhale what you want, exhale what you don't want. And so, when I'm on the runway, I'm about to take off, I inhale and I'm like breathe in confidence, and exhale fear. And when I took off, I take jump, I made the Olympic team. It was incredible and then, yeah, this is what I've been doing."

Tara Davis-Woodhall won her first Olympic gold in the 2024 Paris Olympics, taking a leap of 7.10m besting the defending champion, Malaika Mihambo.

Tara Davis-Woodhall opened up about her plans for the 2025 track season

Long jump athlete Tara Davis-Woodhall- Source: Getty

In an interview with PEOPLE magazine, Tara Davis-Woodhall spoke about her mindset for the 2025 track and field season. She revealed that she wanted to nourish the feeling of being a reigning Olympic champion and manifested that 2025 will be a year of growth.

"It'll be to just embrace the feeling of being the newly reigning Olympic champion, and just going out and jumping and competing with just the joy of that. There's nothing really hanging over my head anymore of like, 'I need to be this, I need to have this.' 2025 should just be a year of growing and rebuilding of what we did this year,” Tara Davis-Woodhall said.

Tara Davis-Woodhall is currently fulfilling the role of an assistant track and field coach at the University of Kansas and will soon commence her 2025 season. She was also recently involved in a controversy with the track and field legend Michael Johnson. He said that he can only save track but not field with his upcoming track event, Grand Slam Track.