In baton twirling, everything looks effortless - the smile, the extension, the spin that never wavers.

But behind the choreography is something most people never see: the pressure to be perfect before you even know who you are.

Michelle was eleven years old when she qualified for the Canadian World Team.

While most kids were navigating school dances and sleepovers, she was training up to 40 hours a week in an elite system where discipline was expected, excellence was non-negotiable, and mental health simply wasn’t part of the conversation.

“There was no language for burnout,” she reflects. “No space to talk about fear or fatigue. You just pushed through.”

And she did.

For eight years, Michelle competed internationally at world championships, navigating escalating expectations and relentless standards.  The environment built technical mastery and resilience. It also shaped her identity around performance.

When your world becomes performance, it becomes easy to believe your worth depends on how well you execute.

Competing for Validation

The pressure showed up most clearly at Worlds - the competition that mattered most to her emotionally.

“Worlds was where I felt I was competing for validation,” she says. “I genuinely believed that if I could finally perform to my actual potential there, then I would be worthy of love, attention, and recognition.”

The year before, she had dropped at Nationals and failed to make the World team while her teammates did. That experience crushed her. She trained relentlessly all summer to make sure it would never happen again.

From that point on, qualifying for Worlds was never in question. She forced the outcome through sheer effort.

But preparation and regulation are not the same thing.

When the tools don't fit

When Michelle and her teammates first qualified for Worlds at age eleven, they saw a sports psychologist once - possibly twice.

They were placed in a room and told to visualize themselves performing perfectly.

That was the entirety of the mental support they received while competing at an international level.

For Michelle, the exercise intensified her anxiety.

“As a neurodivergent child with a very active imagination, visualization did not work for me. I was just as capable of visualizing worst-case scenarios. The tool increased my anxiety rather than helping me regulate it.”

Her anxiety wasn’t explored or reframed. It was simply expected to be managed. 

She was expected to suppress the intensity in her body - something she often could not do.

While she wasn’t punished outright, she was reprimanded. The message was subtle but clear: if she struggled to perform under pressure, she needed to practice harder.

There was no curiosity about whether the tools being used were incompatible with how her nervous system functioned. Even as the pattern repeated year after year.

The assumption was deficiency - not mismatch.

Mental readiness was never named. And even if the language had existed, the adults in her environment were not educated in how to support different neurotypes under elite pressure.

The gap wasn’t malicious.

It was structural.

The moment that shaped everything

When Michelle stepped onto the floor in Italy at eleven years old, competing at the World Championships for the first time, her body reacted in ways she had never been taught to manage.

Her heart pounded. Her body vibrated. Her hands dripped with sweat.

She remembers thinking, How am I supposed to toss a metal baton if my hands are soaked?

She wasn’t grounded in her choreography. She was consumed by physical sensations she had no language for and no tools to regulate.

She performed below her potential.

And what followed stayed with her far longer than the routine itself.

“There was no acknowledgment that I was an 11-year-old child, competing internationally, without my parents, at the highest level of my sport for the first time. That moment should have been celebrated. Instead, I internalized that I had failed.”

There was disappointment - subtle, implied, but unmistakable.

There was no adult voice reframing the moment. No one naming the courage it took to stand on that floor.

So she absorbed a lesson no child should carry: if you can’t perform under pressure, something is wrong with you.

The Long Road Back

As an adult professional performer in dance, circus, stunt work, and film, Michelle began to recognize something she couldn’t see at eleven.

“One reason I subconsciously chose the career path I did was to try to answer the unresolved question of why I could not compete under pressure as a child.”

For more than twenty years, the responsibility for mental and nervous system support has fallen entirely on her.

She has researched, experimented, and developed tools through trial and error - exploring physical, mental, emotional, and creative approaches to understand how they interact within her body.

None of it was institutionally supported.

None of it was funded.

If she did not actively seek out tools, they simply would not exist for her.

Today, she understands what was missing.

Not discipline.
Not effort.
Not talent.

Education.
Awareness.
Nervous system literacy.

Redefining Mental Readiness

Mental readiness is not about being tougher.

It is about learning how to regulate your body under stress, how to recover, and how to separate your identity from your performance.

It is about understanding that one tool does not work for every brain.

It is about ensuring that an eleven-year-old on a world stage is celebrated for courage - not defined by a score. 

 “I wish someone had taught us how to manage stress, not just choreography." she says.

To coaches, her message is clear:

"Your athletes are not machines. They are developing humans. The habits you reinforce - how they handle mistakes, how they talk to themselves, how they recover - will stay with them long after the medals are gone."

Performance careers are often short. Identity lasts a lifetime.

When athletes are equipped with meaningful mental readiness skills early, they don’t just perform better. They transition better. They lead better. They live better.

Why Stories Like Michelle’s Matter

Michelle’s story is about awareness.

It is a reminder that high performance without emotional scaffolding can shape identity in ways that last long beyond competition.

At HONE Athletics, we believe mental readiness must be foundational - not reactive.

Because athletes are not just training for podiums.
They are training for life beyond them.

When we support the whole human, performance doesn’t suffer.
It becomes sustainable. 

Want to Learn More?

If you’re a coach, sport leader, or organization looking to build sustainable high-performance cultures, we’d love to connect.

👉 Book a walkthrough with our team and learn how HONE supports athletes beyond the spotlight.

 👉 Learn about the HONE MPC Pilot Program for Youth Athletes and Parents

Let’s build athletes who rise - and stay strong  - long after the final spin.