How to Stop Your Hands From Shaking Before a Presentation
It is adrenaline. Here is how to discharge it in the ten minutes before you go on.
You can feel them. Your hands are doing a fine tremor that everyone in the front row will see when you reach for the clicker. You have been telling yourself to relax for ten minutes and the relax has not arrived. The shaking is not a sign you are not prepared; you are very prepared. It is also not something you can think your way out of, because the shaking is happening in your body, not your head, and your head's authority over your hands is limited. Hand tremor before public speaking is adrenaline doing exactly what it evolved to do — preparing your body for action that is not going to happen, because your action is going to be talking calmly, and the energy has nowhere to go. The fix is to give it somewhere to go. Discharging the adrenaline takes about ten minutes and works by mechanics, not affirmations. Once you discharge it, the tremor is gone. The technique is just movement.
What follows: how to burn off the adrenaline that is shaking your hands, with the timing and the moves. Then a tool that builds a custom plan.
Do something that uses your major muscle groups
Twenty pushups in the bathroom. Thirty squats. A flight of stairs taken at a fast clip. The shaking is fuel that has nowhere to go; spending the fuel is the fix. The activity has to be vigorous enough to actually consume energy — gentle stretching does not work. The pushups or stairs work because they engage the large muscle groups that the adrenaline was preparing to deploy. Five minutes of real exertion fixes the tremor.
Squeeze and release a fist for thirty seconds
If you cannot do pushups — you are in a green room, you are wearing a suit you cannot sweat in — squeeze your fists hard for ten seconds, release for ten, repeat for thirty seconds. The intense isometric contraction-and-release also discharges some of the energy without leaving the chair. It is less effective than full-body movement but works in tight spaces. Do it before you walk on, not while waiting around.
Hold something on stage
If your hands still tremble when you walk on, give them something to do. A clicker. A pen. The lectern itself. Holding an object hides minor tremor and stabilizes your hands by giving them muscular work. The trembling-hands gesture-of-introduction is the worst possible move. Walk on, find your prop, and hold it. Many speakers grip the lectern in the first thirty seconds for exactly this reason. It is not nervous; it is a technique.
Avoid caffeine in the hour before
If you are someone who shakes when nervous, caffeine compounds it directly. The shot of coffee an hour before to wake you up is exactly the wrong move. Switch to water for the last hour. If you are deeply attached to caffeine, drink it three hours out and let the peak pass before you go on. The interaction between caffeine and stage adrenaline is a multiplier, and most speakers underestimate how much it contributes.
After the first thirty seconds, the body resets
Once you start speaking and the audience is paying attention, the body figures out that the action has begun, and the spike resolves quickly. The shaking is almost always worst in the moments right before — the buildup with no release. Get through the first thirty seconds and the tremor drops noticeably. Knowing this in advance changes how you feel during the buildup. The buildup is the hardest part, not the speaking.
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