The Effect Of Anxiety On An Athletes Performance Psychology Essay

The Effect Of anxiousness On An Athletes Performance Psychology EssayCompetitive state worry is defined as a tendency to perceive competitive situations as threatening and to respond to these situations with feelings of apprehension and tension.(Martens, Vealey Burton, 1990). Competitive state foreboding so-and-so be split into cognitive and bodied shares, cognitive being veto mental thoughts and concerns rough ability and implementation for instance indecision and blemish of confidence, with bodily being the physiological responses to disturbance such as change magnitude heart rate and muscle tension.It is important to measure both loudness and stress to determine the order of trouble on an athletic supporters performance as it allows interpretation of results and rotter subsequently be partd to assist the supporter to alter their thoughts out front a competition and to improve performance. The military capability component indicates the levels of competitive anxiety in relation to factors such as situational antecedents (Woodman Hardy, 2001), and direction allows interpretation of results as facilitative or debilitative to performance (Jones, 1995).The jockstrap in this look at is an 18 year old female tri jockstrap. The study was conducted in the beginning and later a British Universities Colleges Sport (BUCS) national duathlon championship. The proceeds involved a 3.2km run followed by a 16km bike turn on and another 3.2km run in which she came 12th in a eon of 54 minutes 52.747 seconds, which was similar to her previous best performances.ResultsThe results for cognitive A-state and somatic A-state anxiety from the Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2 (CSAI-2) are indicated in the control panel and graph below. The scores piece of tail range from 9 (low) to 36 ( juicy) for intensity, and from -27 (very debilitative) to 27 (very facilitative) for direction.Cognitive Anxiety corporal AnxietyIntensity1914Direction-80The CSAI-2 indicated that she had low to specialty intensity cognitive anxiety and that this would be slightly debilitative to her performance. In contrast, she suffered from low somatic anxiety provided had a direction score of 0 signifying that the somatic symptoms she matte would affect her performance neither positively nor negatively.In the hearing it was observe that she felt that the competition was quite important more everyplace was not a main turn tail for her although there were a lot of elite competitors in the race. She in like manner added that as it was a BUCS race she felt squelch from her rail as healthful as herself to do well for the university. The pressure dish uped her pauperization to keep going through the middle of the race, which turned out to be similar to her previous performances. Prior to the race she felt unhinged provided as the race started she kept move aims to keep up with concourse and overtake other competitors.The race started early whic h gave her less condemnation to torrid up after a hard gentility week leading(a) up to the race. Despite the amount of training in the week before the race, she said she had high energy which was helpful to her performance.DiscussionThe multidimensional possibleness of anxiety (Martens et al., 1990) indicates that as cognitive anxiety increases, performance will drop. This guess only considered intensity, however later research led to the direction locution (Jones, 1995) being added and anxiety considered as debilitative or facilitative. Before the race, the suspensor was feeling low-medium intensity cognitive anxiety, which should result in a medium to high performance. However, the CSAI-2 results indicated that the cognitive anxiety she was feeling would have a pestiferous effect on her performance. Neither somatic or cognitive anxiety were seen as facilitative to performance and research has found that males consistently key out higher facilitative perceptions than fema les (Wiggins, 1998). If cognitive anxiety levels increase too high then, combined with elevated physiological arousal, could lead to a dramatic exacerbate in performance as explained by the catastrophe theory (Hardy Fazey, 1987).Wiggins (1998) also discovered that cognitive intensity was higher than somatic intensity entirely somatic direction was higher (more facilitative) than cognitive direction. This was unmingled with the athlete but neither component of anxiety was considered to be facilitative.Studies have shown that athletes intensity of cognitive anxiety is highest before competition and then declines signifi sacktly from pregame to postgame (Butt, Weinberg, Horn, 2003). This was evident for the athlete as anxiety eased as the race started. Prior to the race, she was experiencing low-medium cognitive anxiety and felt moderately nervous. The main symptoms of cognitive anxiety suffered by the athlete were concern about the competition, the race result and self-doubt as w ell as concern that others would be disappointed with her performance. This intensity and pressure helped her feel motivated and stay strong, and all jumpiness disappeared once she started the race and positive thoughts helped channel her focus on the task in hand.Somatic anxiety intensity has been found to fluctuate over time but direction remains stable (Butt et al., 2003). Intensity was found to be highest before the game and declined during competition. The athlete in this study suffered from low intensity somatic anxiety before the competition but this was not facilitative or debilitative. The main symptoms of somatic anxiety were nervousness, jitteriness and increased heart rate. It was evident that the intensity decreased when the competition started as the nerves eased and she felt energetic.A study of athletes (Hanton, Wadey, and Connaughton, 2005) found that many of the debilitating symptoms remained prevalent after years of many competitions, were reported to fluctuate closer to the event and specially at higher levels of competition. The event that the data for this study was collected from was for the triathletes counterbalance BUCS competition. This shows that even after competing in many previous events as well as internationally, anxiety was still found to be a debilitating factor towards performance.Another discovery made by Hanton et al. (2005) was that an athletes main map before a competition is to be physically prepared over mentally prepared. Physical readiness, such as unassailableing up and training in the build up weeks, was found to allow the athletes to compete at an elite level despite debilitating anxiety symptoms. However, when comparing athletes who mentally prepared and those who did not, performance was higher in those who had mentally prepared. A worry for the athlete in this study was that due to the race start time being moved forward, she did not have sufficient time to physically warm up let alone to mentally prepar e. Failing to warm up properly may have had a ruinous effect on her performance as a warm up can increase the speed of muscle contraction and relaxation, increases heart rate and melody flow to working muscles, in addition to mentally focusing on the task in hand.The coherence between the CSAI-2 questionnaire before the event and the interview afterwards was strong. The athlete felt low-medium cognitive anxiety from the CSAI-2 including self-doubts and concern about the result, and this was backed up afterwards in the interview when she said that she was worried and feeling pressure before the race. She also stated that she was suffering from nerves before the race in both the CSAI-2 and the interview.Conclusions and RecommendationsFrom the CSAI-2 questionnaire and interview I can construe that the anxiety suffered by the athlete did not affect her performance negatively. The intensity of cognitive anxiety was low-medium and somatic anxiety was low intensity before the race. Too m uch anxiety would have a detrimental effect on performance due to high pressure, negative thoughts and attentional narrowing. Too little anxiety could lead to lack of dumbness, focusing on unimportant cues from the environment, external distraction. I establish that the athlete had moderate levels of anxiety which can increase effort as the athlete is not get well by pressure. In the interview after the race she said that any pressure and negativity was foc utilize onto a positive attitude and setting goals to improve her position.Although I consider the athlete was unaffected by her anxiety levels, if the direction aspect of cognitive and somatic anxiety can be made facilitative, it may have a beneficial impact on performance. To do this there are a number of techniques that sports psychologists can use to manipulate an individuals judgment of a competitive situation, including self talk and imagery. A consistent finding across studies is that sport performers have a stronger mo uthful for problem-focused strategies for overcoming anxiety, and perceptions of cognitive anxiety as debilitative are associated with behavioural withdrawal and venting of emotions (Ntoumanis and Biddle, 2000).Self talk can be used to help anxiety responses such as self-doubt. This can be positive, having the ability to win, or negative, not being able to lose. Self-talk can help to increase concentration on the task at hand.Imagery can be used to improve self-confidence and overcome nerves. It involves mental picturing a meliorate performance or remembering a previous performance that the athlete would like to repeat. It can be used with mental rehearsal, planning the events and simulated military operation of the event or in the case of the triathlete, the race. She had positive thoughts during the race, but if these can begin before the race then her start may improve, as the pressure and worry may be relieved.