Helping Athletes to Perform Better under Pressure

Imagine stepping up to the plate and hitting a home run. When you play baseball, your mental game is just as important as your physical skills. A game puts you under pressure to succeed. Your mind has to work well under stress for you to do your best.

Ever since I was a kid baseball has been a big part of my life. Whether I’m watching it with my dad on tv, or I’m suiting up to play under the lights on a friday night. Nerves had always played a huge part when it came to just an hour before game time. My whole body would tense up and I would feel anxious. This, of course, is a serious problem for any athlete who wants to compete at the best of their abilities. My biggest issue was always playing in the “big game”, or any game that would put an excessive amount of pressure on me. Which, when it came to me, was basically every game I played in.

People have always stereotyped “Jocks” as dumb teens who have great skills in athletics. Sean Gregory, writer of the Time magazine’s article,” Lolo’s No choke”, includes the following statement ,“Jocks should be dumb and not think too much”. Throughout his article, he explains the science behind choking and the downfalls of many athletic stars including Lolo Jones. Most athletes choke during the Olympic Games where tons of pressure is put upon on the athletes. As stated in the passage, “No sporting event puts more mental stress on its participants or cultivates more choking than the Olympic Games”. The questions that many are asking “How can you think and hit at the same time?” Trying to perfect their skills they don’t realize their cerebral

A study by Nutrition and athletic performance. (2016) identified the relationship between athlete sport anxiety and various outcomes. Athletes were asked to relate seven coaching behaviors (physical training, mental preparation, goal setting, technical skills, competition strategies, personal rapport, and negative personal rapport) to various forms of sport anxiety (total anxiety, somatic anxiety, concentration disruption, and worry). The investigators found that negative personal rapport was a significant predictor of all measured forms of sport anxiety.They found that when coaches superimpose their goals on children’s participation, they can render a child’s experience a negative

Stress, anxiety, loss of focus, and mood fluctuations has all been shown to decrease and hamper optimal player performance (Ashnel, 2013). Therefor, interventions that reduce or eliminate these

Review of Literature: Research in athletic adult populations is discussed first, providing consistent trends in separation between anxiety factors. Past studies involving high school and college athletes also result in a three-factor model, with two cognitive symptoms- worry and concentration disruption- and one

State anxiety occurs during competition and decreases performances but interventions can decrease cognitive and somatic anxiety (Prapavessis, Grove, McNair, & Cable). Athletes can also attain anxiety when they do not see their coaches as competent. For example, if a coach were to tell a soccer athlete to do this and then they get hurt they would not trust them and be anxious doing any other directions (Myers, Beauchamp, & Chase, 2011). Since coaches are able to reduce an athlete’s anxiety then, coaches have the ability to create a positive atmosphere and in this study student-athletes had an overall positive view of their coaches' ability to develop autonomy-supportive team climates (Noble & Forester, 2016). According to researcher’s anxiety may be a predisposition but state anxiety is heavily influenced by the motivational climate, more specifically ego environments athletes reported increases in anxiety over the season (Smith, Smoll, & Cumming, 2007). When athletes enter state anxiety many have coping methods, and PPR may influence performance through lowering the athlete’s anxiety (Hazell, Cotterill, & Hill, 2014) or even self-talk (Miles & Neil, 2013), but the success of using these techniques would depend on the situation. However, some research suggests that regardless of competition (good or bad) and sport (long duration/short duration) athletes reported an equal number of experiences and implemented coping strategies (Nieuwenhuys, Vos, Pijpstra, & Bakker, 2011). With this conflicting research on how it effects athletes, there is research that states giving athletes CSAI-2 or sports oriented questionnaires can help both parties understand each other (Hall & Kerr,

Jack has been playing on the school soccer team for two weeks now- and he hates it. Ever since he joined his parents have been forcing him to try and do more, like they wanted him to be like Messi. His coach has been pushing the team crazily, and Jack is cracking under all this pressure. He wishes he never joined. Sound familiar? That is because almost everyday, all over the country, kids are being pressured in the same way while playing competitive sports. Young athletes are being pushed to the point where they start breaking down. Although others may disagree, thinking that competitive sports make kids a lot healthier, I believe that competitive

“Too much stress, or bad stress, can cause performance anxiety, which hurts your health and does not allow you to play relaxed, confident, and focused in competition,” (Cohn). Pressure added from an athlete’s coaches, parents, and teammates, can become overwhelming for a student to maintain. Team dynamics can directly affect an athlete’s performance during the game. If an athlete is not performing at their best, they run the risk of not play in future games and causing disappoint to the team. Issues between teammates are often not expressed on an individual basis, but are kept to themselves and never addressed, which is a contributor to the many reports of depression and anxiety in student-athletes (Putukian). With many other stressors present in a student-athletes day-to-day life, the added pressures of team dynamics and performance can result in the development of a mental illness. Over 50% of male athletes and over 60% of female athletes face heavy stress related to their sport in the form of pressure to win, extreme anxiety, and fear (Stress). The stresses of having to do well, not only for yourself, but for the overall team, causes many student-athletes to carry stress into their

There are different ways in which a coach can help their athlete manage and control their arousal levels to prevent negative anxiety. These coping strategies have proven to be successful for various athletes as they try to fix bad habits that are left on the field or court during their performance. The first strategy is imagery and mental rehearsal. This strategy allows an athlete to visualize, in their mind, a specific game event or a skill they feel they need to work on. By an athlete visioning themselves performing the skill, without the use of their body, it allows them to find kinks in their game that might be affecting their play during performance. This strategy can also include an athlete examining video or another athlete to see what

When I look back on my sport participation I remember using strategies similar to those used by sport psychologists to calm myself before big performances. For example, at a national competition for BMX racing the wait between each race could easily be over an hour, this long wait caused anxiety and tension to build within, and the longer I waited the more tension I would feel as the race grew nearer. Overtime I learned to deal with these feelings of unease through relaxation training and mental imaging. When my race grew close I would begin to try and calm myself by using deep breathing techniques to lower stress and tension while also at the same time imagining myself winning the race. At the time I had no idea I was using tools similar

Choking in sport can be defined as the decline in optimal sporting performance under stressful situations (Hill, Hanton, Matthews, & Fleming, 2010) often due to high levels of pressure placed upon athletes which leads to a subsequent decline in performance (Baumeister & Showers, 1986). It is a result of a range of different internal and external factors placed upon the athlete (Baumeister & Showers, 1986) these factors most commonly including distractions, both state and trait anxiety, self-confidence issues (J. Wang, Marchant, Morris, & Gibbs, 2004) (Hill & Shaw, 2013) that lead athletes to choke creating drop in optimal performance (Hill et al., 2010). The Integrated Model of Choking in Sport combined both the distraction model and

The following articles will examine the relationship, if any of anxiety on athletic performance. The first study published by (Robazza, Pellizzari, Bertollo, and Hanin, (2008) discusses the impact of emotions on athletic performance utilizing the Individual Zones of Optimal Functioning (IZOF) model. Since this area of study is generally focused around this model, a majority of this paper will be based off of this article. The following articles are similar, but incorporate biofeedback, neurofeedback, and heart rate variability into their research. The major research question that will be addressed is the relationship between anxiety and athletic performance. The purpose of this literary review was to analyze the mentally demanding aspect of athletic performance to assist in helping them achieve their optimal performance. The following articles will assess this relationship in both a cognitive-behavioral perspective as well as a psychoanalytic perspective.

Many athletes would agree that they have felt butterflies in their stomach or a sudden rush of adrenaline before an important game. This feeling can either translate into legendary performances or monumental failures. According to Sharon D. Hoar (2007), to fully comprehend anxiety’s effect on performance, one must understand the discrimination between two unique sets of sources: trait and state anxiety, and cognitive and somatic anxiety. Anxiety symptoms are numerous and unique to every athlete. Hoar suggests that athletes might report cognitive symptoms (eg. Inability to focus), somatic symptoms (eg. Sweaty palms), or both. The author discusses a variety of sources of anxiety and argues that it can have both positive and negative effects

Competitive and recreational athletes typically use preparatory exercises such as warm-up and stretching to prepare the body for vigorous physical activity (Worrell, Smith, & Winegarden, 1995). For many years, stretching before athletic competition has been recommended to prepare the athlete for the event (Unick, Kieffer, Cheesman, & Freeney, 2005), and stretching has traditionally been considered as an essential component of warm-up routines to prepare muscles for activity, enhance performance, and prevent injuries (Gleim & McHugh, 1997; Marek et al., 2005; Schilling, 2000). The use of stretching as part of warm-up routines comes from the belief that stretching will aid in athletic performance and help prevent injury as well as decrease muscle stiffness, increase range of motion, alleviate pain (Schilling & Stone, 2000; Unick, Kieffer, Cheesman, & Freeney, 2005).