Why are we anxious? Stress and anxiety in sports

To be able to achieve mastery performance it is necessary to apply the latest outcomes of researches within the realm of sports. In many cases whether the athlete can win mainly depends on his/her psychological preparedness and not primarily on his/her physical conditions.

The moments of optimal activity of the nervous system and optimal arousal level count the most. From physiological and psychological aspect Arousal is the level of the nervous system activity⁵ or the state of being awake, alert.  Arousal is important when the connection between stress and performance is examined. Several times researchers mention it as the synonym of stress and anxiety.

The Hungarian János Selye worked out and elaborated the theory of stress in 1964. Stress is the unity of deterioration processes and it is the non-specific response of the body to any use. The adaptation syndrome (GAS) reflects the non-specific effect of stress (Nagykáldi, 1998). Not all stresses are negative. We need stress throughout our life and the notion of positive stress, the eustress, is also known. It contains similar physiological and psychological elements as distress, but its consequences are different, for example, when parents have a new born baby. First the physiological elements of stress were examined mainly through heart rate. Later psychological studies also came into view.

The strategies of how to overcome negative stress were also examined later (Oláh, 2005). According to this view the coping mechanism has three different types; the emotional, cognitive and the avoidant ones. Besides these, sports and physical activity play an important role in building out a defence mechanism. Read more about it in this study:

http://www.magyarpedagogia.hu/document/Margitics-Pauwlik_MP1061.pdf

It has already become evident that among the causes of stress there are individual differences, the condition of our immune system and environmental factors etc. In the preparation process these factors should be taken into consideration as stressors (a chemical or biological agent, environmental condition, external stimulus or an event that causes stress to an organism).

Nagykáldi (1998) argues that there are three basic factors affecting the level of stress in sports.

1. The more important a sport event is the more serious stress affects the performance.
2. The more uncertain factors accompany a competition or match the more stress influences athletes.
3. Trait anxiety reflects a tendency which responds with anxiety in the anticipation of threatening situations, for example, penalty (11 Kick).

Considering the above listed factors it can be stated that the responsibility of coaches and PE teachers to prepare their athletes to cope with stress in favour of mastery performance should be in our focus, too. Therefore the tactical discussions or checking the football field before the match may help athletes psychologically, and parallel with this stress may decrease.

Figure 8. Stress deriving from tasks

Csikszentmihályi writes that sports and physical activities are significantly important to achieve Flow that helps overcome stress. Athletes are also motivated by the fantastic feelings which they have experienced. Several Hungarian and international studies emphasize (Pikó, Keresztes, 2007, Balogh, 2013) that physical activities are not only somatic but also the important shaper of mental health. They function both directly or indirectly as mediators through, for example, experiencing Flow.

Besides the good physiological indicators, such as blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar, sports positively affect the nervous system, in other words sports is medicament (Balogh, 2014).

This website offers other details: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arousal 

It is also worth studying the material of this video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KI08j1gtTlo

Hull (1943) believed that parallel with the increase of psychological arousal performance also increases proportionally. Considering the above mentioned facts it sounds evident that concentration also improves. Meanwhile it has become clear that it does not go to “infinity”. After a while there will be deterioration in the performance.

Performance and distress 1

Figure 9.  The hypothetic relationship between arousal and performance

Hebb’s theory, based on the correlations of Yerkes-Dodson, states that there is an optional level of arousal necessary to perform a task very well. It is also called Inverted U hypothesis. It means that, see figure bellow, if stress level is low athletes experience apathy at the start, and when their stress level is very high they feel race fever. In both cases coordination deteriorates along with sport performance.

Figure10. https://goodpsychology.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/yerkes-dodson-law.gif

Hardy (1988)⁶ based his catastrophe model of anxiety and performance on the optimum arousal theory, but he lays the emphasis on the difference between high vs. low trait anxiety (1). He also states that out-stepping the zone of optimum arousal the performance of athletes with high trait anxiety, which in this case means cognitive anxiety raise, results in the significant decrease of performance. In his view, when an athlete or a team starts loosing after a lot of goals, and due to this, the opponents gain advantages, their arousal level increases and as soon as it out-steps the optimal zone it fails to function. Here we can mention the Hungarian female handball team’s failure at the Olympics final or the tennis matches when players lost from won positions. These examples confirm Hardy’s model.

Performance and anxiety

Figure 11. Hardy (1988, 190): catastrophe model

Martens’ (1990) multidimensional anxiety theory (see Nagykáldi, 1988) is based on the assumption that competitive anxiety is comprised of two distinct parts; a cognitive component, and a somatic component, both having dissimilar effects on performance. The former, the cognitive component, has been defined as the negative expectations and concerns about one's ability to perform and the possible consequences of failure. Whereas the somatic component mainly focuses on physical pains and injuries. Martens proposed that cognitive anxiety has a negative linear relationship with performance, and somatic anxiety has an Inverted U-shaped relationship with performance. This was the reason for labelling his theory with multidimensional anxiety model.  It has also been proved that there are athletes whose performance improves under stress and anxiety. This is called performance facilitating anxiety. But there are also sportsman/sportswomen whose performance decrease. This phenomenon is called debilitating anxiety on achievement. The two competitor types (Deci) are the achievement oriented and the failure avoidant.

Figure 12. Model of  Martens and coworkers
http://www.athleticinsight.com/Vol4Iss2/Competitive_State_Anxiety.htm#Multidimensional

Hanin (2000) worked out his IZOF model using the theory of optimum arousal. The essence of this model is the Individual Zone of Optimal Functioning of each athlete. He used questionnaires for data collections and he arrived at the following conclusion, namely, each athlete has a ZONE within which he/she can achieve the best results.  The empirical evidence of this research reveals that performance achievement can be developed by psycho-regulatory trainings in case of athletes being either “under or above” the ZONE. See details of this model later.

The main deficiency of the model is that it cannot measure either the trait anxiety in quiescence or the optimal stress level when athletes do activities. (It is impossible to fill out questionnaires in these cases.)

Stale anxiety level

Yuri Hanin (1990, 200): Individual Zone of Optimal Functioning

Figure 13. Hanin’s IZOP model
https://www.studyblue.com/notes/note/n/psych-231-study-guide-2013-14- sato/deck/8700936