Psychological factors may hinder an athlete from performing at his best. Health and sport psychologist Annemarie Schumacher Dimech highlights two common such factors – arousal and anxiety – and how athletes may be trained to overcome them.

A fraction of a second could make the difference between a gold or silver medal in a 100-metre race; a slight imprecision could be decisive for a gymnast’s qualification to the final round. Athletes may not perform at their best due to various factors, including psychological ones.

Two related psychological phenomena affecting sport performance are arousal and anxiety. Both have rather negative connotations and one tends to associate them with physical symptoms such as trembling and sweating – symptoms that could prove to be disastrous for athletes.

However, there is actually a positive dimension of physical and mental arousal that could actually help an athlete attain his or her optimal performance.

Arousal refers to a physical and mental state of activity or readiness and varies in intensity. Arousal can be related to negative or unpleasant situations but also to pleasant ones, such as receiving unexpected good news.

High negative arousal is linked to anxiety, a negative emotion state characterised by feelings of worry, nervousness as well as unpleasant physical symptoms.

The positive type of arousal is very important in sport performance since the ideal intensity of physical and mental activation helps one achieve one’s best possible performance. A general theory of arousal illustrates this phenomenon in the shape of an inverted-U where too little mental and physical arousal would lead to a below-average performance.

As arousal increases, performance improves up to an optimal point but further increases in arousal would then lead to a decline in performance.

Recent research has criticised this model as being too general and led to the development of the Individualised Zones of Optimal Functioning (IZOF) model.

This model recognises athletes’ individuality and claims that the optimal level of arousal or state anxiety varies from individual to individual. Moreover, this optimal ‘state’ does not refer to a single point but rather a ‘zone’ and athletes should seek to identify and reach this specific optimal zone of arousal.

The IZOF model contends that an individual’s zone of optimal functioning includes both positive and negative emotions, which also highlights the individuality of this concept: an emotion, such as anger, could be positively associated with good performance by one athlete while being perceived as a distraction by another.

The positive type of arousal is very important in sport performance since an ideal intensity of physical and mental activation helps one achieve his best possible performance

The challenge for athletes and coaches is to identify one’s individual optimal state of arousal and be able to recreate the conditions for this state for every competition.

When considering state anxiety, cognitive anxiety (worry, negative thoughts) has been recognised to play a decisive role in sport performance. High cognitive anxiety does not only lead to a reduction in performance but could even lead to an extreme decline. The catastrophe model describes how cognitive arousal or anxiety debilitates performance once it moves past the individual’s optimal level and reaches a specific threshold that results in a catastrophic decline in performance.

A pep talk is a good strategy a coach could use to psyche up athletes.A pep talk is a good strategy a coach could use to psyche up athletes.

Various strategies are available to help athletes regulate their state of arousal and anxiety, as well as to find an optimal state of functioning. Some strategies deal with anxiety in general, such as breathing techniques, progressivemuscle relaxation, biofeedback and other relaxation techniques aimed at reducing physiological arousal.

Other strategies are specifically aimed at improving sport performance and deal with sport-related anxiety. Imagery, also known as visualisation, is a popular technique that is nowadays used by most athletes and involves mental visualisation of a task before and/or during performance.

There are different kinds of imagery techniques depending on the sport discipline and the individual’s aims and requirements.

For example, imagery perspective is a factor that can be varied: in ‘external imagery’, an athlete views him/herself from the perspective of an outside observer with less emphasis on the kinaesthetic or physical feel of the performance but rather on how the movements look.

‘Internal imagery’ means imagining one’s performance from one’s own point of view. That is, the athlete does not ‘see’ him/herself but focuses on the feel of the movement and competition’s environment.

In cases where arousal needs to be increased, psyching-up strategies are employed. These can be initiated by the athletes themselves, by coaches or a sport psychologist. Such strategies include increasing attentional focus on the task, listening to inspirational music before the event or a pep talk by the coach.

An example of preparatory arousal is the New Zealand rugby team’s haka (team dance) performed before a game. The original aim of a traditional haka is to instil fear in one’s enemies; however, in this case, the haka undoubtedly activates the players and induces a state of higher arousal in preparation to the match.

To sum up, athletes’ interpretation and perception of arousal and anxiety plays a decisive role on how these feelings affect performance. It is important to recognise that not all arousal and anxiety is bad, but that an ideal individual state of arousal leads to optimal performance.

Various strategies for achieving this optimal zone, as well as for regulating negative arousal and anxiety, are available. Support from coaches and/or sport psychologists facilitates athletes’ use of these strategies in preparation for competitions and for enhancing athletic performance.

Annemarie Schumacher Dimech is a research scientist in health and sport psychology at the University of Applied Sciences, St Gallen, Switzerland.

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