Sports psych - 4.5 arousal, stress & anxiety - stress & the influence of arousal on sporting performance

What is stress?

-A state of physiological or psychological tension produced by internal or external forces

What are sources of stress (stressors)

-External stressors —> usually are physiological & measurable, such as extremes in temperature, illness, injury & hard physical training

-Internal stressors —> usually psychological, such as changing a coach, failing a test, an unhappy relationship or losing a competition

What is arousal?

-The amount of readiness or activation a person experiences when faced with a task

-Arousal = the heightened sense of physical & mental alertness or activation. and is an organism’s overall state of readiness for action

Yerkes and Dodson’s inverted U hypothesis:

-This theory states that as arousal increases, so too will the quality of performance until arousal passes beyond an optimal level; beyond this optimal range of arousal, performance will diminish

What is the primary role of a coach?

-To place each of their athletes in their optimum range of arousal just as they enter competition —> difficult as an athlete’s arousal levels can change by the minute

What can affect an athlete’s optimum level of arousal?

-Level of experience of the athlete

-The person’s perception of the competition

-The degree of distraction or disruption in the pre-competition phase

-Their personality

How can the relationship between performance and arousal be affected?

It can be affected by:

-The type of skill or sport —> in this concept, the level of arousal must still be optimal for that athlete in that sport

-The relationship between arousal and performance differs greatly between sports

-For instance, a golfer requires far less arousal for optimal performance than a hockey goalie

-Fine motor skills tend to require low arousal compared to gross motor skills

What is the catastrophe theory?

-The theory is three-dimensional as it includes physiological arousal and performance, as in the Inverted U theory, and also cognitive anxiety (trait and state anxiety acting together)

-Increased arousal will benefit performance as long as cognitive anxiety is relatively low