1. Understanding and Managing Stress in Sport
Chapter 12
Understanding and Managing Stress in Sport
Sheldon Hanton, Stephen Mellalieu, and Jean M. Williams
“Nerves can be brilliant because they get your adrenalin going and it means you care and want to do well. There's a fine line, though... ”
Rebecca Adlington
Olympic & World Swimming Champion
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2. Stress
Integral to any athlete’s preparation is some form of stress management
Goals = optimal mental and physical state ready to perform AND strategies to cope with any challenges that may present themselves during competition
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3. Cognitive-Behavioral Stress Management
Change cognitions and thought patterns to influence behavior
Cognitive motivational relational theory (CMRT)
The experience of stress as an ongoing evaluation of the demands an athlete faces (internal and environment)
TRANSACTION: relationship between the demands of the environment an individual faces and the resources they possess to deal with it
Threat = when athletes perceive resources are too insufficient to meet the demands of the situation
Threat elevates with the individual’s perception
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4. Causes of Stress Competitive stressors Organization stressors
Examples: the level of physical preparation attained; the standard of the opponent; the internal and external pressures and expectations to perform
Organization stressors
Examples: the performer’s role in the sport organization; sport relationships and interpersonal demands
Personal stressors
Examples: lifestyle issues, financial demands, the relationships with family or significant others
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5. Responses to Stress Arousal Activation
Generalized physiological and psychological activation of the person
Activation
the overall physical and mental state that is required by an athlete to be ready to perform a respective task or activity
Deep
sleep
Extreme
excitement
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6. Responses to Stress (cont.)
Competitive anxiety
Situation-specific negative emotional response to one’s view of competitive stressors and competition as threats
COGNITIVE ANXIETY RESPONSES
thoughts experienced in stressful situations
Worries
Negative expectations
Performance apprehensions
SOMATIC ANXIETY RESPONSES
perceptions of arousal in stressful environments
Muscular tension
Butterflies
Increased heart rate
Dry mouth
Perspiration
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7. Responses to Stress (cont.)
Competitive anxiety
An athlete might experience anxiety as positive OR negative
The key message for sport psychologists is to understand that how athletes evaluate and appraise the symptoms they experience will influence subsequent efforts and strategies toward maintaining optimal performance states
Self-regulatory skills
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8. Responses to Stress (cont.)
Measurement of Stress-Related Symptoms
Assess the experiences of the stress process and its consequences with questionnaires
Trait anxiety - general predisposition to respond across many situations with high levels of anxiety because of typically appraising situations as threatening
State anxiety - varies from moment-to-moment and fluctuates proportionately to the perceived threat of a situation
trait anxiety, state anxiety
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9. Responses to Stress (cont.)
Beware of questionnaires
Not all individuals are willing to give open and honest responses
Not necessarily objective
Sport psychologists should seek a comprehensive range of assessment strategies to fully diagnose stress experiences
Also, make sure to explain the relationships between stress and performance!
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10. Early Arousal-Based Approaches
Drive theory
Increases in drive or arousal are associated with linear increases in performance providing that the task is well learned
Debunked – nothing supports it
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11. Early Arousal-Based Approaches (cont.)
The inverted-U hypothesis
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12. Early Arousal-Based Approaches (cont.)
The inverted-U hypothesis with individual differences
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13. Early Arousal-Based Approaches (cont.)
The inverted-U hypothesis provides some useful information BUT it is too simplistic and has too many limitations
Fails to consider cognitive anxiety and its interaction with arousal
Use in combination to explain the stress-performance relationship or for prescribing stress management strategies
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14. Contemporary Anxiety Theories
Zone of optimal functioning (ZOF)
Helps athlete establish individual optimal levels of pre-performance anxiety, within which performance levels are proposed to be greatest
Criticized for its lack of explanation as to why individual levels of cognitive and somatic anxiety may be optimal or detrimental for performance

15. Contemporary Anxiety Theories (cont.)
Multidimensional anxiety theory (MAT)
Makes distinctions between competitive state cognitive and somatic anxiety because they have different antecedents and relationships to performance
Somatic anxiety can have positive performance effects
Cognitive anxiety cannot
Critiqued because it does not consider the beneficial effects of cognitive anxiety on performance
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16. Contemporary Anxiety Theories (cont.)
Cusp catastrophe model
Describes the interactive effects of cognitive anxiety and physiological arousal on performance
The effect of physiological arousal on performance will either be:
Smooth and small
Large and catastrophic
Somewhere in between the two extremes
The model has been critiqued and modified
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17. Mechanistic Explanations
Processing efficiency theory (PET)
When a person is anxious, a proportion of their attentional capacity for the task is filled by task-irrelevant cognitive worry
Reduces their working memory capacity, impairs cognitive processing efficiency, and performance
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18. Mechanistic Explanations (cont.)
Attentional control theory (ACT)
An extension to PET
Anxiety influences efficiency but does not influence effectiveness
High levels of cognitive anxiety are not inherently negative – it can serve to motivate athletes
BUT it is at the expense of using a greater amount of available attentional resources
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19. Mechanistic Explanations (cont.)
Conscious processing hypothesis (CPH)
A high-anxious performer starts to over-think skills
Skills that are normally undertaken with little or no thought become disrupted due to the skilled athlete trying to ‘consciously’ control the movement
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20. Implications for Stress Management Interventions
Approaches adopted by sport psychology practitioners
Reduction approach to reduce the symptoms associated with stress
Restructuring approach to restructure interpretations of symptoms from a negative to a positive viewpoint
Energizing function to help athlete’s with an insufficient activation state in relation to their sporting task or activity (i.e., under arousal)
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21. Stress Management Skills and Strategies: Preventative Approaches
Removing or reducing the stressor by targeting the causes of stress in practical ways
Athlete needs to exert control over their stress
Tactics:
Advice-seeking
Information gathering
Planning
Problem solving
Proactive behavior
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22. Stress Management Skills and Strategies: Reduction Approaches
Reducing physiological arousal and the intensity of competition anxiety symptoms
Techniques:
Muscle-to-mind – focus on the bodily aspects and include breathing exercises and progressive relaxation
Mind-to-muscle – focus on the stimulation from the brain to the muscles, and include meditation, visualization, and autogenic training
Should target or match the dominant anxiety symptoms experienced in stressful situations
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23. Stress Management Skills and Strategies: Reduction Approaches (cont.)
Athletes need to be taught to recognize unwanted tension and to relax or release that tension
Why would an athlete want to be completely relaxed (zero-activation level)?
Increases sensitivity to tension levels and their ability to regulate levels of tension to match the demands of the performance situation
Also facilitates recovery from fatigue, helps sleep, removes localized tension, and creates skills for momentary relaxation
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24. Stress Management Skills and Strategies: Reduction Approaches (cont.)
Breathing exercises
Athletes who experience stress during a high-pressure performance either hold their breath or breathe rapidly and shallowly
Learning to take a deep, slow, complete breath from the belly will usually trigger a relaxation response
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25. Stress Management Skills and Strategies: Reduction Approaches (cont.)
Progressive relaxation (PR)
A series of exercises that involve contracting a specific muscle group, holding the contraction for 5–7 seconds and then relaxing
Differential PR
Abbreviated active PR
Passive PR
The athlete can recognizing unwanted tension wherever it may occur and release it rapidly in practically any stressful situation
Initial requires minutes - should be done daily
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26. Stress Management Skills and Strategies: Reduction Approaches (cont.)
Momentary muscle relaxation exercises
These exercises take seconds and are best used during performance
Quick body scan
Neck and shoulder check
Sport muscle check
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27. Stress Management Skills and Strategies: Reduction Approaches (cont.)
Meditation
Helps one achieve a state of deep relaxation and facilitates concentration by disciplining the mind
Four basic components:
A quiet environment
A comfortable position
A mental device or mantra
A passive attitude
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28. Stress Management Skills and Strategies: Reduction Approaches (cont.)
Visualization
Imagining you are somewhere relaxing
Autogenic training
Exercises designed to produce 2 relaxing, physical sensations: warmth and heaviness
Autogenic training with visualization
Multimodal stress management techniques
Stress inoculation training
Combines the skills of imagery, self-talk and relaxation to develop a coping skills program
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29. Stress Management Skills and Strategies: Reduction Approaches (cont.)
Stress management training
Imagery rehearsal – athlete asked to focus on emotional and affective responses to demand(s) being visualized.
Rehearsal phase - practitioner encourages strong and intense emotional response through use of verbal propositions.
Athlete instructed to ‘turn off’ intense emotional and affective response by implementing coping responses in form of relaxation and self-instruction skills.
Skills transferred from imagined rehearsal scenarios to real-life settings of a steadily increasing stressful nature.
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30. Stress Management Skills and Strategies: Restructuring Approaches
Athletes gain control over their anxiety by restructuring their mental and physical anxiety symptoms as beneficial optimal performance
Advocates combining various techniques into an integrated framework:
Imagery to recreate anxious thoughts and feelings
Self-talk to challenge experiences
Goal setting to provide control over the situation
Imagery to emphasize control over emotions and depict successful performance in the stressful situation
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31. Stress Management Skills and Strategies: Energizing Approaches
Athletes need to learn how to recognize signs and symptoms of low energy and activation
Many of these techniques reverse the focus of reductive interventions so that they become energizing rather than calming
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32. Stress Management Skills and Strategies: Energizing Approaches (cont.)
Breathing exercises
Energizing imagery
Energizing verbal cues
Transferring energy
Disassociate from fatigue
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