Stress & Sports: Tools to Help Athletes Beat the Heat

Athletes experience stress much the same way we all do. In order to come up with a big win, you need a strategy to overcome stress. But first, you need to know exactly what you're up against and how to combat stress.

Stress

Stress is an imbalance between what the environment expects and what individuals believe they can achieve. Stress is not always bad, and it’s not always good. The right level of stress causes muscle tension and activation.

Anxiety

Anxiety is stress expressed as a negative emotion. If the expectations of the environment are above the individuals' belief in their own success, this can lead to the wrong type of movements at the wrong moments.

Anxiety can cause behavioral, physiological, cognitive, and affective breakdowns. When a free throw that could tie the game is missed and as a result, your team loses, athletes can experience shame and depression. Additionally, dreaming about that big moment and worrying the night before can lead to restlessness and missed sleep. This can lead to additional worry leading up to the big moment and increased muscle tension that could lead to poor performance.

Arousal

Arousal can be defined by activation. During rest, there is no arousal because your mind and body are asleep. When you wake up in the morning you start to experience feedback from the different senses such as hunger, thirst, and a desire or worry for upcoming events in the day.

Athletes control activation in different ways leading up to the big game. Those feelings left unchecked can lead to overload. Not enough activation can lead to inactivity and could easily be seen as the team “not showing up” for that big moment or big game. Because everyone deals with arousal differently it’s important to know how to handle stress and anxiety in the big moments and the moments that lead up to it.

Progressive Muscle Relaxation

Progressive muscle relaxation is a technique that takes between 20-30 minutes. The ultimate goal is to release tension in the muscle and control stress. By fully contracting a muscle then releasing that tension and individual can gain control over their movements. This can be done any time the athlete starts to feel anxious or an excess amount of tension in the muscles.

Different athletes respond to stress in different ways. More skilled athletes can handle higher levels of arousal. Less experienced athletes may not be able to filter out the wrong cues and focus on the correct movements during heightened arousal (Arent, 2003). Composure under stress means controlling body movements under heightened stress and arousal. Progressive muscle relaxation may increase composure in that it allows the athlete to control tension and release stress/anxiety.

Systematic Desensitization

Systematic Desensitization is real life stress in practice environments. For example, a basketball team may practice how to beat a full court press during the last 3 minutes of a game during practice. This way, when the moment occurs in “real life,” athletes will have already been exposed to that level and type of stress and know how to respond automatically.

However, not all athletes respond to stress the same way. Repetitive stress from practice can lead to overload and learned helplessness (Fullerton, 2002). Learned helplessness happens when athletes believe a situation cannot be escaped or changed. If a situation is practiced so many times that it becomes too easy, athletes may believe that they already know it all and practice is not necessary. Additionally, athletes with high levels of stress and overload may skip practice all together. Systematic desensitization needs to be used in the right ways at the right time to produce the right effect and avoid burnout.

Athletes need to learn detachment, or separating themselves from current stresses and focusing on only the current goal. These tools can help athletes control stress and find a good level of arousal necessary for high levels of performance.

Sources

Arent, S. M., & Landers, D. M. (2003). Arousal, anxiety, and performance: A reexamination of the inverted-U hypothesis. Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport, 74(4), 436-44. Retrieved from https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy2.apus.edu/docview/218558690?accountid=8289

Balk, Y. A., Adriaanse, M. A., De Ridder, D. T., & Evers, C. (2013). Coping under pressure: Employing emotion regulation strategies to enhance performance under pressure. Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 35(4), 408-418.

Weinberg, R., & Gould, D. (2015).  Foundations of sport and exercise psychology (6th ed.). Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.

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