Cause Of Stress In Sport

Causes of stress

Internal

There are many different individual causes of stress. A number of athletes may be in the same situation but have different stress responses. Some of the main cause of stress are:

• Illness-like infections

• Psychological factors (something could be worrying you)

• not having enough sleep

• Having a type A personality(need everything done perfect or overly self critical)

External

• Environment you find yourself in (could be to noisy)

• Negative social interaction

• Major life events

• Day-to-day hassles e.g. travel

Personal

Personal causes of stress are caused by people who are significant in our lives. These people could be friends, family and partners. An example of this could be you and your partner are currently

When you get complete muscle tension, it prevents the athlete from moving. This is known as freezing

Effects of anxiety in sports performance

Anxiety can affect sport performance and is seen as a negative mental state and also the negative aspect of stress. Anxiety causes concentration problems and in sports that require high concentration this can be a huge problem. In sports such as golf and tennis concentration is a high factor of the sport and if concentration is reduced in golf you may miss an important hole or in tennis you may start to miss important shots and become less consistent. As performance levels decrease this can lead to a decrease in self-confidence which can affect the athlete in future sporting events.

Some symptoms of anxiety can be beneficial to sport such as: increase in heart rate, and higher breathing rate. But if the athlete believes this is happening because of an inability to meet demand it may turn into a negative symptom.

Negative mental state

If your negative mental state becomes too great your performance will suffer.

In a badminton tournament if you are constantly worrying about the event, it can make you think your not good enough to succeed. this is a decrease in self-confidence. When you do play in the event your performance will have decreased because you don 't believe in

This is a dramatic drop in your performance because it cant be improved again.

The difference between this theory and the inverted U theory is that the drop in performance does not have to be a steady decline when arousal levels become to high. It is only when cognitive anxiety is combined with hyper-elevated levels of arousal that performance levels decrease dramatical

Changes in attentional focus

During a heightened state of arousal our focus becomes narrowed during sport. For example if your playing a basketball match, you will focus on who your making and getting the ball to that basket. If you arousal gets to high you may lose concentration and stop focusing on your opponents and just on getting the ball. In this scenario the basketball player maybe focusing on the crowds noise who thinking about something completely different to the sport they are playing.

Increases in anxiety levels

An increase in arousal levels can lead to awareness of anxiety symptoms. This can lead to both somatic anxiety and cognitive anxiety. This can be a positive or negative influence depending on how the athlete