Anxiety and Sport

For some athletes, sports can be a good way to cope with stress. When they hit the court or the field, they feel as if all of their worries from that day vanish. But for others, sports can be how a person identifies his or herself and where they derive most of their self-esteem. So that moment when you realize something in your body or your mind isn’t right, you push through it and tell yourself it will go away. But sometimes the pain gets worse. So you have two

A common adverse affect of overtraining for an elite athlete is ‘Overtraining Syndrome’. Overtraining syndrome is a neuroendocrine (neural input cells in the brain) disorder characterized by poor performance in competition, inability to maintain training loads, persistent fatigue, frequent illness, disturbed sleep and the most frequent in an elite athlete: alterations in mood state (Nature Immunology and Cell Biology Laurel T Mackinnon May 2000). Nearly all athletes experience the mood deterioration observed without impairment in sport performance. Since the goal is to reach a point of improved performance within the athlete the athlete then has to reach his/her limits of physical capacity (or even beyond) and since the balance between the right amount of training and overtraining is a fragile line many athletes suffer from this overtraining syndrome. It is not the hard training that makes you stronger in fact it makes you slightly weaker, it is the rest that will allow your body to grow stronger. Physiologic improvement in sports only occurs during the rest period following hard training. Due to this need for hardened training many elite athletes overwork themselves

The beneficial aspects of participating in sports are often noted but there is another side that cannot be ignored. Mental health issues among elite athletes is a topic of increasing interest and public awareness. Sport-related factors such as injury, overtraining and failure in competition are showing to influence the prevalence of mental health issues in elite athletes. Whatever the cause or reason mental health issues and concerns cannot be ignored. High performance athletes need to be provided with mental health support, despite the negative stigma of mental health issues and the concept of mental toughness in athletes. In the past, there has been a “widespread assumption has existed within the sporting world that only emotionally and mentally strong athletes are able to complete at the highest levels. Psychological disorders, such as depression, were thought to infrequently occur among elite athletes” (Hammond et al, 2013, pg.276) There may actually be an increased risk for mental health issues in athletes as they are less likely to; seek treatment, reveal symptoms, are more accustomed to work through pain, fear of showing signs of weakness and may not have developed healthy coping mechanisms to deal with failure. In addition, many athletes have not developed their identity outside of being an athlete and therefore if this role is threatened by injury or illness, they may experience a significant sense of loss. Treating a psychological ailment in athletes should be given as much importance as treating a physical

No matter how much I suck at swimming I will continue to try and swim and enjoy the water surrounding me. Running is also an activity that I’m not so good at. I can’t run fast, and I can’t last a long period of time running. I would love the idea of running in gym even though in the end I will be breathing heavily, and I will be sore the next day, but there is something that I love about running. Maybe is the idea that I’m in control of my speed or that I’m pushing my body more and more. No matter how much you suck doing an activity, it shouldn’t stop you from doing it, what’s important is that you had a great time. A perfectionist concentrates on trying and trying to get to the perfection, but in the end that person wouldn’t of enjoy the time of doing the activity. Now I see being a perfectionist on something not good in certain occasions. I sometimes want to do things perfect, but that gets in the way of me enjoying things. For example, my job I want to do it perfect and if I don’t then I will be

Fear has been the barrier for goals and dreams leading to great possible success. Especially in athletics, many athletes experience failure and obstacles throughout their athletic career. Therefore, there are very few athletes that do not attempt or avoid the athletic fears. Whereas a student attempts to achieve the top of their academic rank, athletes will strive to be the best in the sport as well. Whether one is an athlete or student, one cannot succeed with just a strong “fixed” mindset of success. They must have more of a “growth” mindset to achieve. One must constantly seek challenge and difficulty in every step of their life. Avoidance is not the way to achieve success; in fact, you cannot achieve anything with avoidance. World-known NBA legend, Michael Jordan shares a very motivational statement through an interview, “I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve almost

There are over 450,000 athletes competing at the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) level across 24 different sports in the United States (NCAA, 2012). What psychological qualities separate the successful student athlete from the non-successful student athlete (i.e., a student athlete who completes their eligibility and graduates, or gets drafted into the professional level)? We know sport psychology and mental performance training can assist athletes in achieving peak performance by teaching confidence, goal setting, imagery, mental toughness, how to deal with pressure, relaxation, positive self-talk and more (Shemake, 2014). This study aims to identify if certain student athletes posses some of these characteristics without

Schwarz, C., Gairrett, L., Aruguete, S., and Gold, S. (2005) stated that the purpose of this article is to find out whether there is a difference in eating attitudes, body dissatisfaction, and perfectionism among female athletes and non-athletes involved in a variety of collegiate sports. Finding out how perfectionism, eating attitudes or body dissatisfaction may relate to either judged or refereed sports may indicate that there is an eating disorder. If there is an indication of an eating disorder for a specific type of sport or even non-athletes, the research will help prevent this.

Studies have shown that coaches should have an enhanced empathetic understanding of how to manage individual and team developments when it comes to undertaking sport and social resolutions. Athletes need to be able to deal with their doubts of disappointment and accomplishments. This should be explained to the athletes because not being able to manage their uncertainties when it comes to their performance can have consequences in multiple domains of their life (quote 2). There are numerous ways to appraise our coaching techniques and be effective with the quality service we provide and it is important to be able to develop and sustain our athlete’s performance in a distinct tailored manor because as coaches and for the clients we mentor it

Not stated directly in Chapter 2, paradox of perfectionism was located in an additional box in the chapter. It discussed perfectionism, and how it is related to sports. It states that perfectionists can develop psychological problems if they cannot properly handle their characteristics. Additionally, Maladaptive perfectionism is related more to avoidance motivation rather than team sports approach motivation. Ref. Ch. 2 pg. 32

This piece of research is based on young adults between the ages of 18-26 and was conducted to conclude whether traits of perfectionism and depression are linked. Those who took part had no previous diagnosis of depression. The Hospital Anxiety Depression scale and the Almost Perfect Scale-Revised was used and given to 378 male and female participants. The participants then filled out this question anonymously only including their age and gender. A Pearson’s product moment correlation was used to correlate our results to conclude whether perfectionism and depression had any relationship. The analysis and findings of the study reported that the mean scores of the questionnaires showed a strong link between the two variables therefore there is

Over the years, there have been many different definitions of the term ‘perfectionism’ (Shafran, Cooper and Fairburn, 2002). In the past, perfectionism has been described as “the tyranny of the shoulds” (Horney, 1950) or as the “practice of demanding oneself or others a higher quality of performance than is required by the situation” (Hollender, 1965). Later, Burns (1980) described perfectionists as “those whose standards are high beyond reach or reason, people who strain compulsively and unremittingly toward impossible goals and who measure their own worth entirely in terms of productivity and accomplishment.” A more current and widely accepted definition of perfectionism by Frost, Marten, Lahart, and Rosenblate (1990) is “the setting of excessively

The race for perfectionism has, no doubt, made us humans more competitive than we used to be. Along with the desire to win comes the anxiety as well. A lot of times it is easy to underestimate the power of anxiety on ones’ ability to function well. Previous studies have shown that anxiety along with perfectionism leads to low performance (e.g., Guignard, Jacquet, & Lubart, 2012; KoUn & Rice, 2011; Pirbaglou, Cribbie, Irvine, Radhu, Vora, & Ritvo, 2013). Adaptive perfectionism happens when students positively use perfectionism to reach their goals. Therefore, it is very important that adaptive perfectionism is practiced to prevent anxiety issues becoming an obstacle in the path to a main goal.

The significance of including perfectionism in this proposed study is due to it being a precursor of burnout as well as having an association with burnout (Buyukbayraktar & Temiz, 2015; Hill, Hall, Appleton & Kozub, 2008; Taris et al., 2010). Previous studies have reported positive relationships between perfectionism and burnout among athletes (e.g., Aghdasi, 2014; Appleton, Hall & Hill, 2009; Chen, Kee, Chen & Tsai, 2008), coaches (Tashman, Tenenbaum, & Eklund, 2010) students (Zhang, Gan & Cham, 2007), and educators (Buyukbayraktar & Temiz, 2015; Flett, Hewitt & Hallett, 1995; Stoeber & Rennert, 2008). However, for academicians within universities, this has yet to be appropriately studied due to the majority of perfectionism literature tends

Over the past few years, I have leveraged this aspect of my character as a positive quality rather than a weakness. I view failures and imperfections as an opportunity for growth and room for improvement. Our hockey team emphasizes the phrase “Get Better Everyday” and personifies this as the GBT, or the “Get Better Train.” In order to be successful in any aspect of your life, you must be hungry for accomplishment. Being on the Get Better Train emphasizes the importance of working closer and closer to your goal everyday. On top of this, it stressed the importance of progress. No matter how big or little, every movement toward your goal is significant. This very simple concept has taught me to be positive everyday and strive to improve one aspect of myself everyday, always working toward the different goals I have in my life from personal, to career, to educational, and more. While many look at the game of golf and other sports as merely just a “game”, these sports have taught me

The primary question posed by the researcher is how to evaluate the relationship between perfectionism and team performance in sports. The study is aimed at investigating how other-oriented, self-oriented and socially prescribed perfectionism influenced performance of the team while competing in sports. Adapting Hewitt and Flett, a change was anticipated in both team-oriented and other-oriented perfectionism while self-oriented was expected to remain the same.