Sport Performance Anxiety

Common factors that can contribute to performance anxiety include; fear of performance failure, negative social evaluation and/or physical harm, as well as disruption of a well learned routine (Cox, p.201, 2007). The effects of these factors can be further heightened in correlation with importance of an event, or the level of competition. These fears and feelings of anxiety may affect the athlete’s perception of their abilities and hinder their self-confidence, which can be detrimental to their performance. Patterns of perfectionism can also lead to sport-related anxiety, mainly involving setting exceptionally high performance standards of oneself (Cox, p.202, 2007). Setting high standards can often be beneficial to a performance, but athletes that succumb to unrealistic thoughts, that nothing but a perfect/ideal performance is good enough, are more likely to experience negative emotions and heightened levels of anxiety due to the discrepancy between ideal and current self/situation (Koivula, Hassmén, Fallby, 2001).

For many years, the mental aspect of sports performance has received considerable attention in sports psychology. The cognitive processes in elite and less skilled athletes have been studied extensively, in an attempt to shed light on the variables arbitrating task execution during performances (Beilock, Carr, Machon & Starkes, 2002). This essay investigates how cognition differs in elite and less skilled athletes. Firstly, it considers elite-novice- differences in attentional focus; which suggests that where athletes direct their attention while performing differs across skills. Moreover, the essay closely examines the difference in elite and novice athletes ' ability to make effective decisions during performances (Milazzo, Farrow, Ruffault & Fournier, 2016).

Before exploring the health of an athlete its important to understand what mental health is. Mental health is characterised by emotional wellbeing and resilience to stress (ClearingHouseForSport Australian Government Ralph Richards 9th June 2016). Mentally healthy individuals are able to cope with daily stresses and fully participate in family, work and in this case sport activities. A mental disorder is a diagnosable illness that affects a persons thinking, emotional state and behaviour and disrupts his/her ability to carry out normal daily activities and maintain personal relationships. Exercise has many benefits, not only for physical health but also your mental health as well. In the brain, exercise stimulates chemicals that improve an

The sixth and final disorder is known as performance anxiety. This disorder is most similar to stage fright. This is when someone is fearful of their performance in the bedroom. Performance anxiety is most often a result of the above disorders.

Throughout youth sports there is a lot of stress that comes along with playing a game that is supposed to be fun. Stress not only harms the body physically, but it harms it emotionally. There are all sorts of stressors that come from youth sports, stress can cause anger, anxiety, fear happiness, and pride.

It can be determined by the results presented that athletes in one way or another do in fact experience pre-game jitters. In turn, this can negatively impact an athlete’s performance.

I agree every athlete deals with some sort of anxiety. I can understand how anxiety can be over came by being though methods. An athletes mental toughness can be decided how they conquer there state of mind. I mention about how watching game tape before a game help me with anxiety about not preforming at the top level.

Athletes may experience symptoms of low concertation, lack of motivation and increased levels of anxiety after following strenuous training and demanding performances,

Anxiety is a bad emotion or poison which is inside your mind which is more shown to others. This makes you feel on ease or maybe tense and disturbed of the worry or fear that you have running through you. Footballers would get this at first but it's over time that they know that they won't have to be unease. Goalkeepers feel on ease at first of a game because they feel like the ball will go past him and into the goal and he is really only noticed for what he is doing when he lets in a goal by accident. When a footballer is on their first game they will feel more uncomfortable and on ease person in that team because they would be the least confident person to play. Anxiety control is needed from all players on the field.

Many athletes would agree that they have felt butterflies in their stomach or a sudden rush of adrenaline before an important game. This feeling can either translate into legendary performances or monumental failures. According to Sharon D. Hoar (2007), to fully comprehend anxiety’s effect on performance, one must understand the discrimination between two unique sets of sources: trait and state anxiety, and cognitive and somatic anxiety. Anxiety symptoms are numerous and unique to every athlete. Hoar suggests that athletes might report cognitive symptoms (eg. Inability to focus), somatic symptoms (eg. Sweaty palms), or both. The author discusses a variety of sources of anxiety and argues that it can have both positive and negative effects

Performance Anxiety, also referred as a fear of public speaking is one of the most common phobias. People who fears and other interests that require them to take the “stage”, such as actors, athletes, etc. will experience stage freight as an impairment of their own particular activity.

As I looked into the audience, anxiety filled my body. I am a very quiet person who never does anything exciting. Anxiety is one problem in my life that I battle everyday. Last year, I decided to take a huge step out of my comfort zone: I auditioned for the school play. This was terrifying. I have never been a huge public speaker; at times, I can barely manage to get a sentence out because of my anxiety. The director and student director gave me a part in the play. My part was a narrator and I had to be on stage describing the history of theater. My goal with acting was to overcome my fear: public speaking and stage fright.

State anxiety refers to what arises in a specific situation. Everyone experiences state anxiety, but the stimulus can vary. In sport state anxiety, may rise when an athlete is in a high-pressure situation and needs to perform to an expected level. Examples of this are serving for the match, taking a penalty shot or converting a try in rugby.

One of the most common situations where we face anxiety is when our abilities are tested. Let it be examinations, competitions, sports or interviews, our desire to succeed or prove ourselves often make us anxious, and this anxiety often influences our performance in that event or situation. Also, this anxiety level

The importance of vision in sports is a subject that triggers everyone’s awareness for the past couple years .In fact, with the increasing of people playing sports as a recreational activity or at a professional level, it is becoming more relevant than ever to stress the type of eye injuries that can happen while practicing a sport and the best way to protect ourselves. Whether it’s basketball, football, baseball or any type of sports human in general, is more exposed than ever to eye injuries. According to the book sport vision care for the enhancement of sports performance “ sports - related ocular injuries account for 33000 to 100000 of the estimated 2.4 million eye injuries that occur in the US annually” (Brumitt & Erickson, p. 139). Furthermore, eye injuries are the number cause of blindness and ocular morbidity in children (Brumitt & Erickson, p. 139). Traumatic eye injury, according to the sports-medical organization sports eye injuries remain the second most common cause of visual impairment, behind only cataracts. Moreover, every year, nearly 15 percent of the 2.5 million eye injuries in the United States occur during sporting activities. Of these injuries, 42,000 are severe enough to warrant an emergency department visit, and approximately 13,500 result in legal blindness (R.A., D., & TS, 2012). All those facts reunite prove that sports related ocular injuries should be a concern for everybody. This paper will focus on the diverse type of injuries that can