From The Sport Psych Handbook by Shane Murphy
Anxiety is a topic particularly relevant to sport: The threat of a negative evaluation or negative performance can manifest itself in all aspects of competition from beginning to end. Let’s look at some of the ways that anxiety manifests itself in the athlete in two key areas--precompetition and competition.
In an anxious athlete preparing for competition, the biological preparedness function of anxiety causes a number of physical changes that have a direct impact on sport performance. These changes include increased muscle tension, heart rate, and respiration rate. Anxiety can also cause narrowed attention and perception and diminished cognitive flexibility. The anxious athlete before competition is likely to worry about what can go wrong or review in his or her mind images of past bad performances against this opponent or in this field. The lack of cognitive flexibility makes it difficult to take a balanced look at the situation, and the anxious athlete often confuses something “possible” with something “likely to happen.” The movement pattern of an anxious athlete and his or her timing, reaction time, and decision-making style are also different from the habitual, low-anxiety movement patterns. An athlete who has a smooth, long stride pattern when running relaxed will look choppy and rigid when anxious. A baseball player who has good mechanics when relaxed will tighten, shorten his swing, and have poor timing, going to the ball rather than waiting for it, when anxious.
Coaches often notice these changes but are not always able to intervene. Sometimes because they do not know what to do, they resort to telling athletes, “Relax!” Other times coaches know how to teach athletes to relax, but, appropriately, do not want to try anything new right before a competition. Finally, each coach has his or her own level of anxiety to deal with before a competition, making it harder to deal calmly with someone else’s tension.
One of the most common presentation problems for sport psychologists has to do with athletes who train well but do not perform at the same level in competition. The golfer who, in practice rounds, enjoys being on the course and is relaxed and confident changes his or her focus when anxious. Instead, the anxious golfer is likely to play to avoid mistakes, which is a very different approach. The goal of avoiding mistakes forces one to keep those mistakes in the forefront of the mind, and the result is a defensive approach, with increased muscle tension, narrower focus of attention, and, ultimately, less confidence, thus more mistakes. Anxiety is often the common denominator of these inconsistent performances.
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