Introduction:
Sports have the potential to create high levels of stress and anxiety. However, anxiety can play a role in sports injury prevention, occurrence, rehabilitation, and return to sports. Anxiety manifests as a part of one's personality, either in a stable form or temporarily.
What Is Sports Anxiety?
Anxiety is an unpleasant psychological state due to stress concerning performing a task under pressure. Anxiety is an emotional state the athletes experience at all performance levels. Anxiety generally comprises worrying thoughts, apprehensions, and a degree of physical activation. In sports, anxiety is a response to a situation where the athlete's skills are evaluated. Sports anxiety is also called competitive state anxiety, cognitive anxiety, competitive trait anxiety, somatic anxiety, performance anxiety, behavioral anxiety, facilitative anxiety, competition anxiety, debilitative anxiety, and pre and post-competition anxiety.
What Are the Signs and Symptoms of Anxiety?
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Physiological: Sweating and increased heart rate.
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Behavioral: Fighting fingernails and fidgeting.
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Cognitive: Negative thoughts and inattention.
What Are the Theories That Explain Sports-Related Anxiety and Its Relationship With Performance?
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Inverted U Hypothesis: This states that low anxiety decreases performance level while the increase in anxiety facilitates performance level up. However, exceeding this limit leads to a decrease in performance levels.
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Drive Theory: This states that the relationship between situation-specific state and performance is linear. Higher the anxiety, the higher the performance level.
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Reversal Theory: This states that anxiety affecting performance depends on the individual's interpretation of their anxiety levels.
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The Conceptual Model of Athletic Performance: This states that anxiety can influence an individual's stress response to a competitive situation which in turn affects their performance. This is achieved by physiological, behavioral, and cognitive factors.
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Multidimensional Anxiety Theory: This states that somatic state anxiety is directly related to an athlete's performance level, whereas cognitive state anxiety is not related to an athlete's performance.
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Catastrophe Theory: This states that somatic state anxiety is related to performance level but only when the individual has low cognitive behavior.
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Individual Zones of Optimal Functioning Theory: This states that elite athletes have an optimal level of anxiety when they reach a high-performance level. The performance level will decline if the anxiety level is low or outside the zone.
What Is the Relationship Between Anxiety and Sports Injury Occurrence?
Sports injury occurrence depends on the cognitive arousal stress response mechanism. Stress and athletic injuries propose that cognitive behavior develops when athletes are placed in a stressful situation. This includes the demands of the situation, the resources available, and the consequences of potential outcomes of the situation. This results in an increase in muscle tension, a narrowing of the visual field, and an increase in distractibility. Depending on the individual's response to stress, one can increase or decrease the potential risk of encountering sports injury. This stress response is mediated by bidirectional interaction between the history of stressors, the individual's personality, and available coping resources.
These stresses can be alleviated by implementing various psychological stress management-based interventions. The stress and athletic injury theory proposes that anxiety influences the stress response injury relationship. From this study, it is concluded that when competitive trait anxiety is in conjugation with other psychosocial variables such as mental worry, irritability, and the presence of coping skills- it has the ability to predict the occurrence of athletic injury. However, in isolation, it has a lower ability to predict the occurrence of athletic injury. Adult hockey, soccer, and football players positively correlate the athlete's perceptions of being injured and injury occurrence.
What Is the Relationship Between Anxiety and Sports Injury Rehabilitation?
Following injury occurrence, the injury itself will become a stressor that leads to the development of cognitive behavior, resulting in bidirectional interaction between emotional and behavioral responses known as the dynamic core. The dynamic core is influenced by personal and situational factors, which influence the overall psychosocial and physical injury recovery outcomes. Anxiety is a personality variable that influences sports injury rehabilitation and successful recovery outcomes. Following an injury, the athlete will likely develop anxiety related to the injury and recovery process. During the rehabilitation phase, the athlete's anxiety will be associated with new rehabilitation activities and using the injured body parts.
Also, stress and coping with injuries are strongly related to the physical progress of athletes during the rehabilitation phase. According to the athlete's perception, when there is physical progress in the rehabilitation phase, the feelings of anxiety and cognitive behavior will decrease over time. When such progress does not occur as desired, the level of anxiety increases, resulting in a greater risk of developing depression, especially in athletes having a high sense of athletic identity.
What Is the Relationship Between Anxiety and Return to Sports?
The final rehabilitation phase concerns an athlete's safe return to play. Reinjury anxiety is of concern to athletes during their return to sports activity. Reinjury anxiety negatively impacts an athlete's performance after returning from injury. An athlete may be hesitant to give their hundred percent during sports due to a lack of confidence resulting in increased worry and tension.
How to Address Athletes With Anxiety?
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Any medically unexplained changes like an increase in heart rate, muscle tension, mood changes, and the emergence of unusual behaviors should be noted. These are the signs of increased stress and anxiety and, if left unaddressed, lead to psychological disorders.
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Clinicians must implement reliable mental health screening tools to detect athletes who are at risk and instruct them to take pre-participation medical examinations.
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This baseline measure helps to identify any possible significant changes and helps in early intervention and referral if needed.
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This is also helpful in estimating the athlete's psychological readiness to return to sports.
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Depending on the individual athlete's needs, the psychological interventions aim to provide athletes with the ability to manage their cognitive symptoms and physiological behavior.
Conclusion:
Steps have been taken to combat the potential adverse effects of sports-related anxiety. Psychosocial interventions are most helpful in preparing athletes to develop self-regulatory skills. In addition, it is advisable to ensure that healthcare professionals work holistically to deliver complete care for the athletes.
