Psychological Characteristics of the Elite Performer: Its all in their head, part 4

Part 1: Personality
Part 2: Motivation
Part 3: Anxiety and Arousal

STRESS AND COPING

Like anxiety, stress is a commonly discussed topic in sport performance and takes both the internal and external environments into account. Stress can be defined as an experience produced through a person-situation relationship that is perceived as taxing or exceeding the athlete’s resources. Stressors, however, may be regarded as those external situations that can potentially be considered stressful (i.e. an injury, a playoff game). Again, athletic abilities vary greatly across the board and therefore, how an athlete interprets these situations and stressors may influence her ability to perform or become an elite athlete.
First, stress may be derived from various sources such as psychological concerns (competitive nature) , physical concerns (injury) , and social concerns (team sport scenarios). Also, stressors may be distinguished as being chronic (the demands of a season) vs. acute (taking a penalty), expected vs. unexpected (injury), and competitive vs. non-competitive (media). Essentially, all tend to be athlete specific and further, may be sport dependent.

How athletes cope however, may help in identifying characteristics specific to elite athletes. Coping, described as variable efforts aimed toward managing the demands that exceed one’s resources, depends on athletes’ resources and expectations and requires flexibility in order to best match the types of stresses athletes face. As a result, athletes tend to be successful in their coping when the strategy utilized matches the strategy required. Elite performers are therefore, likely better able to recognize and subsequently match the strategy required. Unfortunately, very little evidence suggest that coping is directly related to high-performance. What is known, however, is that those athletes who utilize coping strategies may in fact have higher probabilities of attaining their goals. Thus, having specific resources such as psychological skills of goal setting and mental preparation may facilitate higher success in sport.

Tomorrow will be the final installment : Interventions