Stress Management to Optimise Performance

• Stressors: competition, conflict, climate, crowd, frustration, and the feeling of being physically hurt.
• Stress is a perception of an inability to cope with the demands placed on you.
• Eustress is stress that has a positive effect.
• Cognitive management strategy:

  Mental rehersal

  Imagery

  Negative thought stopping

  Positive thinking/ self talk

  Rational Thinking

  Goal Setting

  Mindfulness
• Somatic management techniques:

  Progressive muscular relaxation

  Breating Control

  Biofeedback results

  Centering tehnique
• With stress, Hypothalamus releases hormones including adrenaline to help you deal with threats or pressure.
• After adrenaline is released, the performer will experience fight or flight response.
• Adrenaline increases heart rate and provides energy that can aid performance.
• Intense or prolonged stress causes excessive hormones increasing risk of health problems including high blood pressure, stroke, heart attack, and it can hinder performance.
• Stress response GAS (Seyle 1956) has 3 stages of how the body responds to stress: alarm; resistance; and exhaustion.
• Alarm refers to the physiological responses, e.g. increased HR, raised blood sugar, adrenaline.
• Resistance means if stressor remains the body starts to recover from initial alarm & cope causing adrenaline to fall.
• Exhaustion means the body starts to fail, blood sugar drops and physiological disorders like heart disease can develop.
• Cognitive anxiety management involves controlling cognitive anxiety/stress and managing emotions and thought processes.
• Coaches and performers use cognitive anxiety management to increase confidence.
• Coaches and performers use cognitive anxiety management to improve concentration.
• Coaches and performers use cognitive anxiety management to control arousal.
• Coaches and performers use cognitive anxiety management to increase motivation.
• Coaches and performers use cognitive anxiety management to eliminate mental clutter with unnecessary details.
• Coaches and performers use cognitive anxiety management to reduce anxiety and uncertainty.
• Coaches and performers use cognitive anxiety management to focus on positive and eliminate negative thoughts.
• Mental rehearsal is the practice of a skill in the mind, without physical movements.
• Mental rehearsal could take the form of you actually kinaesthetically feeling the movement due to nerve impulses being fired although no actual movement is produced.
• Mental rehearsal decreases reaction time as decisions are made before the event, and allows practice whilst conserving energy.
• Mental rehearsal is particularly useful for aesthetic based sports.
• Imagery would be thinking about being in your 'happy place'.
• Imagery can be useful as it can calm you down or make you happy therefore reducing worries.
• Some people use sounds instead of pictures in imagery.
• In negative thought stopping individuals should remain optimistic by avoiding negatives.
• Negative thought stopping reduces unnecessary anxiety, frustration, stress and anger which would otherwise hinder performance.
• When the performer feels a negative thought they shouls immediately think 'STOP'.
• Positive thinking / self talk is having an optimistic outlook and telling yourself you can do a skill if you can be positive about past performances.
• Positive thinking / self talk helps to lower cognitive anxiety/stress.
• Positive thinking / self talk raises confidence and motivation.
• Positive thinking / self talk can be instructional. This could be reminding the performer about particular technique.
• Positive thinking / self talk can be motivational. This could be keeping the performers mind focused and confident.
• Rational thinking is thinking sensibly and reasonably and putting thoughts in to perspective.
• Goal setting is one important strategy employed to lower cognitive anxiety.
• Goal setting provides a purpose and something to aim for for athletes meaning they have a higher chance of succeesing and therefore might worry less.
• A benefit of goal setting is they aid attentional focus.