Stress Management Techniques

• 1) Thought Stopping

  • Involves recognising that the athlete has started worrying about a performance
  • Use of a 'trigger' word will hopefully refocus and work on positive thoughts
  • e.g. netball player tells herself 'focus'
• 2) Positive Self-Talk

  • This involves developing positive thoughts to motivate, drive and 'psych' up players
  • This might also include reference to successful past performances
  • e.g. FROM 'We have only got 2 minutes left' TO 'We have plenty of time left'
• 3) Imagery

  • This is the formation of mental picture that often unrelated to the actual sporting action to reduce the feeling of anxiety
  • During imagery the performer will...
  • Create a vision of calm surroundings
  • Recreate a feeling of a successful movement
  • Create the sounds and emotional feelings experienced with success
• 4) Mental Rehearsal

  • involves the athlete imagining themselves in an environment performing a specific activity using all of their senses
  • The images should have the athlete performing successfully and feeling satisfied with their performance

  Can be used to...

  • Motivate the athlete by recalling images in a past competition
  • Perfect skills or skill sequences
• 5) Visualisation

  • involves using mental images stored in an athletes memory of the perfect model
  • The skill is then re-lived in real time situations
  • Can be internal (emotions and feelings) or external (the playing environment)
• 6) Attention control (1)

  • Nideffer suggested that different activities require different types of attentional focus known as attention narrowing
  • The best athletes can switch from one style to another
• 6) Attention control (2)

  
  

  There are two dimensions of focus:​

  • Broad/narrow – relating to how many cues are being focused on
  • Broad is many cues; narrow is one or two cues
  • Internal/external – relating to where the focus is being placed
  • Internal refers to the thoughts and feelings of the performers themselves; external focuses on environmental cues
• 7) Cue Utilisation

  • Links a performer's ability to sustain focus on the correct cues in the environment with their level of arousal
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  • At low levels of arousal the performer is not stimulated enough and takes in a large number of environmental cues. They are unable to distinguish what are the relevant cues are and can become confused, reducing performance level
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  • At high levels of arousal, the performer takes in a very small number of cues because they are excessively stimulated and may begin to panic. This is attentional wastage. The correct cues are missed, again reducing performance level
• 8) Psychological Skills Training (PST)

  • PST is an individually designed combination of methods selected to improve stress management during competitions
  • Many professional sports clubs will now employ a dedicated team to guide players through visualisation and mental rehearsal