Anxiety

Question 1

What is anxiety?

Answer 1

• State of nervousness and worry, a negative response to a threatening sporting situation.

Question 2

What are the 4 types of anxiety?

Answer 2

1. Somatic anxiety.
2. Cognitive anxiety.
3. Competitive state anxiety.
4. Competitive trait anxiety.

Question 3

Competitive trait anxiety

Answer 3

• Feeling nervous before a game/ race.
• Can be genetic/ innate.
• Trait anxiety is displayed before all competitions, regardless of the importance.
• You just feel nervous every time you play (not controllable).

Question 4

Competitive state anxiety

Answer 4

• Temporary.
• Response to a particular moment or situation in a game.
• Can vary during games.
• Depends on the mood of the performer.
• Controllable.

Question 5

What is the link between trait and state anxiety?

Answer 5

• An individual with high trait anxiety is more likely to experience high state anxiety when faced with a stressful situation, especially if they feel like others are watching/ evaluating performance.

Question 6

What is cognitive anxiety?

Answer 6

• Psychological.
• Irrational thinking and self doubt.
• Worrying.
• Occur before or during the performance.
• Loss of concentration.
• Experience nervousness.

Question 7

What is somatic anxiety?

Answer 7

• Physiological.
• Bodies response to individual believing in their lack of ability.
• Increased HR.
• Sweating.
• Muscular tension.
• Nausea.
• Viewed as good up to the right level!!!!!

Question 8

What are some causes of anxiety in a performer?

Answer 8

• Task importance.
• Fear of Injury.
• Audience effects.
• Evaluation apprehension.
• Fear of losing/ coaches opinions.

Question 9

What is the relationship between cognitive and somatic anxiety and performance?

Answer 9

• Somatic anxiety has an identical effect on performance as increased arousal does in the Inverted-U theory.
• Increases in somatic anxiety can improve performance up to a point, after which further increases will impair performance.
• Cognitive anxiety has a negative linear effect.
• Therefore, the greater the cognitive anxiety, the worse the performance.

Question 10

What is the relationship between anxiety and the time of competition?

Answer 10

• Somatic anxiety tends to increase just before a competition is due to begin.
• It reduces as performance is underway.
• Cognitive anxieties are present much earlier.
• Just because the performer is not showing physical signs of anxiety foes not mean that they are not worrying about the forthcoming event.