Using stress, anxiety and arousal to aid an adolescent develop into a semi-pro rugby player.

Due to the athlete being an 18-year-old amateur with no experience in rugby, they will most likely suffer from the stress, anxiety and arousal. To reduce stress, anxiety and arousal one must understand how it will affect the individual both due to the nature of rugby as well as the training regime that has been put in place for them to build muscle mass and reduce body fat percentage, then understand how to tackle stress, anxiety and arousal with the use of different techniques available.

Stress is defined as: a substantial imbalance between physical and psychological demands placed on an individual and his or her response capability under conditions in which failure to meet demands has important consequences (McGrath 1970). There are 4 stages in which an individual goes through stress, these can be separated into 4 different stages and they are as follows:

Stage 1 – A physical or psychological demand is placed on the individual.

Stage 2 – The individual makes a perception about the demand based on what they think their ability to meet the demand is. If the person perceives an imbalance between what is being asked and what they can do, the stress process continues.

Stage 3 – This is the individual’s physical and psychological response to the perception of the situation. If an imbalance between demands and response capability is perceived, there will be increased state anxiety, increased worries, heightened physiological activation, possible changes in concentration and increased muscle tension.

Stage 4 – This is the actual behaviour of the individual. Performance may decline due to the problems of state anxiety or improve because of increased intensity.

Due to the stressful nature of sport (rugby in this case) and the competitive environment surrounding the achievement of optimal pre-performance mental states; this places demands on participating athletes whether they are at an amateur or professional level to achieve the optimal pre-performance mental states. (Jones, 1995; Mellalieu et al., 2006) Therefore effective psychological preparation for performance is therefore an important area for investigation, in theory and towards the application of sport psychology (Cerin, Szabo, Hunt, & Williams, 2000) from this there is a large body of literature which exists to observe the stressors and competitive anxiety-related symptoms (level, frequency, and interpretation) athletes will experience prior to competing in sport.

Nonetheless there is an extensive emphasis on the pre-competitive anxiety response when in comparison to the number of studies that have assessed the efficacy of interventions designed to target such symptoms, particularly those viewed as debilitating to performance. An example of which, would be a study performed by Davidson & Schwartz as they considered the psychobiology of relaxation and related stress. Another study by Maynard and colleagues examined the impact of various anxiety reduction techniques on the intensity and direction (interpretation of level as facilitating or debilitating) of anxiety symptoms primarily in nonelite performers (Maynard et al., 1998; Maynard et al., 1995; Maynard, Smith, & Warwick-Evans, 1995). These studies suggested that interventions designed to reduce anxiety intensity were able to illicit more positive symptom interpretations. Despite these findings, research on the intensity and direction of anxiety symptoms has produced only limited support for the hypothesis.

But there is however one psychological technique that has been identified as important in helping athletes restructure their precompetitive symptoms from debilitating towards more controllable and facilitating to performance is that of imagery (Hanton & Jones) study’s such as Mellalieu et al., 2006 looked into and highlighted the fact that elite performers utilize a number of psychological skills, including mental imagery, to enhance their self-confidence and protect against the potential debilitating interpretations of competitive anxiety symptoms. E.g. taking a penalty kick on football and or taking a conversion in rugby after a try. Athletes, coaches, and sport psychologists have long acknowledged the value of imagery as a performance enhancement technique in sport, due to this there is a considerable of studies performed that provides a framework of how imagery works, what images are created, as well as when, where, and why imagery is used in sport (e.g., Hall, 2001) therefore it can be seen as beneficial to incorporate imagery training during other various exercises during a training session, for example: the amateur athlete is in a game based scenario inside of a scrum playing as a flanker, he knows the proper technique to perform the tackle if the number 8/9 run on the inside lane but lacks the confidence, with the use imagery the athlete can then visualize themselves performing an ideal tackle on the opposition, they can then gain the confidence that the athlete was lacking, reduce stress levels and reduce the excess amount of state anxiety and arousal to reach ideal performance level as seen on an Inverted-U hypothesis as it measures how arousal and anxiety affect performance. (this can be seen in the below image)

(Arent, Shawn M; Landers, Daniel M)

In the inverted – U graph it can be seen that too little and too much physiological arousal can lead to low performance levels, this can also be based on an individual as depending on the sport or person themselves they could require more or less physiological arousal to perform at their highest level.) when using this on the athlete it can be seen that due to them having little to no experience in high contact sports, the athlete will have to steadily introduce themselves to the sport as rugby has a high physiological arousal due to the intensity of the game and how it is played, because of this the athlete will therefore develop techniques which reduce the arousal build up, ways of doing this are the previously mentioned imagery training, there is then meditation and progressive muscle relaxation. (Feltz and Landers, 1983)

Arousal and state anxiety do not always have negative effects on performance. They can be facilitative or debilitative depending on the interpretation, some optimal levels of arousal lead to peak performance, but optimal levels of physiological activation and arousal-related thoughts are not the same. Interaction of physiological activation and arousal interpretation is more important than actual levels of each, this means that it is the relationship between the person’s psychological interpretation of a situation as seen in the stress process, and the physiological responses which can include Increased muscle tension, fatigue, and coordination difficulties, Changes in attention and concentration. An example of the physiological responses connecting attention and anxiety would be their attention field as seen in the diagram below.

From this the athlete can Identify optimal combinations of arousal-related emotions for best performance during training sessions. They will then also be able to recognize how personal and situational factors interact to influence arousal, anxiety, and performance; therefore, allowing themselves to recognise the signs of arousal and state anxiety, which in turn allows them to gain some control over the levels of stress, anxiety and arousal. (Driskell et al., 1994)

Due to rugby being a high contact and high intensity sport there is the risk of injuring one self, whether this be through training or in a match based situation; the threat of an injury will still be present, because of this the athlete can become scared and therefore stressed as their anxiety will increase resulting in higher stress levels which can result in a low performance level but also increase the likelihood of an injury occurring, to have a closer look into the cause and prevention of injuries I refer to colleges page at: peters work.

Because of the high intensity and contact level the athletes require a particular body type to play for each position, in regards to the athlete and his ideal position being a forward as a flanker 6,7/number 8, these positions require the individual to have a high upper body strength and a somewhat high lower body strength, they also have to have the ability to sprint repeatedly over 10 seconds as a flankers job is to tackle outside of the scrum and a number 8’s job is to usually break through the opposition outside of a scrum, because of this and the fact that the athlete is an amateur with no experience in rugby means they are required to build as much muscle as safely as possible. This can affect the athlete psychologically by increasing arousal levels through an increase in self-confidence (Callow et al., 2001), however they can also suffer from anxiety and stress from the training and dietary needs as they can lower their performance level which then affects their training, to consider this in more detail I refer to colleges page at: Angel’s work.

In conclusion, to reach semi-pro level rugby playing status the athlete will have to practice and maintain the techniques (imagery, meditation) which allow themselves to monitor their own the levels of stress, anxiety and arousal. By incorporating these techniques with the use of the inverted-U hypothesis the athlete will be able to reach and maintain peak performance level by reducing or increasing physiological arousal.

References:

McGrath, J. E. (Ed.), “Social and Psychological Factors in Stress.” New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. (1970).
G. Jones “More than just a game: research developments and issues in competitive state anxiety in sport” British Journal of Psychology, 86 (1995), pp. 449–478

S.D. Mellalieu, S. Hanton, D. Fletcher “An anxiety review”, Literature reviews in sport psychology, Nova Science, Hauppauge, NY (2006), pp. 1–45

E. Cerin, A. Szabo, N. Hunt, C. Williams “Temporal patterning of competitive emotions: a critical review” Journal of Sports Sciences, 18 (2000), pp. 605–626

R.J. Davidson, G.E. Schwartz “The psychobiology of relaxation and related stress: a multiprocess theory” Behavioural control and modification of physiological activity, Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ (1976), pp. 399–442

I.W. Maynard, B. Hemmings, I.A. Greenlees, L. Warwick-Evans, N. Stanton “Stress management in sport: a comparison of unimodal and multimodal interventions” Anxiety, Stress and Coping: An International Journal, 11 (1998), pp. 225–246

S.D. Mellalieu, R. Neil, S. Hanton “An investigation of the mediating effects of self-confidence between anxiety intensity and direction” Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport, 77 (2006), pp. 263–270

C.R. Hall “Imagery in sport and exercise” R. Singer, H.A. Hausenblas, C.M. Janelle (Eds.), Handbook of research on sport psychology (2nd ed.), Wiley, New York (2001), pp. 529–549

Arent, Shawn M; Landers, Daniel M “Arousal, Anxiety, and Performance: A Reexamination of the Inverted-U Hypothesis” Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport; Washington74.4 (Dec 2003): 436-44.

D.L. Feltz, D.M. Landers “The effects of mental practice on motor skill learning and performance: a meta-analysis” Journal of Sport Psychology, 5 (1983), pp. 25–5

J.E. Driskell, C. Copper, A. Moran “Does mental practice enhance performance?” Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, 79 (1994), pp. 481–491

N. Callow, L. Hardy, C. Hall “The effect of a motivational-mastery imagery intervention on the confidence of high-level badminton players” Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport, 72 (2001), pp. 389–400

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