Psychology

Stress - Sports Psychology

What technique to use?

Stress comes in three forms, too much tension, too little motivation/drive or just enough. The trick is to get the balance right for you and for the particular situation.

For example, an athlete might experience little or no drive to perform well before an event that is perceived to be easy or unimportant.

That same athlete might experience debilitating levels of stress and tension before an event that he/she perceives to be highly important and very difficult.

So this athlete will need skills to relax him/her and skills to get ‘psyched-up’ which need to be used at the correct time.

There are a number of different techniques that can be used and different individuals prefer different techniques, a few will be outlined on the next pages.