Are you fond of sports? Do you enjoy supporting certain teams and athletes? Are you an athlete yourself? Or maybe you simply like to bet on esports and other types of sports on different betting sites Australia and take those deposit bonus bet offers? In any scenario, it might interest you to learn more about the incredible amount of psychological stress that athletes often face.
Harness sport appropriately and it may drive you to perform well when the high pressure of the day is on, and, most importantly, it may enable you to win any competition. But struggling to balance stress levels without a proper recovery – or forgetting to consider stress during load monitoring – could lead to mental and physiological problems.
Increased psychological stressors have been proven to “slow down the recovery rate from training” and prevent a short-term muscle recovery from resistance. In the meanwhile, it can have a detrimental influence on cognitive processes, such as reactions, if you lack the resilience essential to handle stress levels.
However, what are those stressors that can impact negatively on professional athletes?
Classification
It is a helpful step to separate the forms of psychological stressors that affect athletes into three groups. Research conducted in 2000 that examined the sources of stress affecting professional Australian athletes found that they identified sources of stress that go beyond the athletic sporting events. Hence, the researchers concluded that when creating stress management techniques, the whole experience has to be taken into consideration.
These sorts of stress levels were rated as competing, organizational, and personal in 2006. Understanding this may enable both coach and an athlete to get a broad picture of what is preventing an athlete from achieving success.
Competitive Factor
Competitive stressors are directly connected to the athlete’s athletic environment. They are essentially the most evident stressors and most directly related to the workout or a game.
Some competitive stressors are the following:
- Injury
- Coming back after injury
- Pressures before the day of the game/sporting event/competition
- Performance pressure
- The opponent athlete or team
- Competing to win the first place
- Technique or form issues
The response of each athlete to these competing stresses is varied too. The difference is time-crushing when you find the right spot when these pressures contribute to a busy, secure mentality. To know if an athlete is overwhelmed by competitive stressors and has an adverse effect, might be an effective preventive strategy to avert additional problems.
Organizational Factor
The organizational stressor is a continuous transaction between the needs of an athlete and the environment in which the athlete operates first and immediately.
Some organizational stressors are the following:
- Problems with training (changes in coaching, set-up; training program)
- Conflicts in-between teammates/coaches
- Lack of structure/organizational support
- Travel issues
Organizational stress levels can be ascribed to the coaching and organizational creation of the team and are, thus, resolved. Things such as tight travel plans and corporate choices out of hand indicate that organizational stressors are not always resolved. However, knowing which players struggle to deal with specific scenarios offers the chance to address this issue and, ideally, to find a solution that works for them and the team in search of victory.
Personal Factor
The environmental and personal needs of athletes directly related to personal life situations are personal stressors.
Some personal stressors are the following:
- Problems/changes in lifestyle (alcohol, sleep)
- Financial problems
- Traumatic events in life
- Commitments beyond the sport (e.g. University degree for student-athletes)
Personal stressors might be hard to detect by their very nature. Athletes might take baggage or life difficulties away from the team or the coach into competition and training. It is also vital that one has a positive and trustworthy connection with the athletes, so players may bring up potential personal difficulties on the table.
