The difference between arousal & anxiety before a sports event

Arousal can increase focus for an athlete, change blood flow and help an athlete cope with the game that is ahead. This can be a great benefit to an athlete and a team environment competing for a win. The team with the higher arousal potentially will come out of the gates faster looking for that first goal or try but different sports need different states or arousal to perform so it isn’t the most important thing for sports like golf and lawn bowls where you need a lower state of arousal.

 Anxiety can really hinder an athletes performance if they get to worried about all the negatives that potentially could happen. If an athlete is anxious about performing them may choke and have a poor performance due to over thinking and not focusing on the task at hand.

 Also too much anxiety can create too much adrenaline through the body that they then have an adrenaline dump before they’re set to perform, they get tired, sick and fatigued. They bomb out and can’t last the distance.

 Anxiety though can be seen as a good thing for an athlete in some scenarios if an athlete loves a challenge or sticking it to the man after they have been told they’re not good enough they will have anxiety about needing to prove a point and perform but they will love this feeling and really thrive off the adrenaline.

 It is hard to predict how to control anxiety and arousal in athletes as they will all respond differently in certain situations. For some athletes starting or taking a shot doesn’t make them anxious but for others they can really struggle with this task or for some athletes they rise to the challenge or clearing a jump, being the lead runner or breaking away from the pack while others will crumble with anxiety if they find themselves in this situation.

Same with arousal, some athletes will get pumped up with loud music, coaches yelling at them and the crowd cheering whereas other athletes will not be bothered by this, not find it affective to pump them up and even the opposite start to get anxious.