Negative Stress can severely hamper an athletes hopes of achieving their potential
People in every walk of life experience stress, and it is certainly no different for an athlete. In fact the problem of stress can be an even greater one for athletes, particularly those operating at elite level. The sources of stress on a sportsperson are numerous, and include the likes of:-
- pressure to win
- coping with injuries
- pre-competition nerves
- coping with the stress of a big day
- coping with loss of form
This can be on top of other issues that impact on their lives such as financial worries or, for student athletes, the problem of combining academic work with sport. While it is accepted that a certain amount of stress is good in terms of providing the spark that motivates the athlete to improve or to achieve their goals, the negative stress, or distress, can severely hamper an athletes hopes of achieving their potential. As Roger Covin, Ph.D explains in How Stress Can Affect Athletic Performance: Listen Up, Tiger
In many ways, the brain is like a computer. If memory capacity is low or impaired, performance will be slower, less efficient and there will be less information that can be processed at a given time. There is also a greater risk of errors in decision making if the brain cannot process all the necessary information
The impact of stress on athletic performance
Stress can have a significant impact on academic and athletic performance. An example of the debilitating effects of stress are outlined in a study in the Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology which found that stress had a significant impact on physical performance. Runners were intentionally stressed by being forced to complete a difficult computer test immediately before a 1.86-mile race (3,000-meters). The race times for runners who had taken the test were about 15 seconds slower than for the runners who hadn’t taken it. The reason why performance in the classroom and on the sports field is affected by stress is outlined by by Dr. Mercola who reminds us that mental and physical fatigue are closely connected as he identifies the following effects of stress.
- Stress Impairs Working Memory
- Stress Sabotages Concentration
- Stress Impairs Motor Coordination
- Stress Compromises Visual Acuity
- Stress Hampers Your Fitness Gains
- Stress Slows Exercise Recovery
- Stress Raises Your Risk for Injury
- Stress Seriously Impedes Weight Loss
- Stress Kills Motivation
- Stress Depletes Emotional Resources
Coping with stress through mindfulness meditation
The key for athletes is to find a way to deal with the stress and ensure that the issues don’t have a negative effect on physical performance. There are many different ways of coping and it is important for the athlete to find the solution that suits them best.
One option open to athletes that may be worth exploring is mindfulness meditation and the advantages of this approach have been highlighted in The effect of mindfulness meditation training on biological acute stress responses in generalized anxiety disorder, under lead author Elizabeth A. Hoge, MD, associate professor in Georgetown University Medical Center’s Department of Psychiatry. The findings of the study are outlined in Mindfulness meditation training lowers biomarkers of stress response in anxiety disorder and illustrate that anxiety disorder patients had sharply reduced stress-hormone and inflammatory responses to a stressful situation after taking a mindfulness meditation course. It has long been believed that mindfulness meditation was a good method of dealing with stress, but there had been very little research done to back this up. However, this study allowed the authors to conclude that
Mindfulness meditation training is a relatively inexpensive and low-stigma treatment approach, and these findings strengthen the case that it can improve resilience to stress
The study showed that a randomly selected group took an eight-week mindfulness based stress reduction course, and monitoring of blood-based markers illustrated that the meditation training had helped them cope. Hoge and her colleagues also found that the meditation group patients, experienced significantly greater reductions in self-reported measures of stress after their course. These findings led Hoge to conclude that
The study adds to evidence for the effectiveness of mindfulness meditation in treating anxiety
In The effects of mindfulness and meditation on the brain (Desbordes et al. 2012, and Lazar et al. 2005) research using fMRI the results showed that a mindfulness training group had reduced activity in their amygdala when perceiving the negative emotional stimuli suggesting that the effects of meditation training on emotional processing might transfer to non-meditative states.
Declutter your mind
Further evidence of the benefit of mindfulness is provided by The University of Nevada Reno’s Sunjin Im and Florida Institute of Technology’s Victoria Follette, which is explained by Susan Krauss Whitbourne in Research Suggests How to Declutter the Mind
The study asked undergraduates to recall recent stressful events and then to rate themselves on current psychological symptoms including those related to trauma exposure. Participants also completed questionnaires assessing their mindfulness and ruminative tendencies. In general, the findings showed that people with more trauma-related symptoms indeed engaged in more rumination. However, those with higher mindfulness scores, even if they suffered trauma, were less likely to ruminate
As a result of the research, the authors concluded:
Mindfulness can facilitate nonjudgmental awareness and acceptance of present subjective experiences, thus leading to a decrease in rumination while promoting psychological flexibility
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References
Mindfulness meditation training lowers biomarkers of stress response in anxiety disorder
Research Suggests How to Declutter the Mind by Susan Krauss Whitbourne Ph.D.
How Stress Can Affect Athletic Performance: Listen Up, Tiger by Roger Covin, Ph.D