Athletes and stress

ATHLETES AND STRESS

A
ALife as a professional athlete is far from easy. The bodily demands alone would overwhelm most ordinary people, and on top of them competitors must withstand fierce mental pressure every time they compete. It was precisely this that the Slovenian tennis player Nika Beran described in a post she shared online after withdrawing from the 2019 Fairhaven Championships. She had been performing strongly until then, but partway through one match she found her breathing and heartbeat impossible to steady — a reaction she later put down to what she called ‘everything piling up at once, the thrill and the sheer noise of it’.
B
BFor any competitor, a certain amount of performance stress is more or less inescapable. Precisely how a given person’s body and mind react to a stressful moment, though, is shaped by a wide array of factors. In essence, stress emerges from a kind of trade-off between two things: the demands being made and the resources available to meet them. Should the demands appear to exceed what an athlete can manage, stress is likely to follow. Among the demands are the heavy physical and mental effort that success requires, alongside the athlete’s anxieties about how testing the event will be, their prospects of winning, and any threat of harm such as injury. The resources, by contrast, amount to a person’s capacity to handle those demands — their level of confidence, the degree to which they believe the outcome is theirs to control, and whether they face the event with eagerness or with dread.
C
CEvery fresh demand, or shift in circumstances, helps decide whether someone reacts to stress well or badly. As a rule, the greater the resources a person believes they can bring to bear, the more favourable their stress response — a positive reaction of this sort is termed a challenge state. Where the demands instead feel overwhelming, a negative response becomes more likely, and this is known as a threat state. Studies indicate that challenge states tend to produce strong performances, whereas threat states are linked to weaker ones. For Beran, then, a far bigger crowd, loftier expectations and an opponent of greater ability may together have convinced her that the demands upon her had grown — without her having the resources to match them. The result was a threat response.
D
DIn effect, our challenge and threat responses shape the way the body reacts under stress, since each alters the output of two hormones, adrenaline and cortisol, commonly labelled ‘stress hormones’. Within a challenge state, adrenaline raises the volume of blood the heart pumps and widens the blood vessels, so that additional energy reaches the muscles and the brain. That combination of increased blood flow and reduced pressure in the vessels has repeatedly been tied to better sporting results — in disciplines as varied as batting at cricket, putting in golf and taking penalties at football. In a threat state, by contrast, cortisol suppresses adrenaline’s benefits, leaving the vessels narrower, blood pressure higher, mental reactions slower and the heartbeat quicker. Put simply, a threat state heightens anxiety: choices worsen and performance suffers. Among tennis players, cortisol has been connected with a greater number of failed serves and with heightened anxiety.
E
EEven so, anxiety is something athletes routinely feel when the pressure is on. It can drive up the heart rate and perspiration, trigger palpitations, muscle tremors and breathlessness, and in the worst cases bring on headaches, nausea, stomach pain, weakness and an urge to flee. Anxiety can likewise blunt concentration and self-control while fuelling overthinking. How fiercely a person feels it comes down to the demands they face and the resources they hold. Depending on the stress response, moreover, the same anxiety may surface as excitement or as nervousness. Negative responses can harm body and mind alike — and bouts of anxiety, repeated and paired with such responses, can raise the likelihood of heart disease and depression.
F
FThere are, however, plenty of ways for athletes to make sure they respond well when the pressure mounts. The language used by the athletes themselves, and by those around them like coaches or parents, can encourage a positive response. Psychologists, too, can teach athletes to reinterpret their bodily reactions — to read a racing heart as a sign of excitement rather than of nerves. Cultivating mental skills such as visualisation likewise helps dampen the body’s threat responses. In visualisation an athlete might rebuild in the mind a moment when they competed well, or imagine themselves succeeding in some future contest; either way it fosters a sense of control over the stressful situation. Reproducing competitive pressure in training is another route: awarding athletes scores against their teammates, for instance, manufactures a feeling of rivalry, raising the demands beyond those of an ordinary session while still letting them rehearse how to cope with stress.

Question 1 - 5

Which paragraph contains the following information?

an athlete’s own account of what she believed had caused her difficulties

an explanation of the two opposing elements whose balance gives rise to stress

reference to specific sports in which a strong reaction to pressure has improved athletes’ results

a description of the many bodily symptoms that anxiety can bring about

examples of techniques that help competitors manage pressure

an athlete’s own account of what she believed had caused her difficulties

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