Athletes

Ecology

Biology

Social psychology

Psychiatry

Anxiety

Competition (biology)

Psychology

Applied psychology

Physical therapy

Arousal

Medicine

Clinical psychology

Personality

Korean Journal of Sports Science

This study aims to analyze the precedent studies on elite athletes' competitive anxiety inducement elements in a variety of sports influenced a lot by competitive anxiety and provide the basic data for developing psychological energy conditioning program for improving players' training performance and athletic performance. By conducting literature review on athletes' competitive state anxiety to see, for example, what impact the competitive state anxiety has psychologically on athletes when they participate in the competition and what the correlation with declined athletic performance is, this study obtained the following conclusions. First, individual player's anxiety level should be identified exactly. As players generally have high anxiety that they feel during the game, the effect of anxiety on game is generally negative. But as such anxiety causes not only negative impact but also positive impact on the game, the anxiety can be different depending on the personality traits of players. Second, the fundamental cause of anxiety should be identified. The reason why players feel anxiety in the competition varies: including player's personality factor and external environment. Identifying the cause of anxiety exactly and removing it is the most efficient way to relieve competitive anxiety. Third, appropriate techniques to relieve competitive anxiety should be selected so that players could keep the appropriate arousal level. As leaders or players cannot change the actual competitive situation randomly, players should develop an ability to regulate their psychological state by themselves through psychological adaptive training. Fourth, players should concentrate on realizable goal setting and successful task performance and be positive about the game result. If leaders understand the anxiety and stress process, they can have players recognize the game positively and reduce fear and subsequently reduce anxiety and finally set realizable goals successfully. It is considered that further studies need to make a continuous study on psychological energy conditioning through psychological training together with physical and technical training by developing the psychological training program against the competitive state anxiety by characteristic of each sport.

Literature Review on Competitive State Anxiety in Elite Athletes