➢ Can be defined as any type of

change that causes physical,

emotional or psychological strain.
➢ Body’s response to anything that
requires attention or action.
.
✓ Money
✓ Work
✓ Poor Health
✓ Aches and pains.

✓ Chest pain or a feeling like your heart is

racing.

✓ Exhaustion or trouble sleeping.

✓ Headaches, dizziness or shaking.

✓ High Blood Pressure.

✓ Muscle tension or jaw clenching.

✓ Stomach or digestive problems.

✓ Weak immune system.

✓
✓
✓
✓
✓
✓

✓
 Stress has been identified as crucial in
STRESS sport, influencing as well as social
functioning (Jones & Hardy, 1990).

Increased anxiety and burn-out are symptoms which

have been associated to an inability to manage stress
in sport, as well as decreased self-esteem and
performance difficulties.
 The symptoms of stress although
mainly will cause negative effects on
performance (‘Distress’) can in some
instances be facilitative, this term is known
as ‘eustress’.
 It is a sensation that is experienced
not only by elite athletes but by everyone.
The symptoms of stress are broken into 3
categories:
Physiological – Increased Heart Rate,
Sweaty Hands, Muscle Tension
Cognitive – Perceptual Changes, Decision
Making, Memory, Response Selection
Emotional – Violence, Withdrawal from
sporting situation, Anger.
Investigates the effect of exercise on the function and structure of the body.

Physiological Factors in Sports

➢Age.
➢Somatotype
➢Gender.
➢Drugs (legal)
➢Performance Enhancing Drugs (illegal)
➢Olympic Drug Restrictions.
➢Drug Testing.
➢Blood Doping.
➢ are those characteristics of a person that affect the way
they learn and perform. Such factors serve in a way
which modulated performance and are therefore
susceptible to improvement, as well as decline.

Examples of these cognitive functions are things

like memory, attention, and reasoning.
 The emotional factor has a
range of features, which can
impact performance. They can
range from increased anxiety
levels to being scared of a
particular aspect of your
performance. They can also
interlink and impact each other .
➢ McKay et al. (2008) emphasized that in order to successfully aid performers
to cope with stress it is imperative to understand the broad range of
stressors that will inevitably be encountered.
➢ Some examples include; stress during a world cup (Holt & Hogg, 2002),
stress in elite figure skaters (Gould, Jackson & Finch, 1993) and self
presentational stress (James & Collings, 1997).
➢ A stressor has been defined as an “environmental demands encountered by
an individual” and have been categorized within recent literature into three
main groups; competitive, organizational and personal stressors (Fletcher et
al. 2006).
 Defined as “an ongoing transaction between an individual and the
environmental demands associated primarily and directly with
competitive performance (Fletcher et al. 2006).
Therefore, only stressors directly related to competitive performance
are named competitive stressors (e.g. opponents; Hanton et al. 2005).
▪ Injury (Nicholls, Holt, Polman, & Bloomfield, 2006)

▪ Preparation for competition (Hanton et al. 2005)

▪ Pressure (McKay et al. 2008)

▪ Opponents (Nicholls et al. 2006)

▪ Technique issues (Thelwell, Weston & Greenlees, 2007)

 Defined as “the environmental demands
associated primarily and directly with the
organization in which he or she is operating
in” (Fletcher, Hanton, Mellalieu & Neil, 2012).
▪ Factors Intrinsic to sport – Training environment, Travel, Accommodation

▪ Roles in Sport Organizations – Role conflict, Ambiguity

▪ Organizational Structure & Climate – Cultural and Political Issues

▪ Sport Relationships and Interpersonal Demands – Lack of Social Support.

▪ Athletic Career and Performance development issues – Position insecurity,

Career progressions, Income, Funding.

➢ By far the least cited of the stressors is Personal Stressors and is
defined as “an ongoing transaction between an individual and the
environmental demands associated primarily and directly with personal
life events” (McKay et al. 2008).

Examples include:
▪ Lifestyle Issues (Noblet & Gifford, 2002)
▪ Financial Issues (Thelwell et al. 2007)
 Healthy ways for athletes to deal with stress are
to engage in pleasurable activities, take care of their body,
maintain a positive perspective, laugh, practice relaxation
techniques, talk to others, and get help from a professional.