Coping Strategies
Coping strategies have been shown to enhance resilience, allowing athletes to navigate the challenge of performance anxiety and handle relevant setbacks within the game. Developing effective coping mechanisms allows female players, including youth and children, to improve their focus, maintain motivation, and foster a positive mindset that can lead to improved performance on the field while maintaining their well-being in daily life. Evidence also suggests coping strategies play a role in reducing injury risk.
Key takeaways
- The use of coping strategies by athletes has been shown to aid both performance and the athlete well-being.
- Female athletes appear to be more vulnerable to performance-related anxiety and stress.
- A strong support network may be crucial for optimal development of female athletes.
- Techniques such as mindfulness are suitable for developing emotional control.
- Psychological skills should be individualised within the overall development programme.
Strategies
- Problem v emotion Focused
Psychological training to teach coping strategies involves cognitive and behavioural effort to counter both the internal pressures (from yourself) and external pressures. (demands of the game, parents, coach etc). Such programmes have been shown to improve both athletic development and psychological well-being.
Strategies can be split into either problem-focused or emotion-focused. Which strategies females prefer or resort to when required is still debated with evidence for and against available. However, recent studies in female football have shown how emotion-focused strategies reduce negative behaviours such as mental withdrawal, with other studies supporting the use of emotion-focused strategies by females. More research with specific factors such as age, gender, coach behaviours and sport type are required as these need to be factored in when suggesting appropriate strategies. No one size fits all approach is currently suggested.
Emotional Intelligence
While males are suggested to lean towards problem-focused solutions with positive effect, females with increased vulnerability to anxiety and stress are thought to benefit from emotion-focused strategies, coinciding with a higher reliance on a social support network.
For all players, the inability to control emotions within the game leads to a loss of concentration, decreased self-esteem and increased anxiety with the associated muscle tension leading to decreased performance. Emotion-focused strategies may allow players to appraise and understand their emotions, enabling them to choose appropriate coping strategies to improve performance and their well-being.
Teaching emotional intelligence could therefore result in players recognising and understanding their emotions, communicating their feelings appropriately and managing scenarios within the game more effectively. Studies suggest that for females, and adolescents in particular, this is only possible within a positive supportive social environment. Social support, team cohesion and an autonomy-supportive coach therefore appear crucial for development of emotional intelligence in female players.
Research limitations - While evidence can be found for a range of positive outcomes for psychological techniques, well designed research within this area, especially on female athletes, is limited and therefore open to interpretation. Findings therefore need to be put into context and used with awareness of this fact.
Practical strategies
Mindfulness training with non-judgemental awareness of emotions has been shown to enhance concentration. While other acceptance-based techniques involving emotional regulation have also been shown to have positive benefits on performance and well-being. These include cognitive re-appraisal whereby a player restructures their thoughts and emotions.
The positive impact of the psychological training techniques of imagery, self-talk, goal-setting and arousal-regulation are supported by research. Relaxation techniques involving control of breathing and muscular tension (Deep breathing and PMR) are also linked with decreased competitive anxiety. The technique of positive framing has been linked with both reduced injury risk in female adolescent footballers and quicker return to sport when used as part of injury rehabilitation programme.
Psychological skills Training(PST)
Evidenced-based psychological interventions have been shown to be effective in improving performance and well-being amongst athletes. Specific techniques should be taught to female footballers as part of a broad PST programme that aims to build in balanced scheduling for both sport and outside sport commitments. Females, and in particular youth and adolescents, require a strong social support network that should be built into the coaching environment allowing pro-active communication with coaches who should aim to provide motivational feedback. Regular monitoring of individuals both formally and informally can aid in pre-empting stressors that can be part of competitive sport. Finally, the programme should aim to individualise support based on the athlete's needs with a central aim of developing effective emotional control.
Reference list
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