Does competitive stress have a solution or can it be tackled?

We begin by giving a brief explanation about what competitive stress is. According to Selye (1950), we can understand stress as the response produced in relation to a demand to which we are exposed, which prepares us to fight or flee. This response can be produced by a great variety of factors, intervening in it two important physiological systems.
When faced with a competitive situation, our body suffers a series of internal modifications that prepare us for what we are going to do. That is, it is something necessary and positive when it occurs in its proper measure. (Personally, I liked competitive stress and I knew how to manage it to influence me positively).

However, if you do not have the means or the strategies to face it, it can be negative for your performance. Example of this is: increased sweating, increased heart and respiratory rate, intestinal discomfort ... etc. This can harm our performance since we will show more attention in what our body is feeling and less in the competition.

To avoid this there are a series of strategies that will help us to improve our focus on what is really important.
There is talk of coping to refer to a process that includes the individual's attempts to resist and overcome excessive demands that arise in their life, and restore balance, that is, to adapt to the new situation. The magnitude of the discrepancy determines, in part, the stress experienced by the person (Soucase Lozano, Soriano-Pastor and Monsalve-Dols, 2005).






The coping strategies of the athletes have been associated with psychological variables such as (Márquez, 2006):

• Perceived control (Anshel and Kaissidis, 1997, Haney and Long, 1995).

• Self-efficacy (Haney and Long, 1995).

• Trait of anxiety (Finch, 1994, Giacobbi and Weinberg, 2000).

• Confidence in oneself (Grove and Heard, 1997).

• State of anxiety (Ntoumanis and Biddle, 2000).

• Goal orientations (Kim and Duda, 1997, Ntoumanis, Biddle and Hadcock, 1999).

• Motivational climate (Ntoumanis et al., 1999).

• Positive and negative affects (Crocker and Graham, 1995).

• Execution measures (Finch, 1994, Haney and Long, 1995).



The use of strategies to cope with stress requires training to adapt to the sporting discipline in which it competes along with the supervision of a specialist to determine not only what will be appropriate depending on the sport practiced or the stressful situation but also at what times to use it.