POINT FORM SUMMARY

progressive relaxation, biofeedback, autogenic training, autohypnosis

examples

· to relax muscles: tighten muscle group → then loosen that group

· to get aroused, increase adrenaline: increase heart rate by jumping up and down

· to get oxygen to muscles → hyperventilate

· to slow heart down → hold breath

• Reacting to stress:
  • Task-orientated response to stressful situation (deal with requirements of stressor)
  • Defense-orientated response to stressful situation (behave to protect self from hurt and disorganization)
• Psycho-somatic responses to stressful situation:
  • can lead to immunological defenses, damage and repair of body parts.
  • coping strategies:
    • Psychological: coping skills, self-defenses, support from others
    • Sociocultural: unions, religions, community
• Excessive stress → decomposition
  • Lowers adaptive efficiency: Biologically become lower immune. Psychologically, get tunnel vision, emotions.
  • Depletion of adaptive resources: Become over or under responsiveness to stressors.
  • Wear and tear on system: It is never fully restored.

diathesis-stress model:

diathesis: predisposition to abnormal behavior

stress: causal factor precipitating behavior

positive stress response: MOVE

· increase activity of all body functions

· If metabolism increased too much → get “butterflies”

negative stress response: ANXIETY

· cause: frustration, anger worrying, fear, typeA personality

· state: numbness, lack of control, dec attention span & organization

· chronic: constipation, coronary problems, ulcers, hives from PNS overcompensation.

TSS (training stress syndrome)

· see diagram

accumulative affect of stressors

· “Last straw effect” is when one little incident was the one that “broke the camel’s back.”

· solution: coping strategies

burnout

· marked by athlete’s disinterest, apathy, looking for external rewards like $

· solution: induce intrinsic interest

TSS (training stress syndrome)

a) staleness
    solution: goal setting. Find purpose and direction.

b) overtraining
    solution: a) & effective retrieval cues and cognitive strategies so do not have to rely on daily muscle memory.

c) burnout
    solution: a) b) & regain intrinsic motivation.

Decide what to do by asking the following questions in order:

· If there is something wrong

· If it is realistic or not

· What the appropriate intervention should be

Example for fear and anxiety. Is what you are experiencing fear or anxiety? Is it realistic and rational or unrealistic and irrational?
>  [anxiety and fear flowchart]
You need a little fear and anxiety to appreciation of dangers and motivate you to rehearse realistically before attempt made.

realistic fears:

Happens when personal injury when crash or make mistake. May think something like “I love skiing, skiing can kill”, which is realistic. Realistic fear alerts you that something needs to change to make things safer. You can decrease the probability of making a mistake, and hence realistic fear, with the ”control commitment” in goal setting.

realistic anxiety:

Happens when you realize that you have no backup support. No resources to note problems and solve them. May think something like, “Pretty well on own.” The best way to deal with this is to improve self-sufficiency. Develop autonomy and problem solving skills.

irrational anxiety:

Happens when there is overreaction to competition itself. You can deal with irrational anxiety retroactively using psychological methods like RET. You can use proactive methods like distracting your emotions by concentrating on task itself. This decreases emotional metabolism and increases cognitive metabolism.

irrational fear:

Happens when experience debilitating fear. Psychological retroactive methods like extinction techniques are useful.

• oversensitization to some stimuli in sport E
  • debilitating unrealistic fear
    • examples: post traumatic stress disorder, learned fear
    • solution: extinction techniques
  • unrealistic anxiety
    • examples: negative cognitive set
    • solution: Beck’s RET..
• undersensitization
  • examples: desensitized, no fear, defenses
  • solution: develop reality check via understanding and control of situation
• inappropriateness
  • inappropriate cognitive set, anxiety response pattern
  • meaningful to anxiety, BUT meaningless to real world
  • solution RET..

Use distraction to decrease anxiety. Focus on task instead of focussing on anxiety.
By focussing on anxiety, you may be reinforcing anxiety.

example:

child’s game: A child pokes you, and you look at child (positive reinforcement). The child laughs “ha ha”, and pokes you again. Alternatively, when the child pokes you, you do not look back at child (negative reinforcement), the child will go away.

Motivation vs Task orientated approach to decrease anxiety.

example:

· In practice, everything learnt and working properly

· In competition, emotions different. There may be anxiety etc. This effects the area firing before and during competition, which in turn sends unusual messages sent to spinal cord, creating bad performance

solutions:
motivational orientated approach: decrease anxiety by

• goal:
  • Hope everything ok. Decrease emotions enough, so when start performance, everything falls into place.
• methods:
  • relaxation: biofeedback (disadvantage: anticipation may reinforce anxiety reaction)
  • persuasion:
    • ”practice like tournament” (disadvantage: assume anxiety irrational, when there are inherent risks and therefore fears)
    • increase self esteem (disad: sense of control not necessarily actual control)

task orientated approach: decrease anxiety by

• goal:
  • proper priming for control over natural style
  • attention strategies for appropriate responses, using stimulus control
• method:
  • acknowledge and accept tournament is different from practice
  • when anxious, distract cognitions by reviewing previously created retrieval cues.