Lesson 12 · The mind in competition
Psychological strategies: arousal, stress and anxiety
At the same competition, one athlete is shouting and slapping their own chest while another is slowing their breathing until their heart rate drops. They are not disagreeing about sport psychology. They are chasing the same target from opposite sides of it.
A powerlifter walks to the bar shouting, slapping their own chest, breathing hard. Eight metres away, an archer at the same competition is deliberately slowing their breathing until their heart rate drops.
Both are about to perform, and both believe they are doing the right thing. Write down what each is trying to achieve, and then answer the part that matters: are they pursuing different goals, or the same goal from opposite starting points?
- Explain arousal and why performance is best at an optimal level rather than a maximal one.
- Distinguish stress from anxiety, and separate the cognitive and somatic components of anxiety.
- Describe the main psychological strategies and match each to the problem it actually solves.
- Explain how a strategy improves participation, not only elite performance, which is half of what this dot point asks.
- Investigate how individual and group sports differ in the psychological demands they create and in how strategies are delivered.
- Arousal — the general level of physiological and psychological activation, from deep sleep to extreme excitement.
- Optimal arousal — the level of activation at which a given athlete performs a given task best.
- Stress — the response produced when the demands of a situation are perceived to exceed the resources available to meet them.
- Eustress — stress experienced as positive and energising.
- Anxiety — the unpleasant emotional state, involving worry and physical tension, that stress can produce.
- State anxiety — anxiety in a particular situation, which rises and falls.
- Trait anxiety — a person's general tendency to experience anxiety across many situations.
- Cognitive anxiety — the thinking component: worry, doubt, and attention pulled towards the consequences of failure.
- Somatic anxiety — the bodily component: raised heart rate, muscle tension, altered breathing, nausea.
- Mental rehearsal — imagining a performance in detail, using several senses, without physically performing it.
- Self-talk — what an athlete says to themselves, which can be instructional or motivational.
- Concentration — directing and holding attention on the cues that matter for the task.
Arousal is a general level of activation, and its relationship with performance is an inverted U. Too little and the athlete is flat: slow to react, inattentive, not producing force. Too much and performance falls again, for reasons that are specific and worth naming — attention narrows too far so relevant cues are missed, muscle tension rises and disrupts coordinated movement, decision-making becomes rushed, and fine motor control degrades. In between is the level at which that athlete performs that task best.
The syllabus word is optimising, not maximising, and the distinction is the whole point. Optimal arousal is not one number. It moves with two things.
| Factor | Effect on optimal arousal | Example |
|---|---|---|
| The task: complexity and precision | Simple, gross, forceful tasks tolerate and benefit from high arousal. Complex, fine, precise tasks require lower arousal, because tension and narrowed attention hurt them first | A powerlifting attempt or a rugby collision against an archery shot, a golf putt or a set shot at goal |
| The athlete: experience and personality | Experienced athletes often perform well at higher arousal because the skill is more automatic; athletes high in trait anxiety typically have a lower optimum | A first-year player and a ten-year veteran, in the same match, need different pre-game routines |
Put those together and the archer and the powerlifter in card 01 are not disagreeing. They have the same goal — reach their own optimum for their own task — and they are approaching it from opposite directions, one raising arousal and one lowering it. This is why a coach who gives an entire squad the same fired-up team talk is guaranteed to have moved some athletes further from their optimum, not closer.
Optimal, not maximal. The right level depends on the task and on the person, so the same team talk cannot be right for everyone in the room.
Quick check: Compared with a powerlifter attempting a maximal lift, an archer's optimal arousal level is likely to be:
Stress is what happens when the demands of a situation are perceived to exceed the resources available to meet them. The word perceived is load-bearing: two players facing the identical final-minute penalty are in the same objective situation and can be under completely different amounts of stress, because they judge their own resources differently. That is also the opening for every strategy in the next card, because perception is changeable in a way that the scoreboard is not.
Stress is not automatically harmful. Eustress is stress experienced as positive: the situation is demanding, the athlete believes they can meet it, and the result is energising. The same physiological arousal is being interpreted as excitement rather than threat.
Anxiety is the unpleasant emotional state stress can produce, and it splits two ways that matter for choosing a strategy.
| Division | The two forms | What it changes |
|---|---|---|
| State and trait | State anxiety is situational and fluctuates; trait anxiety is a general disposition | A high-trait-anxiety athlete needs strategies built into their routine all season, not just applied on the day |
| Cognitive and somatic | Cognitive is worry, doubt and attention on consequences; somatic is heart rate, muscle tension, breathing, nausea | They respond to different strategies, so naming which one an athlete has is the first step |
That second row is the practical heart of this lesson. Somatic anxiety responds to strategies that act on the body — breathing control, progressive muscular relaxation, a physical routine. Cognitive anxiety responds to strategies that act on thought — restructuring self-talk, refocusing attention onto a controllable cue, mental rehearsal of a successful execution. Give a worrying athlete a breathing exercise and you have treated the wrong half; their heart rate will fall and the worry will continue.
The most common error on this topic
Writing that anxiety is always harmful and must be eliminated. It cannot be eliminated, and an athlete with no activation at all performs poorly. The goal is management: bring arousal towards the athlete's optimum for the task, and reinterpret the physical signs as readiness rather than as evidence that something is wrong.
True or false: An athlete whose anxiety is mainly cognitive is better served by refocusing attention and restructuring self-talk than by a breathing exercise, because the two components of anxiety respond to different strategies.
A list of strategies earns few marks. What earns marks is matching a strategy to a problem and saying by what mechanism it helps. Five strategies cover most of what this dot point can ask.
| Strategy | Problem it addresses | Mechanism | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Goal setting | Stress from an outcome the athlete cannot control, and flat motivation over a long season | Shifts attention to process goals the athlete does control, which makes success achievable regardless of the opponent and gives progress something to be measured against | Outcome-only goals, which increase stress precisely because the athlete cannot control them |
| Mental rehearsal or imagery | Cognitive anxiety, uncertainty about an unfamiliar situation, and skills that cannot be physically practised often | Rehearsing the successful execution in detail builds familiarity and confidence, and occupies attention with the task rather than the consequences | Rehearsing the failure instead, which is what an anxious athlete does by default |
| Relaxation | Somatic anxiety: raised heart rate, muscle tension, disrupted breathing | Slow controlled breathing and progressive muscular relaxation reduce physiological activation directly, moving arousal down towards the optimum | Using it on an athlete who is already flat, which pushes them further below their optimum |
| Concentration and attentional cues | Attention pulled to the crowd, the scoreboard, the last mistake, or the consequences | A cue word or a fixed pre-performance routine gives attention a specific controllable target, crowding out irrelevant information | Cues that direct attention to the mechanics of a well-learned skill, which can disrupt automatic execution |
| Self-talk | Cognitive anxiety, low confidence, and errors that spiral after a mistake | Instructional self-talk directs attention to the key technical cue; motivational self-talk sustains effort and reframes the physical signs of arousal as readiness | Treating it as empty positivity; it works when it is specific and rehearsed, not when it is invented under pressure |
Two strategies deserve a note. Goal setting is the one most often written about vaguely: the substance is the process-versus-outcome distinction. "Win the final" is an outcome goal and it is a stressor, because the opponent has a vote. "Complete my full pre-shot routine on every attempt" is a process goal, entirely under the athlete's control, and it is achievable in a loss. And relaxation is the one most often applied blindly — it lowers arousal, so it is the wrong tool for an athlete who is under-aroused, where an activation routine is needed instead.
Finally, notice that these strategies are rehearsed, not deployed. A breathing routine invented in the last minute of a grand final does not work. The strategies that work are the ones built into training, which is why Lesson 10 placed reflection inside the session rather than leaving it to chance.
Fill the gaps. A goal the athlete fully controls, such as completing a routine on every attempt, is called a goal. The component of anxiety made up of worry and doubt is anxiety. A person's general tendency to become anxious across many situations is called anxiety.
The dot point asks how individual and group sports apply these strategies, so the comparison is not decoration. The two settings differ in the pressures they generate and in how a strategy can be delivered.
| Aspect | Individual sport | Group sport |
|---|---|---|
| Where the pressure comes from | Sole responsibility for the result, with no one to share credit or blame, and long periods alone with one's own thinking | Responsibility to teammates, competition for selection, and a role within a structure that others depend on |
| How an error feels | Uncontested and visible, with nobody to cover it, so error spirals are a real risk | Absorbed or compounded by others; visible to teammates, which can steady an athlete or add to the pressure |
| Optimal arousal | One person's optimum, so the routine can be exactly right | Many optima in one changing room, so a single collective team talk necessarily misses some athletes |
| How strategies are delivered | Individually tailored routines, rehearsed alone and executed alone | A shared framework plus individual routines, with team-level tools as well: shared goals, defined roles, communication and pre-game structure |
| Available extra resource | Coach and support staff, but nobody inside the contest | Teammates, whose support and communication are themselves a stress-management resource that individual athletes do not have |
Now the half of the dot point that students routinely drop. It says to improve participation and performance, and participation is not a synonym for performance. Anxiety about being judged, about not being good enough, or about letting a team down is one of the main reasons adolescents stop playing sport altogether. Strategies aimed at participation look different from strategies aimed at winning: process goals so that improvement is visible without winning, a mastery climate in which effort and progress are praised rather than only results, roles that give every player a defined contribution, and structures that reduce the fear of public failure. An answer that treats this dot point as being only about elite performance has answered half of it.
Half of this dot point is about people who are not elite. Managing anxiety keeps people playing, and keeping people playing is a performance outcome for the sport even when it is not one for the athlete.
Two truths and a lie. One of these statements is false. Find it.
This dot point's verb is investigate, which asks for more than description. An investigation names what it is claiming, says what evidence would support the claim, and acknowledges what the evidence cannot settle. That is a skill, and it is assessed by outcome HM-12-10 as much as by the content itself.
Applied here, three things are worth saying honestly. First, the inverted-U relationship is well supported in its broad shape, but the idea of a single precise optimum for every athlete is a simplification, and individual patterns vary. Second, the effectiveness of these strategies is usually measured through self-report — how anxious an athlete says they felt — which is legitimate evidence but is not the same as an objective measure, and athletes who have been taught a strategy know what answer is expected. Third, in real settings a strategy is almost never the only thing that changed, so attributing an improved performance to it alone is a stronger claim than the evidence usually supports.
| Vague question | Investigable version | Evidence it would need |
|---|---|---|
| Does mental rehearsal work? | Does a four-week mental rehearsal routine reduce reported state anxiety before competition in a squad of junior netballers? | Pre-competition anxiety measures before and after the four weeks, ideally with a comparison group doing something else |
| Are team sports more stressful? | Do junior athletes in team sports report different sources of pre-competition stress from those in individual sports? | The same instrument applied in both groups, with the sources categorised rather than only the intensity scored |
| Does anxiety cause dropout? | Among players who left a club during one season, what proportion name performance anxiety or fear of judgement among their reasons? | Exit responses from those who left, and the recognition that people who have already left are hard to reach, which biases the sample |
Note the last row's final clause. Saying what the evidence cannot settle is not a weakness in an answer; it is the part that distinguishes an investigation from an assertion.
Odd one out. Three of these are process goals. Which one is an outcome goal?
Activities · match the strategy to the athlete
For each athlete, name whether the problem is arousal that is too high, too low, cognitive anxiety, somatic anxiety, or more than one. Then choose a strategy and explain the mechanism by which it would help.
A goalkicker converts almost everything at training and misses routine kicks in matches. They report their hands shaking and their heart pounding as they place the ball.
A distance runner spends the two days before a race replaying a bad result from last season and imagining being overtaken in the final lap.
A team is playing the bottom-placed side, is flat in the warm-up, and concedes twice in the first ten minutes.
A 14-year-old is considering leaving the club because they are afraid of making a mistake in front of teammates and being blamed for it.
Match each term to its meaning.
- Arousal
- Stress
- Somatic anxiety
- Eustress
- The general level of physiological and psychological activation
- The response produced when demands are perceived to exceed available resources
- The bodily component of anxiety, including muscle tension and raised heart rate
- Stress experienced as positive and energising
You have thirty minutes with a squad of twelve before a semi-final. Within the squad: a captain who is under-aroused and flat, two first-year players with high trait anxiety, a goalkicker with clear somatic symptoms, and a player who has been dropped to the bench and is angry about it.
| Element | What to write |
|---|---|
| The common part | What every player does, and what it is for |
| The individual parts | What each of the four named players does differently, and the mechanism in each case |
| The team talk | Whether you give one at all, and how you handle the fact that it cannot be right for everyone |
| When it was built | Which parts of the plan must already have been rehearsed during the season, and why they will not work otherwise |
Then two judgements. Which of your interventions would you defend most confidently, and on what evidence? And which one is closest to guesswork, and what would you need to know to do better?
Lock it in. In one sentence, explain why a coach's single fired-up team talk is guaranteed to move some athletes further from their best performance.
Investigate how psychological strategies are used to optimise arousal and manage stress and anxiety in sport.
Investigate asks for a planned inquiry ending in a supported conclusion — question, evidence, findings, limitations.
Plan: frame the question, name the evidence, report the findings, state the limitations, then conclude.
The inquiry asks which psychological strategies athletes use to reach and hold an optimal level of arousal, and whether the same strategies serve individual and group sports equally.
The evidence base is sport psychology research on arousal and performance, coach and athlete self-report on strategy use, and performance data from competition compared with training.
The evidence supports an inverted-U relationship between arousal and performance: too little arousal leaves attention unfocused and reaction slow, too much narrows attention excessively and disrupts fine motor control, and the optimal level differs by task — higher for gross power tasks such as a heavy lift or a tackle, lower for fine skill tasks such as a golf putt or a free throw.
Four strategy families appear consistently. Arousal is raised through energising self-talk, tempo music and increased physical activation in the warm-up, and lowered through controlled breathing, progressive muscle relaxation and centring. Mental rehearsal and visualisation prepare the athlete for the competitive situation so it is met as familiar rather than novel. Goal setting directs attention to controllable process goals rather than the outcome, which reduces the anxiety generated by uncontrollable factors. And concentration and attentional cues restore focus after an error or interruption.
Two limitations qualify this. Much of the evidence is self-reported, and athletes may attribute a good performance to a strategy that merely accompanied it. And the optimal arousal level is individual as well as task-specific, so group-level findings do not prescribe an individual's target. Within those limits the findings support the conclusion that individual and group sports use the same strategy families but apply them differently: individual athletes self-regulate to a personally calibrated level, whereas group sports must additionally manage collective arousal, where a coach's team address raises a whole squad including athletes already above their optimum.
This inquiry asks which psychological strategies athletes use to reach and hold an optimal level of arousal, and whether the same strategies serve individual and group sports equally. The evidence base is sport psychology research on arousal and performance, coach and athlete self-report on strategy use, and competition performance data compared with training. The evidence supports an inverted-U relationship between arousal and performance: too little leaves attention unfocused and reaction slow, too much narrows attention excessively and disrupts fine motor control, and the optimum differs by task — higher for gross power tasks such as a heavy lift or a tackle, lower for fine skill tasks such as a golf putt or a free throw. Four strategy families appear consistently: arousal is raised through energising self-talk, tempo music and increased physical activation, and lowered through controlled breathing, progressive muscle relaxation and centring; mental rehearsal and visualisation prepare the athlete so the competitive situation is met as familiar rather than novel; goal setting directs attention to controllable process goals rather than outcomes, reducing anxiety generated by uncontrollable factors; and attentional cues restore focus after an error or interruption. Two limitations qualify this: much of the evidence is self-reported, so athletes may credit a strategy that merely accompanied a good performance, and the optimal arousal level is individual as well as task-specific, so group findings do not prescribe an individual's target. Within those limits the findings support the conclusion that individual and group sports use the same strategy families but apply them differently — individual athletes self-regulate to a personally calibrated level, while group sports must also manage collective arousal, where a rousing team address raises an entire squad including athletes already above their optimum.
Explain why the optimal level of arousal differs between tasks and between athletes.
Explain asks for the mechanism behind the variation. The stem names two sources of difference — task and athlete — and both need answering.
Plan: name the principle, explain the task effect, explain the individual effect, then answer directly.
Arousal is physiological activation, and rising activation has two simultaneous effects: it increases available energy and reaction speed, and it narrows attention and increases muscle tension. Performance depends on the balance between the effect that helps a given task and the effect that hinders it.
Tasks differ in how much they depend on each effect. A gross power task such as a maximal lift or a tackle benefits from high force production and is largely unaffected by reduced fine control, so its optimum is high. A fine motor task such as a putt, an archery release or a free throw depends on precise, low-tension control and on broad attention to relevant cues, so the same activation that helped the lift degrades it — placing its optimum much lower.
Athletes differ because the same objective situation produces different perceived threat. Personality, experience and how the athlete interprets their own activation all vary, so an experienced athlete may read a raised heart rate as readiness while a less experienced one reads the identical sensation as anxiety — which means the level of arousal at which attention begins to narrow damagingly is individual.
It follows that arousal cannot be managed with a single team-wide approach, since the same pre-competition address will move different athletes in the same direction from different starting points — which is why individualised strategies matter even in group sports.
Arousal is physiological activation, and rising activation has two simultaneous effects: it increases available energy and reaction speed, and it narrows attention and increases muscle tension — so performance depends on the balance between the effect that helps a given task and the effect that hinders it. Tasks differ in how much they depend on each. A gross power task such as a maximal lift or a tackle benefits from high force production and is largely unaffected by reduced fine control, so its optimum is high; a fine motor task such as a putt, an archery release or a free throw depends on precise low-tension control and broad attention to relevant cues, so the same activation that helped the lift degrades it and its optimum is much lower. Athletes differ because the same objective situation produces different perceived threat: personality, experience and the way an athlete interprets their own activation all vary, so an experienced athlete may read a raised heart rate as readiness while a less experienced one reads the identical sensation as anxiety, which means the point at which attention begins to narrow damagingly is individual. It follows that arousal cannot be managed with a single team-wide approach, since one pre-competition address moves every athlete in the same direction from different starting points — which is why individualised regulation strategies matter even in group sports.
Go back to card 01. The powerlifter and the archer have the same goal: reach their own optimal level of arousal for the task in front of them. They are moving in opposite directions because a maximal lift is a gross, forceful task that tolerates high arousal, while an archery shot is a fine, precise one that is disrupted by tension and by attention narrowing too far. If your first answer said they wanted different things, write down what you would change now. Then add the consequence for a coach: the same intervention applied to a whole group moves some athletes towards their optimum and others away from it.
Multiple choice · 5 questions
MC 1. The relationship between arousal and performance is best described as:
- A. an inverted U, with best performance at an optimal level rather than a maximal one
- B. directly proportional, so higher arousal always improves performance
- C. inversely proportional, so the calmest athlete always performs best
- D. unrelated, because arousal affects only physiological measures
MC 2. Which is a somatic symptom of anxiety rather than a cognitive one?
- A. worry about disappointing teammates
- B. doubt about whether the skill will hold up
- C. attention drawn to the consequences of missing
- D. muscle tension and a raised heart rate
MC 3. An athlete sets the goal "complete my full pre-shot routine on every attempt". This is:
- A. an outcome goal, because it aims at a better score
- B. a process goal, which reduces stress because it is entirely within the athlete's control
- C. ineffective, because goals must always refer to results
- D. a relaxation strategy targeting somatic anxiety
MC 4. Why can a single collective team talk not optimise arousal for a whole squad?
- A. because arousal cannot be changed by anything a coach says
- B. because team talks always raise arousal beyond the useful range
- C. because optimal arousal differs with the task being performed and with the individual athlete
- D. because arousal only matters in individual sports
MC 5. A 14-year-old leaves a club because they fear being blamed for mistakes in front of teammates. The most appropriate response is:
- A. a mastery climate with process goals and defined roles, so that progress and contribution are visible without depending on results
- B. an increase in training volume so their skills improve faster
- C. a breathing routine used immediately before each match
- D. selecting them in a more prominent position to build confidence
Short answer · exam style
SA 1. Understand Band 4 Explain why the optimal level of arousal differs between a golfer taking a putt and a rugby league forward preparing for a tackle. (4 marks)
SA 2. Apply Band 5 Distinguish between cognitive and somatic anxiety, and for each one describe a psychological strategy that addresses it, explaining the mechanism by which it works. (5 marks)
SA 3. Evaluate Band 6 Investigate how individual and group sports apply psychological strategies to improve both participation and performance. Refer to at least three strategies and comment on the strength of the evidence for what you claim. (7 marks)
📖 Comprehensive answers (click to reveal)
Multiple choice: 1 → A. 2 → D. 3 → B. 4 → C. 5 → A.
Activity 1, indicative answers: 1 → Somatic anxiety, with arousal above the optimum for a fine precise task. Slow controlled breathing and a fixed physical pre-kick routine reduce physiological activation directly and give attention a controllable target, so tension falls and the well-practised movement is allowed to run. Note the diagnostic clue: the skill is intact at training, so the problem is not technical. 2 → Cognitive anxiety, specifically rehearsing failure. Mental rehearsal of a successful execution, supported by instructional self-talk and a process goal for the race, replaces the imagined failure with an imagined success and occupies attention with what the athlete will do rather than what might happen to them. A breathing exercise alone would treat the wrong half. 3 → Arousal below the optimum, at team level. An activation routine is needed rather than relaxation: a more demanding warm-up, competitive elements in the final drills, a specific early target, and process goals that do not depend on the opponent being good. The wider lesson is that a weak opponent removes the natural source of activation, so it has to be supplied deliberately. 4 → Cognitive anxiety with a strong social-evaluative component, and this is a participation issue first. Useful responses are a mastery climate in which effort and improvement are praised rather than only results, process goals so progress is visible in a loss, a defined role so the player knows what their contribution is, and team norms about how errors are responded to. It is a participation issue because the outcome at stake is whether the child continues playing at all, which no amount of performance improvement addresses if they have already left.
Activity 2, indicative answers: The common part is a shared structure that raises arousal towards the middle of the squad's range without pushing anyone far: a standard warm-up, a short reminder of the two or three process goals for the match, and clarity about roles. The individual parts differ. The flat captain needs activation rather than calming: a more demanding warm-up role, a specific early responsibility, and motivational self-talk. The two first-year players with high trait anxiety need strategies that were built into their season rather than applied today: a familiar routine, a small number of controllable process goals, and a senior player paired with each. The goalkicker's symptoms are somatic, so slow controlled breathing plus their fixed physical pre-kick routine, rehearsed at training, is the match. The dropped player needs their role defined rather than their arousal managed: what they are being asked to do, when, and what success looks like from the bench, because ambiguity is the stressor here. On the team talk, the defensible answer is a short one that supplies information and shared purpose rather than emotional arousal, precisely because a single emotional message cannot be right for twelve different optima; individual arousal is then adjusted person by person. The parts that must already have been rehearsed are the breathing routine, the pre-kick routine and the self-talk, since a strategy invented under pressure does not work. The most defensible intervention is the goalkicker's, because the symptoms are specific, the mechanism is well supported and the effect is observable. The closest to guesswork is the first-year players, because trait anxiety is inferred rather than measured; a season of monitoring, or a proper measure of state and trait anxiety, would give a firmer basis.
SA 1 (4 marks): State the relationship [1]: performance and arousal follow an inverted U, so performance is best at an optimal level and falls when arousal is either too low or too high. Explain the mechanism at high arousal [1]: attention narrows so relevant cues are missed, muscle tension rises and disrupts coordinated movement, and fine motor control degrades. Apply to the putt [1]: a putt is a fine, precise, self-paced task, so it is disrupted early by tension and by attention narrowing, and its optimum is comparatively low. Apply to the tackle [1]: a tackle is a gross, forceful task requiring maximal force production and aggression, and it tolerates and benefits from much higher arousal, so the same level that ruins the putt is close to ideal here. Credit also for noting that the optimum shifts with the individual as well as the task, so two forwards may still need different pre-game routines.
SA 2 (5 marks): Distinction [1]: cognitive anxiety is the thinking component — worry, doubt, and attention pulled onto the consequences of failure; somatic anxiety is the bodily component — raised heart rate, muscle tension, altered breathing, nausea. Cognitive strategy and mechanism [2]: mental rehearsal, self-talk or refocusing on a process goal [1]; rehearsing a successful execution in detail builds familiarity and confidence and occupies attention with the task rather than the consequences, while a process goal returns attention to something the athlete controls [1]. Somatic strategy and mechanism [2]: slow controlled breathing or progressive muscular relaxation, embedded in a physical pre-performance routine [1]; these reduce physiological activation directly, lowering heart rate and muscle tension so arousal moves back towards the optimum and coordinated movement is not disrupted [1]. A strong answer adds why the matching matters: a breathing exercise given to an athlete whose anxiety is cognitive lowers the heart rate and leaves the worry intact.
SA 3 (7 marks): Individual sports [2]: the pressure comes from sole responsibility with no one to share credit or blame, and errors are uncontested, so error spirals are a genuine risk. Strategies are individually tailored and executed alone — a rehearsed pre-performance routine, mental rehearsal, cue words to reset attention after a mistake, and process goals that make success possible in a defeat. Group sports [2]: the pressure comes from responsibility to teammates, selection competition and a role others depend on, and a squad contains many different optima so no single team talk can suit everyone. Delivery is a shared framework plus individual routines, with team-level tools such as shared goals, defined roles and communication; teammates are themselves a stress-management resource that individual athletes do not have. Participation as well as performance [2]: fear of judgement and of letting others down is a major reason adolescents leave sport, so strategies aimed at participation look different — a mastery climate rewarding effort and progress, process goals that make improvement visible without winning, defined roles so every player has a contribution, and norms about how errors are treated. The outcome at stake is continued involvement, not a result. Evidence [1]: the inverted U is well supported in shape but a single precise optimum per athlete is a simplification; most strategy research relies on self-reported anxiety, which is legitimate but not objective and is open to athletes reporting what they think is expected; and in real settings a strategy is rarely the only thing that changed, so attributing an improvement to it alone overstates what the evidence can carry. Saying so is part of what the verb investigate asks for.
Two ideas do most of the work here. Optimal, not maximal: the right level of arousal depends on the task and on the person, which is why a single intervention applied to a squad necessarily helps some and harms others. And name the half of anxiety before choosing the strategy, because cognitive and somatic anxiety respond to different tools.
Do not leave the second half of the dot point behind. Participation is named alongside performance, and the strategies that keep a nervous 14-year-old in the sport are not the same as the ones that sharpen a finalist. Lesson 13 stays with the individual-and-group comparison and turns to the strategies and tactics themselves.
Mark lesson as complete
Tick when you've finished the practice and review.