Dr.Med., Professor P.V. Rodichkin¹
Postgraduate student F.F. Kostov¹
Assistant G.V. Buznik^2
1Russian State Pedagogical University named after A.I. Herzen, St. Petersburg
²Saint Petersburg State University, St. Petersburg

Keywords: anxiety, asthenia, mental stability, self-assessment.

Introduction

Anxiety (or uneasiness) is one of key definitions in the conceptual toolkit of modern sport psychology that may be basically classified into trait anxiety (TA) and state anxiety (SA). Generally, anxiety may be defined as an emotional condition that occurs in response to supposed unclear danger and focused on expectations of unfavourable and harmful risk effects of danger. Anxiety and associating emotional excitement are known to be normally of disorganizing effect on any activity by making it more chaotic and counterproductive. It should be noted that anxiety and emotional excitement viewed as mental conditions are not totally identical and may arise and evolve separately from one another. An athlete experiencing strong emotional excitement may be virtually free of feeling anxious, and this mental state normally is of no detriment to his/her conscientious activity. On the whole, it is the permanent pressing demand for high sport accomplishments that is known to dominate among the major stress factors of the long-term sport training process. [4]

The notion of mental stability/ strength is closely interrelated with the definition of anxiety. The former means both the healthy psychological state of an athlete that allows standing competitive stresses (associated with state anxiety – SA) and the ability to mobilize individual psychosomatic reserves. The broader is the competitive experience of an athlete, including the anxiety restraining experience, the more balanced is his/her behaviour in stressful situations and the more dependable is the personal reserve mobilization process. Mental strength level is quite individual for every athlete that means that athletes may differ in their responses to different situations depending on a wide variety of internal and external factors. When SA prevails over TA and an individual response to stress is dominated by a negative behavioural model, there is a high probability of prestart apathy or some other asthenic condition being developed. [3]

Asthenia - (Greek: ασθένεια, lack of strength but also disease) is a medical term denoting symptoms of physical weakness and loss of strength; a condition in which the body lacks or has lost strength either as a whole or in any of its parts; it is manifested in poor ability to continue any activity and is dominated by the feeling of spontaneous sluggishness that may occur even in a load-free situation, stay for a long time and be unaffected and unrelieved by a rest. It is the prolonged nature of this pathologic mental condition that complicates any therapy and makes it impossible for the sufferer to continue his/her sport career. It is known that highly stressful competitive situations and uncontrolled high anxiety are among the key reasons for development of reactive asthenia as a serious disease. [1]

The enduring stress catches a person into a vicious circle of fatigue ---> sagging success rates ---> increased intensity of training sessions ---> growing fatigue. Reactive asthenia stops the athlete on the way to success and manifests itself in falling physical performance indicators that, in their turn, undermine the personal mental balance as verified by the relevant symptoms of mental disorder. In such a situation, prudent actions need to be taken to adjust the physical and mental balancing aspects in such a way as to maintain the equilibrium that is imperative for the sport accomplishments being maintained at least at the achieved level [1, 4].

High TA levels are associated in practice with increased injury rates in the training process and competitive cycles as a result of a failure in the basic mental processes [2]. It should be noted in this context, however, that athletes tested with low SA and TA levels that stay constant during competitions are normally less successful than the athletes showing moderate trait anxiety levels and reasonable variability of SA rates [6]. Mental stress factors are known to be largely controllable when due provisions are made for adequate physical and mental restoration of the body. Therefore, most successful in competitive process are normally the athletes that are skilful enough in keeping their mental stresses under control prior to and after the events, and these abilities are critical for the training accomplishments and sport fitness being kept at due levels [5].

Staying in shape is an important prerequisite for success in competitions, and the success, in its turn, gives the boost to self-confidence and wellbeing of the athlete. Emotional stability and its optimization ability viewed as prime conditions for individual success are always rated among the top priority objectives in any sport discipline.

Objective of the study was to explore correlations of anxiety, health self-assessment and performance efficiency rates in sport faculty students.

Subject and methodology of the study

Subject to the study were 25 second-year female students of 19-20 years of age from the Physical Education Department of Herzen Russian State Pedagogical University; the sampled young women were all certified Class I Athletes to Candidate for Master of Sport as stipulated in the test qualification terms. Screened out of the sample were those who failed to qualify based on the “lie” scale scores under the Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale (TMAS) in the version adapted by V.G. Norakidze.

The health, anxiety and performance efficiency tests under the study were made using the following methods: the WAM (Well-being-Activity-Mood) Questionnaire; the Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale (TMAS) test adapted by V.G. Norakidze as Anxiety Scale (AS); the Spielberger-Hanin State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) test; and the Tapping Test (TT).

The test rates were obtained and processed as follows. At the first stage of the study, the subjects were tested using the above WAM, AS and TT tests. One respondent was screened out based on the “lie” scale score under the AS test by V.G. Norakidze, and the test group contracted to 24 people. Based on the prior Taylor Scale tests, the subjects were split up into 2 groups: one tested with the below-average scores; and the other with the above-average Tailor Scale scores.

At the second stage of the study, the subjects were tested using the WAM, STAI and TT methods.

To provide due emotional motivation to the students, they were told at the first session that active cooperation in the tests would guarantee them being directly qualified for the exams skipping the oral qualifying test (professor has not told about before), on the only condition that would be announced to them at the second session (which was an important emotive factor). Next time the students were told that a qualification condition for the exams is the positive difference of their TT points. The Tapping Test was actually used to rate rather their performance efficiency under stress than the nervous system qualities as assessed by the relevant psychomotor indices; but the students had not been told that at the first session. After the test conditions were announced, the students were tested by the WAM and STAI methods prior to the TT session.

The test data acquisition, processing and analysis were performed using the regular mathematical methods of statistics as provided by the relevant standard Microsoft Excel software package. The mean data difference was rated using the Student reliability criterion (t). 

Study results and discussion.

Table 1. WAM and AS test results

Note: t F, t A and t M are the results of WAM rates versus AS rates, with p≤0.01 in every case

Given above in Table 1 are the mathematically processed results of the WAM and AS tests for the first session. These data give good reasons to state that all three WAM test rates are statistically reliable for the anxiety-based (AS test) samples, i.e. both  of the test groups (p≤0.01). However, the high-anxiety group respondents were found to report better condition than the low-anxiety group ones, as follows: Well-being rate of 4.2±0.7 versus 5.8±0.6; Activity rate of 4.8±1.1 versus 5.3±0.5; and the Mood rate of 5.2±1.1 versus 5.8±0.8; with the anxiety scores of 14.42±2.8 versus 23.33±2.2. There is some probability that this situation may be due to the tasks being so easy that made the highly-anxious respondents feel relieved and happy being qualified for the exams and, hence, they scored higher on average being somewhat boosted by the positive emotions. In the second session, when all conditions were disclosed, the test situation was found different as demonstrated in the following Tables.

Table 2. Well-being scores under the WAM test results

Well-being of the low-anxiety group was found to change from 4.2±0.7 to 4.9±0.7 (p≤0.01), whilst that of the high-anxiety group sagged from 5.8±0.6 to 4.9±0.9 (p≤0.01), with both of the groups showing virtually the same results.

Table 3. Activity scores under the WAM test

The Activity scores showed the similar variations: 4.8±1.1 and 7.0±0.9 for the low-anxiety group (p≤0.01), and 5.3±0.5 and 4.4±0.7 for the high-anxiety group (p≤0.01). It may be pertinent to note that the low-anxiety group showed much higher Activity scores in the second test than the high-anxiety group in the first test (7.0±0.9 vs. 5.3±0.5, respectively), albeit the picture was opposite before that. It may be indicative of the psychomotor mobilization effect in the students tested with better emotional stability.

Table 4. Mood scores under the WAM test

The Mood score variation trends are much the same as the above, with 5.2±1.1 and 5.5±1.1 for the low-anxiety group (p≤0.01), and 5.8±0.8 and 5.3±1.3 for the high-anxiety group (p≤0.01). The Mood score variations were the lowest compared to the other indices under the WAM test.

Table 5. Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale (TMAS) scores

All the above variations of the WAM scores were detected in the context of statistically significant TMAS test data for independent samples with the scores of 14.42±2.8 and 23.33±2.2 (p≤0.01).

Table 6. WAM and STAI scores

Note: Note: t F, t A and t M are the results of WAM rates versus AS rates in the STAI test, with p≤0.01 in every case

In view of the fact that the WAM and TMAS scores were found to be in correlation as verified by the first-session tests, our prime interest during the second session was to check if the similar correlation exists between the State Anxiety (SA) and WAM scores (Table 6). The low-anxiety group showed the SA score of 26.5±6.03 versus 50.5±12.6 scored by the high-anxiety group. It should be noted that the Well-being scores in both of the groups were very close (4.9±0.7 vs. 4.9±0.9, respectively), and the same applies to the Mood score of 5.5±1.1 vs. 5.3±1.3, respectively (p≤0.01); as for the Activity score, it was found to grow higher in the low-anxiety group versus the high-anxiety group (7.0±0.9 vs. 4.4±0.7, respectively) (p≤0.01). The general growth of the WAM scores for the low-anxiety group may be explained by higher emotional stability of these students and their better mobilization qualities, as verified by the data given in Tables 7, 8 and 9 hereunder.

Table 7. State anxiety (SA) scores in the STAI tests

Table 8. Trait anxiety (TA) scores in the STAI tests

Table 9. TA and SA scores in the STAI tests

As demonstrated in Table 9, the low-anxiety group showed the TA score being much higher than the SA score (41.17±7.4 vs. 26.5±6.03, respectively), whilst the ratio for the high-anxiety group was just opposite, with the TA score of 39.58±6.6 vs. the SA score of 50.5±12.6 (p≤0.01); that may be indicative of the higher emotional stability level of the low-anxiety group students. The data given in Table 8 give reasons to maintain that the trait anxiety levels were scored about the same by both of the groups of respondents (41.17±7.4 vs. 39.58±6.6), whilst the Student criterion was in the zone of non-significant values. Knowing that, and making account of the state anxiety scores (given in Table 7) and Taylor Scale scores (Table 5), we have reasons to assume that the TA scores may be similar due to the stress effects; furthermore it is important to note that comparisons of the TA and SA scores (Table 9) are based on statistically significant differences, i.e. the TA levels were actually scored by the respondents with an eye to the state anxiety scores at the moment of test (p≤0.01).

Table 10. Tapping Test score difference

Both of the test groups showed a positive growth of the TT scores without statistically significant differences: 14.58±10.8 points scored by the low-anxiety group and 13.75±6.8 by the high-anxiety group. The TT data and WAM score variations give the reasons to make a conclusion that the individual well-being of an athlete may fall with no detriment for his/her sport accomplishments, albeit it will inevitably manifest itself in future competitions; that means that the individual competitive performance efficiency being stable or even on some rise gives no guarantee for the sport fitness being stable. Therefore, it is important to underline that asthenia may develop in a concealed manner and may be detected only by additional preventive health tests, with different emotional stability developing methods and techniques being applied to prevent these negative developments.

Conclusions

Increased state anxiety is always of negative effect on the athlete's well-being on the whole, whilst the ability to maintain mental stability under stress contributes to positive self-assessment scores. High anxiety is known to increase the probability of injuries, and every injury, in its turn, becomes one more pathogenic factor for asthenia being possibly developed as a result of an excessive body response to stress. The situation is further aggravated by the negative impacts of frustration caused by the temporary loss of athletic fitness and working capacity.

Disclosure of the tapping test results and differences to the tested students was of different effect on them: some of them were tested to feel more confident and balanced, while the others showed some drop in their health condition scores, albeit the actual growth of the test scores was much the same. That means that growing results may not guarantee the individual health and sport form being always maintained.

There are good reasons to believe that the average or somewhat increased state anxiety rates versus the trait anxiety rates – provided they are still within the normal range – may play an important role as a mobilization factor in the context of the emotional excitement in a stressful situation.

To prevent asthenic conditions being developed in athletes, it is important to train their mental and emotional stability that imply not only the abilities to effectively counter negative internal and external impacts, but the individual prestart condition control and reserve mobilization abilities, supported by the ability to suppress the excessive emotional excitement when the competitions are over. The study data and analysis show that the respondents having the state anxiety scores lower than the trait anxiety ones are generally doing better in personal condition assessments than those with the higher state anxiety. More detailed study of the problematic issues and further research is needed to develop an efficient asthenia prevention methodology for sport applications.

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Corresponding author: g-ponomarev@inbox.ru