Background:
Participating in a sport can be a helpful way of reducing stress levels and increasing feelings of physical and mental well-being. Physical activity helps bump up the production of your brain’s feel-good neurotransmitters, called endorphins. These transmitters help immensely to reduce stress from everyday activities that we become stressed from. You might feel like you’re simply too busy or too stressed to join an organized activity, but engaging in a sport can also provide stress-relieving benefits. There are tons of opportunities to participate in all different kinds of exercise. Regular exercise should be a part of everyone’s regular stress-management routine due to its numerous physical and mental rewards. In our modern society, that is full of stressors finding ways to exercise through team and individual sports is extremely important for anyone who wants to live an active and stress free life.
Research/Evidence
We began our study on the general term of “sports” but found that to be a little hard to sift through all of the information between team and individual sports and independent exercise, so we decided to narrow down to team sports only. When searching for the positive and negative effects of team sports we came across a study done on a field hockey team, in which 12 team athletes participated showed results that team athletes were most likely to appraise the situation as a challenge and use problem or emotion focused coping strategies. This is an example of how team athletes are able to use what we call eustress or positive stress. Team athletes are going to experience stress all throughout a game and a season, but both positive and negative stress but what is found is that team athletes, especially athletes on a successful team, are able to manage and cope this stress into a challenge. This was an interesting find that related to some of our class discussions that we had/ our podcast that we completed. We began to look even further at different studies that have been done on team sports and stress and came across another study done on 44 athletes from the Greek soccer association. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of a person-centered approach to managing anxiety among soccer athletes, prior to and after the application of the approach. The duration of the program was 9 months, with a frequency of one time per week for 60 minutes. . M. R. F. (Mental Readiness Form) and CSAI-2 (Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2) instruments were used for evaluation measures prior to and after the application of the intervention program. Statistical analysis revealed significant, observed differences in the reduction of a team’s somatic anxiety in favor of post-application measures and decreased self-confidence attributed to the effect of a person-centered approach. What somatic anxiety means is the physical symptoms, such as the butterflies in the stomach. So this is all great information about adults and team sports and anxiety so now we want to move toward the affect of team sports on children. Dropout rates in youth sports are higher than ever and is currently at very concerning level. What many experts are putting the blame on is the pressure from parents to excel and compete at a high level. That added pressure from parents are creating a surplus of that negative stress and kids aren’t able to get past it. Parents need to understand the limits to push their kids in order for team sports to do it’s job properly and be a release from reality and be a stress reliever. In order to further our findings take a look at this video to help explain what we have found in more depth.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bD-FD44zDn8
In order to experience these team sport benefits some local Dubuque locations that I recommend is the YMCA down on Bluff street. The YMCA is a perfect spot to try out multiple different team sports from basketball leagues, soccer leagues, cycling classes or swim courses. Another recommendation that I would have is to go watch any team sport live and see if you see that as something that would potentially interest you. Whether that be a high school game, a collegiate game, a professional game, or a recreational men’s basketball game at the local gym. Go watch and observe what team sports are all about.
Resources:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1600-0838.2010.01192.x/full
http://europepmc.org/abstract/med/692298
http://europepmc.org/abstract/med/1406204
http://www.apa.org/helpcenter/sport-psychologists.aspx
http://www.pponline.co.uk/encyc/sports-psychology-stress-management-in-sport-358
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF01566164
http://believeperform.com/performance/stress-in-sport/
http://sdtheory.s3.amazonaws.com/SDT/documents/2011_Joesaaretal_PSE.pdf
http://sdtheory.s3.amazonaws.com/SDT/documents/2007_PerreaultGaudrauLapointeLacroix_IJSP.pdf
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3763348/
http://www.scopemed.org/?jft=18&ft=18-1312355856
Wikinews sports (n.d.). Retrieved from: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bc/Wikinews_Sports.png
Psychology of Stress 