Abstract
This study analyzed the level of state-anxiety of swimming athletes based on sex, category, competitive specialty, competitive level and competitive experience. Participants were 178 male (n = 105) and female (n = 73) swimmers with mean age of 15.51 ± 1.9 years at regional, national and international levels. The Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2 (CASI-2) was used as instrument. Data analysis was conducted using the independent Student’s t-test, Mann-Whitney, Kruskal-Wallis and Spearman correlation. The results showed higher levels of self-confidence in males (p = 0.02) and higher levels of cognitive anxiety in females (p = 0.019). Among the competitive specialties, there were differences between levels of cognitive anxiety (p = 0.045) and self-confidence (p = 0.041) of swimmers. Differences were also observed in levels of cognitive anxiety (p = 0.049), somatic anxiety (p = 0.001) and self-confidence (p = 0.047) between swimming competition levels. It was concluded that male swimmers are more self-confident and less anxious than female swimmers and there are different levels of self-confidence and types of anxiety for different competitive specialties and ranking of competitions.
Highlights
This study aimed to analyze the level of pre-competitive anxiety of swimming athletes through (CSAI-2), seeking to compare levels of cognitive, somatic and self-confidence anxiety according to sex, category, type of test, ranking of competitions and experience, besides verifying the relation between the subscales of competitive anxiety
The research findings show that swimming athletes differ on CA and SC by sex, and that athletes who participate in competitions of better ranking are more self-confident than those of lower competitive level
Swimming athletes had higher self-confidence scores than cognitive and somatic anxiety, which suggests a greater capacity to interpret the competitive context as a challenge to be overcome
Summary
Expectations about performance and pressures exerted by parents, coaches and others involved in competitive sport trigger in many athletes, in addition to stress, emotional or behavioral responses such as fear, apprehension, panic, insecurity, aggression and apathy, capable of promoting exaggerated levels of psychophysiological activation (Paludo, Nunes, Simões & Fernandes, 2017). Many of these emotional changes are linked to the term anxiety which can be established as a negative emotional condition, characterized by nervousness, worry and apprehension, associated with the activation or excitation of the body (Nascimento, Bahiana & Nunes-Júnior, 2012). This is capable of improving, worsening or not interfering with performance, depending on the psychological characteristics of coping of the individual (Silva, Lima, Ribeiro, Costa & Hernandez, 2015)
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