ABSTRACT
Pressure-filled moments where athletes are expected to execute high-level skill for successful performance are inevitable in sport. These moments are part of what make sport entertaining, but the performance expectations placed on athletes by themselves and others are often anything but amusing. This chapter introduces current theoretical and research understandings of arousal in sport and offer applied considerations for those working with athletes. Anxiety is a negative emotional state characterized by nervousness, worry, and apprehension and associated with activation or arousal of the body. Determining athletes’ arousal levels can be done by assessing physiological, cognitive, and behavioral symptoms. Arousal-performance theories have been proposed, modified, and critiqued for decades. Each of these theories has aimed to explain the complex relationship between arousal and/or state anxiety and performance. The individual zones of optimal functioning model emphasizes that coaches need to find each athlete’s optimal zone and then teach them how to alter their anxiety levels to get them in their optimal zone.
