The Relationship between Relaxation Techniques and Sport Performance

Abstract

Anxiety, as negative emotion, affect perceptions in sports competitions, where a large majority of athletes consider anxiety to be debilitative towards performance, which may result in decreases in performance. Several researches on anxiety among athletes indicated that athletes take drugs to combat anxiety and enhance performance. There are many researches indicating that relaxation techniques benefits athletes by enhancing self-confidence, concentration, performance, reducing anxiety and stress, blood pressure as well as muscle tense. The aim of this research was to find the correlation between different kinds of relaxation techniques and sports performance. The sample consisted of 122 athletes. The sample was drawn from athletes who competed in Sports between University (MASUM). The Questionnaire of Imagery, The Questionnaire of Meditation, The Questionnaire of Progressive Muscle Relaxation and The Questionnaire of Techniques of Breathing, was used in this study. Besides that, Sports Performance Questionnaire also has been used in this study to correlate the relationship between the relaxation techniques and performance of athletes. The result showed that there are positive correlation between imagery and sports performance, meditation and sports performance, progressive muscle relaxation and sports performance, breathing techniques and sports performance. Sport psychologist and coaches should use these findings to practice various kinds of relaxation techniques on athletes. Practicing relaxation techniques can reduce the number of athletes taking drugs to reduce anxiety and enhance performance. For sport industry, relaxation techniques product can be sold through the form of CDs, VCDs, DVDs and audio.