Competitive Anxiety Level of International and National Kurash Athletes before and during Competition

Abstract

The anxiety of an athlete in the process of participating in competitions and in the process of competitions is the main obstacle to achieving sports results. This study aimed to compare the state of anxiety before and during the competition of different levels and gender categories of kurash athletes. A total of 450 kurash athletes (international level -225, national level -225, males -238, females -212) voluntarily participated in this study. The verification of participants was carried out at 4 competitions in the territory of Uzbekistan. The instrument used for the research was the Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2 which consisted of 27 items and was tested twice: to examine the level of anxiety before and during the competition. To test the research hypotheses, t-tests were used, and P values were set at p<0.05. The obtained results showed that the participants in the competition received average scores of 45.5783 for male kurash athletes and 46.6532 for female kurash athletes (t-test-6.506, p<0.05). In addition, the international level kurash athletes in the competition had an anxiety score before competition of 39.3590, while the national level kurash athletes had an anxiety score of 44.0218 (F=14.110, p<0.05). The study also revealed that the level of anxiety of international kurash athletes (38.6400) during the competition was lower than that of national kurash athletes (43.8439) (F=7.899, p<0.05). The results of the study indicate the need to optimize the psychological training that kurash athletes of the national category received before competitions, and to organize the training of females based of an individualized approach, in particular, with the implementation of psychological training.

Fear of failure and anxiety in kurash athletes: gender and age differences

“…The study depended on several factors and it concluded that gender had no significant effect on the anxiety level of the athletes. Furthermore, this study had also previously determined the competitive anxiety level of international and national kurash athletes before and during the competition [20].…”