Klingner, F. (Fabian) (2021) The heat is on: Investigating the relationship between competitive success and performance under pressure in elite surfing. thesis, Sport Sciences.
Full text available on request.Abstract
Background: The Attentional Control Theory: Sport (ACTS) suggests that a bi-directional relationship exists between performance and perceived psychological pressure. That means, under high situational pressure and after prior failures athletes may create substantial anxiety from their interpretation of the cost of failure and the probability of it. Doing so may negatively affect subsequent performance. However, only few studies tested these predictions with non-experimental data. Aim of research: This study aimed to investigate the relationship of performance with situational pressure and performance errors, by using play-by-play data from men’s and women’s elite competitive surfing. Furthermore, potential differences in how high-ranking surfers (HR) and low-ranking surfers (LR) respond to situational pressure were explored. Methods: All actions (n=6497) of the 2019 men’s and women’s world championship tour (WCT) were annotated based on video recordings. Annotations included situation-based pressure levels and performance errors. Binary logistic regression was used to investigate the relationship of performance errors with situational pressure and prior errors, as well as their relationship to competitive success. Multiple one-way ANOVAs were performed to investigate whether HR outperform LR under pressure and after performance errors. Results: Confirming previous research, prior-errors, and situational pressure, as well as their interaction significantly predicted the occurrence of subsequent performance errors. Situational pressure also predicted the outcome of 1-on-1 heats in surfing, however performance errors and their interaction with pressure did not. Although, HR performed better than LR in high-pressure situations and after prior error, they did so across all levels of pressure. Conclusion: Our findings further confirm the assumption of ACTS in that a bi-directional relationship exists between performance and pressure. However, regardless of ranking, all surfers seem to be negatively affected by those factors. This further underlines the value of interventions that help athletes to perform under high psychological pressure. Keywords Surfing, coping with pressure, clutch performance, choking, anxiety
| Item Type: | Thesis (UNSPECIFIED) |
|---|---|
| Supervisor name: | Kempe, dr. M. |
| Faculty: | Medical Sciences |
| Date Deposited: | 13 May 2022 12:28 |
| Last Modified: | 13 May 2022 12:28 |
| URI: | https://umcg.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/3304 |
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