COPING STRATEGIES IN SPORT

Coping has been defined by Lazarus and Folkman (1984) 📚 as "constantly changing cognitive 🧠 and behavioral 🧍‍♂️ efforts to manage specific external 🌍 and/or internal 💭 demands that are appraised as taking or exceeding the resources of the person ⚖️".

Coping involves a personal response 🙋‍♂️ on the part of the athlete 🏃‍♀️ to address the stress response 😰. The athlete feels anxious 😟 in a competitive situation 🏟️ and tries to use personal coping resources 🛠️ to reduce anxiety ⬇️. The use of various relaxations 😌 or arousal management procedures ⚡ to reduce anxiety is commonly referred to as stress management 🧘‍♂️. When an athlete uses a stress management technique or any other cognitive 🧠 or behavioral 🧍 intervention, this is a form of coping 🔄.

In this lecture 📖 we will focus our discussion on:

A conceptual framework for coping strategies and styles 🧩
Measurement of coping skills 📏
The dynamic nature of coping skill 🔄
Factors that enhance the generalizability of coping 🔁
Coping strategies used by elite athletes 🏆

Conceptual Framework for Coping Strategies and Styles 🧠🧩

Coping strategies are of two types 🔀: problem-focused 🛠️ and emotion-focused 💓. Problem-focused coping strategies center on alleviating the environmental stimulus 🌍 that is causing the stress response 😰. For example, in cricket 🏏, if a right-handed batsman is very anxious 😟 when batting against a left-arm bowler, an appropriate problem-focused coping strategy might be to get more experience 🎯 against a left-arm bowler during practice 🏋️‍♂️. Other common names for problem-focused coping include the terms "task-focused coping" 📋 and sometimes "action-focused coping" ⚙️.

Emotion-focused coping strategies 💓 seek to regulate emotions 😌 in order to reduce or manage cognitive distress 🧠😟. In the same cricket example 🏏, the batsman would focus his coping on controlling his emotions 🎛️ through anxiety reduction techniques 🧘‍♂️. Instead of attacking the source of the problem ⚔️, through problem-focused coping, the athlete seeks to reduce or eliminate the symptoms associated with stress 😰.

Several authors ✍️ have proposed a third coping strategy and called it "avoidance coping" 🚫. Anshel and others however, have pointed out that rather than being a coping strategy, avoidance coping is really a coping style 🔁. Two different coping styles are identified: approach coping ➡️ and avoidance coping ⛔. Some athletes prefer an approach style of coping ➡️ in which their coping preference is to address the stressful situation directly 🎯. Conversely, some athletes prefer an avoidance style of coping ⛔, in which their preferred coping style is to solve the problem by avoiding the problem 🚪. Avoidance coping is also referred to as repression 🙈, disengagement 🔕, or rejection ❌.

Based upon these four different coping strategies include 📑:

Approach/problem-focused coping ➡️🛠️
Approach/emotion-focused coping ➡️💓
Avoidance/problem-focused coping ⛔🛠️
Avoidance/emotion-focused coping ⛔💓

Athletes cope with stress 😰 by either approaching ➡️ or avoiding ⛔ the situation. Within this framework, they will either adopt an active problem-solving strategy 🛠️ or an emotion-focused strategy 💓.

Measurement of Coping Skill 📏🧠

Several different pencil-and-paper inventories ✏️📄 have been developed to measure coping resources 🧰. Among them are:

Ways of Coping Checklist (WOCC) by Crocker, Folkman & Lazarus (1992) 📋
COPE and MCOPE instruments by Craver, Scheier and Weintraub (1989) 🧪
Coping inventory for stressful situations (CISS) by Endler & Parker 📊
The Coping Style in Sport Survey (CSSS) by Anshel et al. (1990) 🏟️

The Coping Style in Sport Survey (CSSS) 📑 was developed to reflect the coping styles and strategies 🔄. The CSSS is composed of 134 items 🧮 associated with seven common sports-related stressors 🏃‍♂️. The athletes' task is to indicate how she would usually respond 🤔 relative to the following acute stressors ⚠️:

After making a physical or mental error ❌
After being criticized by the coach 🧑‍🏫
After observing my opponent cheat 🚫
After experiencing intense pain or injury 🤕
After receiving a "bad" call by an official 🚨
After successful performance by an opponent 🏆
After poor environmental conditions such as bad weather 🌧️, poor ground/court conditions 🏟️ or negative crowd reactions 👎

The Dynamic Nature of Coping Styles and Strategies 🔄🧠

Sport psychologists 🧠 have been interested in knowing if athletes' coping strategies are dispositional 🧬 in nature or if they are consistent with a dynamic process 🔄. The dispositional hypothesis posits that athletes have a certain learned or innate way 🧩 of coping with stress-related situations 😰. Conversely, the dynamic hypothesis posits that athletes' coping responses are dynamic and fluid 💧, changing from situation to situation 🔁. Research 🔬 shows that athletes utilize a dynamic as opposed to dispositional approach to coping with stress ✔️.

Applied research 📊 (Gould, Eklund & Jackson, 1993; Gould, Finch and Jackson, 1993; Park, 2000) supported the hypothesis that coping strategies and styles are dynamic and fluid 🔄.

Factors That Enhance the Generalizability of Coping 🔁🌍

The skills athletes acquire 🎯 to deal with anxiety 😰, low self-confidence 💔, and other stressful sport-related situations 🏟️ may generalize to other more global life situations 🌍. This means that if an athlete can learn to cope with failure ❌ (or success 🏆) in an athletic situation, the coping skill may be transferred 🔄 to another sport situation or even a stressful nonsport situation such as illness 🤒, financial setback 💰⬇️, loss of job 🧳 or loss of friend 💔.

In this regard 📌, Smith (1999) identifies five different factors that can facilitate the generalizability of coping skills 🔁. These factors are as follow:

1. Recognition of stimulus generality 👀

Many stressful life situations 😰 are very similar to athletic situations 🏟️. Recognizing the similarity 🔍 and recalling the specific coping strategy 🧠 that was effective in the athletic situations will facilitate transfer 🔄 of coping skill to another situation.

2. Broad application of coping skill 🌐

Some coping skills are very specific 🎯 to a specific athletic situation, but others are very broad 🌍. Progressive relaxation 🧘‍♂️, for example, is a broad coping skill that should generalize to numerous sport and nonsport situations 🏃‍♂️🏠.

3. Personal significance of coping application ❤️

A coping skill that was effective in reducing stress 😌 related to an issue of great personal significance 💖 will be remembered 🧠. Coping skills that have proven to be personally important will generalize to other situations 🔁.

4. Internal locus of control of coping skill 🎛️

When an athlete claims "ownership" 🏅 of a coping skill it is more easily transferred 🔄 to other situations.

5. Learned resourcefulness 🧰

Learning a specific coping skill 🎯 to address a specific life stress 😰 is effective. The resourceful individual 🔑 looks for broader application of all coping skills and learning experiences 📘.

Coping Strategies Used By Elite Athletes 🏆💪

Gould and colleagues 📚 (Gould, Eklund & Jackson, 1993; Gould, Finch & Jackson, 1993) studied coping strategies reported by Olympic wrestlers 🤼‍♂️ and National Champion figure skaters ⛸️. Thirty-nine different themes 🧩 were found and then were reduced down to four broad dimensions 📊:

Thought control strategies 💭 (example, self-talk 🗣️, positive thinking ➕, thought control 🧠)
Attentional focus strategies 🎯 (example concentration control 🔍, tunnel vision 👁️)
Emotional control strategies 💓 (example, arousal control ⚡, relaxation 😌, visualization 🌈)
Behavioral strategies 🧍 (example, set routine ⏰, rest 😴, control of the environment 🌍)

All athletes use all four coping strategies 🔄. Female sportspersons 👩‍🦰 utilize social support 🤝 as a strategy more often than males 👨. Elite athletes 🏆 tend to use an approach style of coping ➡️, with the majority of the strategies being problem or action focused 🛠️. All these strategies may be categorized under the heading of psychological training 🧠, physical training 💪 and strategizing 📋, and somatic relaxation 😌.

References 📚

Cox, H. Richard. (2002). Sport Psychology: Concepts and Applications. (Fifth Edition). New York: McGraw-Hill Companies 🏢

Lavallec. D., Kremer, J., Moran, A., & Williams. M. (2004). Sports Psychology: Contemporary Themes. New York: Palgrave Macmillan Publishers 📖