Reading Research: Coping strategies of elite figure skaters

Yesterday, I looked at the framework in which sports pychologists view the coping strategies and styles used by athletes.

Today, I’m going to look briefly at a research article about coping strategies as they are used by elite athletes, called Coping Strategies Used by National Champion Figure Skaters, Gould, Finch and Jackson, Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport, 4, 1993.

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Coping strategies used by elite athletes

The researchers identified the following different coping strategies used by the athletes:

1. Rational thinking and self-talk – this was the most common coping strategy (cited by 76% of the athletes) and involved logical and rational examination of potential stressors, with a focus on improving and maintaining what could be controlled.
2.  Positive focus and orientation – the second-most common coping strategy (cited by 71% of the athletes) was the concious effort by the athletes to turn negative thoughts into positive ones.  Whenever they perceived that they were developing negative thoughts because of adversity, they stopped themselves and began new trains of thought with a positive focus.
3. Social support – another very common coping strategy used by the athletes was social support (cited by 71% of the athletes) and involved the effort to seek out emotional, technical and informational assistance from others.
4. Time management and prioritisation – the athletes (65%) reported the importance of making time for personal interests, personal growth and relationships.
5. Precompetitive mental preparation and anxiety management - the athletes (65%) stressed the importance of cognitive, physical and behavioural techniques for coping with the cognitive (mental) and somatic (physiological) implications of competitive stress.
6. Training hard and smart – a large number of the athletes (65%) used hard training and intelligent training to deal with the stress of being at the top of their game.
7. Isolation and deflection – a surprising number of the athletes (47%) used avoidance measures to prevent certain pressures from getting to them, including not reading the media in which their events were being covered.
8. Ignoring – and a still more surprising number of athletes engaged in ignoring stressors completely (41%).  This goes to show that even elite athletes are human after all.
9. Striving for a positive working relationship with team members – obviously, working with other team members can be stressful and some athletes find that developing positive working relationships with their team can help alleviate some friction and therefore stress. 
10. Adopting healthy eating behaviours – for athletes requiring a particular power-weight ratio, maintaining a particular bodyweight is a source of stress that is mitigated against by healthy eating.
11. Reactive behaviours – reactive behaviours are spur-of-the-moment reactions to stressors rather than preplanned or constructive responses.  A small proportion of athletes (29%) admitted using such reactions.
12. No distinct strategy – an amazingly cool 24% of the athletes perceived that they had no real coping strategy for dealing with stress.

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I’ve done a couple of other research reviews on similar sports psychology topics and I’ve put them up on this sports psychology research page.