Relaxation Techniques on Athletes’ Performance in Sports: An Overview

Sport is characterised by both positive and negative emotions, which can harm athlete’s performance. Emotions such as stress, anxiety, anger, even excitement can impact their performance. Sometimes athletes get tensed-up such that it prevents them from performing their best at crucial times. Also, success in sports is determined partly by physical conditioning, skill and preparation but it is also influenced by psychological factors such as self-confidence, motivation, concentration and emotional control. When two athletes of equal and often unequal ability compete, the athlete with mental edge most often emerges as the winner. Athletes can achieve this edge with the use of mental skills training. One of these mental skills training is a relaxation technique. Relaxation can be defined as a psychological strategy used by sports performers to help manage or reduce stress-related emotions (for instance anxiety and anger) and physical symptoms (for example physical tension and increased heart rate) during high pressurized situations. There are many types of research indicating that relaxation technique benefits athletes by enhancing self-confidence, concentration, performance, reducing anxiety and stress, blood pressure as well as muscle tense. Relaxation can be done individually or in a group. It is the focus of this paper to examine the influence of relaxation techniques on athlete’s performance in sports. Also, different types of relaxation techniques are discussed all of which, can be used to help the athlete relax and perform optimally in their sports.