Performance-related experiences and coping during races: A case of an elite sailor

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Abstract

Objectives

To show that describing and structuring athletes’ subjective experiences during competition can be instrumental and supplemental in better understanding the implementation of their coping strategies.

Design

A single-case study.

Methods

Based on the theoretical framework of the Individual Zones of Optimal Functioning (IZOF) model, two semi-structured interviews were conducted with an elite sailor about his experiences in a very good and a very bad race. Procedures involved (a) recall of subjective performance-related experiences; (b) distinguishing of experiences into situational (state-like) experiences, relatively stable patterns of (trait-like) experiences, and meta-experiences; (c) identification and composite sequence analysis (CSA) of processes of awareness, acceptance, and action; and (d) a social validation interview.

Results

The participant's description of his performance-related experiences during both races showed the presence of all three levels of experience. Race descriptions included 13 situations in which the participant specifically recounted the implementation of coping strategies. CSA showed that coping strategies were related to existing meta-experiences and that these meta-experiences were, in turn, related to the awareness of experienced situational states. In a reaction to the interview, the participant said that he was positively surprised about the central role that meta-experiences played in his performances and told to have obtained many new insights that he immediately wanted to integrate in his training program.

Conclusions

Results provide initial support for the idea that meta-experiences (1) are instrumental and additional in explaining and predicting the impact of experiences on performance; (2) determine an athlete's perception and choice of coping strategies; and (3) should therefore be a major target for interventions. Further research is needed in order to replicate and extend the present findings as well as to explore practical implications.

Introduction

In their striving for consistent excellence, athletes make use of coping strategies based on their performance-related experiences. Generally, coping strategies reflect processes of constantly changing cognitive and behavioral efforts aimed at managing specific external and/or internal demands or conflicts that are appraised as taxing or exceeding one's resources (Hardy, Jones, & Gould, 1996; Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). According to Folkman and Lazarus (Folkman & Lazarus, 1980; Lazarus (2000a), Lazarus (2000b)), coping strategies—based on their impact on the person-environment relationship—include emotion-focused and problem-focused coping. Emotion-focused coping is more reactive and only aims to alter one's (emotional) perception of a situation (including such strategies as relaxation), whereas problem-focused coping is more proactive. This often involves pre-planned (purposeful), direct actions for changing the person–environment relation or oneself in order to optimize a certain situation (e.g., information gathering, goal-setting, and problem solving).

Understanding how elite athletes learn to cope with specific situations that they encounter during their performances has been a field that has interested many researchers throughout sport psychology history. The main emphasis during the last 25 years has been on the identification of specific strategies and coping skills and the development of inventories to assess athletes’ abilities and dispositions to implement them (Loehr, 1982; Mahoney, Gabriel, & Perkins, 1987; Nideffer, 1976; Smith, Schutz, Smoll, & Ptacek, 1995; Thomas, Murphy, & Hardy, 1999).

Although each of these inventories has certainly proven its usefulness in the past (Thomas et al., 1999), in most studies athletes’ implementation of coping strategies was usually unrelated to specific performance situations and their performance-related experiences. Moreover, the time sequence in which events related to the implementation of these coping strategies occurred was often ignored. While this approach might render information about an athlete's general ability to cope or about the frequency with which certain strategies are implemented, qualitatively important questions such as where, when, how, and in relation to what these strategies are implemented—as well as the degree to which they are successful or not—remained unanswered.

In trying to help athletes find ways of coping successfully with the demands of their competitions, it is our conviction that collecting the answers to such questions and using those answers as a basis for future interventions is an important step towards optimization of their performance. Therefore, the quantitative approach that is taken in many of the aforementioned questionnaires and inventories should be supplemented with qualitative, ethnographic (Krane & Baird, 2005), phenomenological (Dale, 1996; Kerry & Armour, 2000; Nicholls, Holt, & Polman, 2005), and individualized (Hanin (1997), Hanin (2000), Hanin (2003), Hanin (2004), Hanin (2007)) studies.

The current exploratory qualitative study attempts to analyze an athlete's performance-related experiences and the implementation of coping strategies in two opposing contexts: a bad and a good sailing race. This approach, with a clear within-individual emphasis (the same individual in two different races), employs the Individual Zones of Optimal Functioning (IZOF) model (Hanin (2000), Hanin (2003), Hanin (2004)) as a conceptual framework and methodological tool. In the sections that follow, selected aspects of the IZOF model bearing on the purposes of this study are briefly reviewed. These include the notion of experience and its derivatives (state-like, trait-like, and meta-experiences) and the awareness–acceptance–action (“triple A”) framework in explaining coping strategies. For a more detailed description of the IZOF model, the reader is referred to several reviews (Hanin (2000), Hanin (2003), Hanin (2004), Hanin (2007); Harmison, 2006; Robazza, 2006).

Section snippets

Theoretical rationale

To study something as an indivisible unity, according to Vygotsky (1984), it is necessary to find a construct that appropriately captures the characteristics of both interacting elements. In psychology, experience is a relevant construct for studying person–environment interactions because it reflects an individual's attitude towards different aspects of the environment and the meaning of the environment for the individual. Experience has a biosocial orientation as every experience is always

Methodology

The current case-study used an ethnographic (Krane & Baird, 2005), phenomenological (Dale, 1996; Kerry & Armour, 2000; Nicholls et al., 2005), and individualized (Hanin (1997), Hanin (2000), Hanin (2003), Hanin (2004)) approach to describe situational experiences, relatively stable patterns of experiences, meta-experiences, and coping strategies of a highly skilled, elite-level sailor. Acknowledging that each person socially constructs, interprets, and reacts to social settings (Krane & Baird,

Results

Table 1, Table 2 show the situational experiences, relatively stable patterns of experiences, and meta-experiences that were reported by Andy in the description of his bad race (Table 1), which took place at a world championship about a year before the interview, and his good race (Table 2), which took place about 1 month before the interview at a big international regatta. In the tables, experiences are depicted and structured along eight specific stages (i.e. legs) of a sailing race. In

Discussion

The aim of the current study was (1) to investigate the validity and usefulness of meta-experiences as a determinant of athletes’ perception and choice of coping strategies; (2) to discover if the triple A framework could be instrumental in describing, structuring, explaining, and predicting athletes’ implementation of coping strategies; and (3) to examine the validity and functionality of the IZOF model in distinguishing between situational (state-like) experiences, relatively stable patterns

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      As such, from a practical point of view, mental training programs could help to increase athletes’ awareness of meta experiences (i.e., make them more accessible) and, at least with elite athletes, target (e.g., improve, develop) those skills that athletes themselves know (by experience) to be necessary and effective. For this, an analysis of individual coping processes in good and bad competitions, as laid down in the current study, might be a good starting point (also see Nieuwenhuys et al., 2008). One shortcoming of the current approach is that it is based on athletes’ recall of their experiences during competitions they performed in the past and that, for several reasons, these recollections may be biased or become inaccurate over time (e.g., Ericsson & Simon, 1980; also see Nicholls & Polman, 2007).

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