Stress Management mechanism among Football players

Introduction

            Stressors and how they are handled is the focal point of this research study. It represents a critical field of applied sport, more specifically within active sports. It is critical that we acquire awareness and understanding of what stressors exist and the resulting coping mechanisms that are commonly followed. The athlete's and coach's stress levels can have a major effect on results. Coach stress may have a negative effect on an athlete, demonstrating the need for stressors to be investigated further within a coaching environment. The Transactional Model of Stress and Coping (TMSC) were used to underpin this study. The model portrays stressors and coping scenarios as arising in a series of steps, the first of which is the primary assessment. The primary assessment represents a stage in which a hazard, harm, or challenge must be addressed. Following this is the secondary assessment, which includes an examination of available coping tools. Constructive coping in athlete research as seeing conditions as obstacles rather than risks. A strategy either focusing the problem or emotion or avoidance are the most commonly used coping dimensions. The Transactional Model of Stress and Coping (TMSC') has been investigated in sport and coaching and it has also found proof of coaching's negative psychological impact, such as self-doubt and frustration. These are examples of the stressors that coaching can cause for the player in different environment. According to previous research, a Football coach's stress is caused by poor results, ineffective training environments, and officiating, as well as the competition atmosphere and athlete behaviour.

            Players face a variety of stressors in the Football related to training, performance, personal capacities, coach, team-mates and spectator’s expectations. Since stress and coping are transactional processes that do not occur in isolation, it is important to understand the coping mechanisms used by players when confronted to stressors. Problem solving, knowledge gathering, self-reliance, and seeking help were the most prominent coping mechanisms in players. Capturing stress and coping data from a participant later on can be skewed by memory decay or information about the task's performance, resulting in biased results.In terms of promotion of health and well-being, participation in recreational activities play significant role. Success in professional sports is determined by the physical abilities as well as mental toughness of the players in terms of dealing with the different types of stresses. Competency and emotional soundness of the player have significant impact on their performance.

            Football is a game asking for a combination of mental calmness, power, strength, skill, speed and fitness on part of the player. In the process of domination in performance players pass through different types of critical situations like physical hurt, mental disappointment, biased decisions et c. This is part and regular feature of the game and players’ must should know the art of how to deal with these types of situation. This is the most prevalent factor influencing players' performance, well-being and success. Sports psychology researchers are interested in its implications and evolution. Everyone is exposed to stressful events; however, the level of stress associated with a specific situation is determined by individual interpretation. Stress, in general, decreases creativity, efficiency, and one's ability to show their best in performance, so it is important to be able to minimise stress in order to achieve higher quality.

            Numerous studies have shown that stress decreases success in sports, so reducing stress is critical (Amoura and Baldes, 2017). Players face a variety of stressors in sports. Few sport experts have arranged these stressors in a meaningful way other than mentioning the sport challenge during which they occurred to date. The stressors that resulted could be traced back to the organisation and were divided into four categories: setting, personal, leadership, and teamwork. Selection, finances, and training climate, as well as housing, transport, and competition environment, were all environmental concerns. Nutrition, injury, and goals and expectations were among the personal concerns. Coaches and coaching styles were among the leadership concerns, while the team environment, support network, responsibilities, and communication were among the issues raised by team members. In the context of this pretext, each of these sources may potentially lead to a player's stress. Coping with stress is a personal response, and everyone handles stress differently. This research will fill in the gaps by identifying and explaining the importance of understanding the social dynamics of understanding the Football Player’s' behaviour in terms of dealing with different types of stressful environment. Pivot of this research study is to identify the stressors and its coping mechanisms among Football Players of six different universities in Hazara division, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Literature Review

            Identifying the stressors and evaluating the right strategy to cope with the prevailing stressors is a key factor in deciding whether or not athletes can reach their desired level of success and whether or not participating in sport will be a rewarding experience for them (Zullow et al., 2017).

Stressors

          Competitive, operational, and personal stress are the three forms of stress (Beach, Nien, & Duda, 2018). Understanding the phenomenon of stress will aid both coach and the player in having a big picture perspective of what is hindering or supporting results.

(a) Competition Stressors:

            There are stressors that are specifically linked to the player’s playing environment. They are, in essence, the most noticeable stressors, and they are most specifically related to what occurs during preparation or during a game. Injury, return from injury, pressures leading up to game day, pressures to win during a big game are all common competition stressors (Çetinkaya and Ġmamoğlu, 2018).

(b) Organisational Stressors:

            Common organisational stressors include the changes in the working environment in terms of changes in the coach training material, training practicalities (Clayton et al., 2018). Internal friction among the teammates and coaches, a perceived lack of cooperation, assistance with each other, and travel and housing problems. The coaching and organizational set up that affects a team can be related to, and thereby solved, organisational stressors.

(c) Personal Stressors :

            These are environmental and personal demands associated with the player as a result of personal life activities. Health problems, financial issues, stressful life experiences, and outside obligations are all common personal stressors. Personal stressors are impossible to detect by default. Players can bring problems from their personal lives into competition and training with them. As a consequence, it's important for the player to build a healthy, trustworthy relationship with the coach and trainer so that they can share about their personal problems (Hanton et al., 2016).

Coping Strategy:

            In light of various assessments, literature has established three main forms of strategies; Problem-focused coping, Emotion-focused coping and Avoidance coping (Zullow et al., 2017).

Problem-focused Coping

            Problem-focused coping includes both therapeutic and interpersonal attempts to collect knowledge on what to do as well as trigger behaviours to modify the stressors reality (Cooper et al., 2016). Problem-focused coping is widely used where a person feels that the situation can be improved by intervention (Cowburn & Foster, 2018). Several studies have suggested that using Problem-focused coping mechanisms is linked to improved implementation (Dorsey et al., 2017). Emotion-focused Coping

Emotionally driven Coping

            This type of coping refers to intellectual and relational efforts to steer stressors-induced emotions without ever affecting the underlying causes of the distress (Flournoy & Browne, 2018). Emotionally driven coping tends to operate in two ways; by shifting the meaning of what has arisen by reappraising the disturbing situation in a less compromising context, or changing how the person interacts with the unfortunate circumstances (Gloppen & Markham, 2018). Refusal, unwinding, self-fault, shirking, acknowledgement, and impractical rationale are some examples of possible feeling-centered adapting methodologies.

Avoidance Coping

            Avoidance Coping refers to when a person ignores and doesn't cope with a stressors specifically by suffocating both the stressors and the bad emotions that come with it. Evasion adaptation entails both behavioural and emotional efforts to remove oneself from a distressing situation (Farkas et al., 2019). Disregarding, restricting, mental deleting, and engaging in another irrelevant task are also examples of templates. Despite popular opinion, one of the most common ways people, especially teens, cope with stress is through avoidance coping (Wentura et al., 2016). It may be either maladaptive or appropriate in many critical situations (Yamak et al., 2016).

Material & Methods

            Analytical and cross-sectional study design was used for this research study. The population of the study includes all 114 Football male players from six different universities of Hazara division (KPK) who were selected through purposive sampling technique.

Objectives

1. To explore the stress among the Football players.

2. To explore the coping mechanisms among the Football players.

Hypotheses

H1 There is stress among the Football players.

H1 There are coping mechanisms among the Football players.

Discussion

            During practices, the Football players were subject to a number of stressors, which seemed to have an effect on the team's overall results. Specifically, team sport players described communal sources of stress as "our" problem, which included social pressure issues (e.g., opponents' provocation, coaches' behaviours), interpersonal relationships (e.g., negative behaviours, negative social interactions), performance issues (e.g., low controllability of the score or situation, opponents' dominance), and logistical adversity (e.g., equipment). Overall, the results corroborated prior studies that looked at team sport athletes' individual causes of stress from an interpersonal perspective. Interpersonal aspects of stress and its coping in sports setting has been a new spectrum of the problem (Zullow et al., 2017; Farkas et al., 2019). While previous studies have looked at communal coping mechanisms in a sport environment, such as inside coach–athlete (Fiske et al., 2017) or within communities (Gordan, 2017) no work has looked at them in team sports.

             The aim of this research was found out the major stressors of Football players and coping mechanisms used to deal with these stressors. This study lends methodological support to previous studies on stressors and coping mechanisms in sports environments. Football players used a number of mechanisms to cope with sports related stressors, according to the results. Problem-centered copying, emotion-focused copying, passive copying, and evasion copying are all techniques used in difficult environments (Yamak et al., 2016). Majority of the players used problem-focused coping and emotion-focused coping as their main coping mechanisms. Passive copying and omission coping were less common, but a few players used them in circumstances where they feared they couldn't manage themselves, such as playing in difficult conditions or following the decisions of controversial referees. Just a few players use tactics like self-criticism, accusing others, adopting a pessimistic mindset, taking / abusing drugs, and appealing to religion.

            Furthermore, in contrast to other fields (Bray & Born, 2016), it is critical to recognise the uniqueness of communal coping in the context of team sport, where performance goals, exceeding limits, and facing adversity are all commonplace. In order to achieve good team results, team sport players use complex communal coping mechanisms to cope with mutual stressors by pooling their energy and developing cooperative behaviour (Del Pilar Vílchez, & De Francisco, 2017). Furthermore, in contrast to other fields Busse (2018) has confirmed that it is critical to recognise the uniqueness of communal coping in the context of team sport, where performance goals, exceeding limits, and facing adversity are all commonplace. In order to achieve good team results, team sport players use complex communal coping mechanisms to cope with mutual stressors by pooling their energy and developing cooperative behaviour.