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Stress levels can have a big impact on your performance, and can have a negative and positive effect on your game. Most people when they think of the symptoms of stress, they imagine it to be a negative aspect when it comes to playing their sports, but without some of these responses, your body would not be able to meet the demands of your sport and be able to perform to your best. So in order for us to perform to the best of our abilities, we have to have symptoms of stress, for our body to be able to cope with the demands of the sport.

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The model demonstrates the sharp declines in performance as a result of physiological arousal such as elevated heart rate and muscle tension is coupled with worry and negative thoughts. Athletes will excel when their physiological arousal is at an optimal level, but their performance declines dramatically when it gets too high.
Hardy has emphasised the importance of self confidence in avoiding the negative effect of anxiety on performance, and he also suggested that self confident athletes are more likely to avoid the catastrophic effects of competition anxiety for longer periods of time.
The biggest difference between the inverted U hypothesis and the catastrophe theory is the drop in performance does not have to be a steady decline when arousal levels become too high.

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When arousal is at it's optimal level, this is when performance levels will be at their highest, but when arousal is either too low or too high, performance levels will be lower. As arousal levels increase, so does performance level, but only up to the optimal point. At this optimal point of arousal, the athletes performance will be at it's highest. This theory argues that at lower levels of arousal, performance will not be as high as it should be because the athlete is neither physiologically nor psychologically ready, whether the heart rate is too low, or the concentration levels are too low. This theory is widely accepted because most athletes and coaches can report:
- Personal experiences of under-arousal (boredom)
- Over arousal (excitement to the point of lack of concentration)
- Optimum arousal (focus on nothing but sports performance)

High level of arousal is necessary for the best performance in gross motor skills, such as weightlifting.

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The drive theory view of the relationship between arousal and performance in linear and direct. This theory indicates that as arousal levels increase, the performance level will increase. This means that the more 'learned' a skill is, the more likely it is that a high level of arousal will result in a better performance.
Late learning, or for simple tasks, the dominant response is the correct response, but for complex tasks, or ones that are early learning, the dominant one is the incorrect one.
This theory can be summarised by the equation:
Performance = arousal x skill.

However, there is evidence to suggest that athletic performance is benefited by arousal only up to a certain point, and once you go past this point, the athlete becomes too aroused and their performance decreases.

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The definition of arousal is "a physiological state of alertness and anticipation which prepares the body for action".
Arousal is considered to be neutral because it is neither positive or negative, it involves both physiological activation (increased heart rate, sweating rate or respiratory rate) and psychological activity (increased attention). Individuals who are optimally aroused are those who are mentally and physically activated to perform.

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Trait Anxiety
Trait anxiety "is a personality predistortion. It is a predisposition to perceive a certain environmental situations as threatening, and to respond to these situations with increased state anxiety" - Spielberg, 1971.
Trait anxiety is an aspect of personality and part of an individual's pattern of behaviour. Someone with a high level of trait anxiety is likely to become worried in a variety of situations, even when the situations is non-threatening.

State Anxiety
State anxiety is described as "an immediate emotional state that is characterised by apprehension, fear, tension and an increase in physiological arousal" - Cot, 1998.

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Effects of anxiety on sports performance

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Effects of anxiety on sports performance

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For skills that require a great deal of concentration such as golf, putting and potting a ball in snooker, anxiety can lead to lower performance levels due to reduced:
- Concentration
- Attention levels
- Co-ordination faults

In sports such as weight lifting and discuss throw, anxiety can have a negative effect on performance, due to factors like freezing and coordination faults. These negative effects can cause your performance levels to decrease, which can then lead to a significant decrease in self-confidence.

But not all symptoms of anxiety are negative, some symptoms of anxiety can be beneficial for sports performance, such as increased:
- blood flow
- breathing rate
- respiratory rate
These are physiologically beneficial to the athlete.
But if the athlete believes they are happening because of their inability to meet a specific demand, it is this perception that makes the symptoms negative.

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The definition of anxiety is suggests that it is a "negative mental state characterised by worry and apprehension".
Anxiety can adversely affect sports performance, but it is seen as a negative mental state that is the negative aspect of sports.

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When you're in a situation you find threatening, your stress response is activated, the way you react depends on how seriously you interpret the threat, and the response is controlled by two parts of your nervous system:

Sympathetic nervous system
- This is the part of the system is responsible for the 'flight or fight' response.
- The body is simulated, and it is caused to expand energy, due to sympathetic division, when the sympathetic division is activated mobilises the body for an emergency.
- It gives you the energy you need to confront the threat or run away from it.
The sympathetic nervous system produces these physiological responses
- Increase in perspiration to cool the body and sugar is released into the bloodstream to provide more energy.
- Heart and breathing rates are increased because of this, as well as this, the muscle tension increases as does the adrenaline production.
-  Blood diverted to working muscles to provide more oxygen.
- Dilated pupils
- Slows down digestion
- Increased metabolism
- A dry mouth

Parasympathetic nervous system
Once the initial stress has passed, that's when the Parasympathetic nervous system begins to work. This is part of the system that helps you relax, because of the parasympathetic division, which conserves energy, and brings bodily functions back into balance.
This is achieved by producing the following responses:
- Makes muscles relax
- Slows Metabolism
- Increased digestion rate
- Decreases body temperature
- Decreases heart rate
- Constricts the pupils
- Increased saliva production
- Decreases breathing rate

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There are many causes of stress, there are internal factors and external factors that can contribute to having stress. Some of the internal factors that can lead to stress are sickness and disease, not having enough sleep, being overly self critical and being a perfectionist. Being a perfectionist and overly self critical can cause stress because if something isn't perfect, or you didn't do something to the best of your ability, you will feel like you have let yourself down, and will cause stress. There are also external factors that can cause stress as well, such as major life events, such as a family member passing away, this could have a massive impact on an athlete, because they will obviously be emotional, and may not know how to deal with the emotion, this may cause stress to the athlete. Other external factors that can cause stress are the environment, negative social interactions, day to day hassles and lifestyle factors.
Sports environments can also cause stress, and there are two aspects of sports performance that can cause stress, which are:
- The importance
- The amount of uncertainty that surrounds it
The importance of a sports event can cause someone stress because it could be a very important game, and they feel like they have to perform to the best of their ability, otherwise they will let everyone down, so they feel under pressure to perform in certain situations. The amount of uncertainty that surrounds it could cause stress for the players because they don't know what's going to happen, what's going to happen to them if they lose.

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There are two types of stress, which are distress and eustress. Distress is what people are normally talking about when they're talking about stress, as it's the bad form of stress. Distress is an extreme form of anxiety, apprehension, worry or nervousness as a result of a perceived inability to meet demands.

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This is the other type of stress, that doesn't get discussed as much as distress. Eustress is the good form of stress, that gives you the feeling of fulfilment. Some athletes will even seek out a stressful situation, in order for them to challenge and push themselves to their limit, this can help the athlete because it can increase their skill level, and help them focus their attention on aspects of their chosen sport. The benefits of this is that intrinsic motivation will usually increase as well.

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'Stress is a pattern of negative physiological states and psychological responses occurring in situations where people perceive threats to their well-being which they may be unable to meet' - Lazarus and Folkman 1984