Anxiety changes did not influence performance of young swimmers

Abstract

Anxiety is the main emotion, which influences life quality and competitive performance. The purpose of this study was to evaluate anxiety levels on different training phases during a semester season and to analyze the relation between anxiety and athletic training of adolescent swimmers. Twenty swimmers were included, 13 men with an average age of 15.6 ± 1.8 years old, and 7 women with an average age of 13.4 ± 0.7 years old. The swimmers were asked to answer the Trait Anxiety (TA) and Anxiety State (SA) inventories during one season, which had five periods of preparation for a major competition. Results showed that there was no significant difference on the performance (p>0.05) when compared base and competition periods to all swimmers, or when analyzed per gender or age categories. The change of swimming race time (base and competition period) of girls (0.6 ± 3.3 s) and boys (0.1 ± 7.9 s), also was compared, but there was no significant difference between them (p = 0.97). We concluded that the girls presented higher scores to anxiety in the competitive period compared to boys. As well as infantile category showed higher state anxiety scores compared to juvenile. However, there was no correlation between changes of anxiety scores and performance.