Article: A Practical Resource for Supporting Athletes with Pre-Performance Anxiety

Check out the full paper HERE!

Pre-performance anxiety is a familiar experience for many athletes, but knowing how to recognize it—and, more importantly, how to support athletes through it—can be challenging for coaches and other members of the sport environment.

The new paper “Five Modules of Support: Pre-Performance Anxiety Management Strategies” by Courtney Stevens, Barbi Law, and J. Paige Pope offers a practical resource for coaches, practitioners, and other athlete-support personnel. Published in the Journal of Sport Psychology in Action, the paper brings together research on pre-performance anxiety and translates it into accessible, user-friendly strategies that can be applied in sport settings.

Rather than focusing solely on the athlete, the authors take a knowledge-mobilization approach, helping those around athletes build their own understanding and capacity to respond to pre-performance anxiety. The paper organizes this work into five modules, with resources presented in different formats to make the information easier to understand and use in practice.

This makes the paper particularly useful for anyone working directly with athletes who experience nerves, worry, pressure, or anxiety before competition. It provides a bridge between sport psychology research and the everyday realities of coaching and athlete support.