sports-psychology

Introduction: Sufficient sleep is integral to overall health whereas suboptimal sleep puts athletes at greater risk for injury, lengthens their recovery time, and decreases their performance. Our purpose was to compare sleep across training days (i.e., competition, practice, and rest) in adolescent athletes, specifically identifying differences between nights before and after training. Methods: P…

Nature, Published online: 11 June 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-01865-2 As the men’s football World Cup gets under way, how the game weighs on the health of athletes still isn’t talked about enough, says player-turned-medic Vincent Gouttebarge.

IntroductionPre-competitive anxiety and self-confidence are key psychological factors influencing athletic performance. While anxiety was traditionally seen as harmful, recent biopsychosocial models suggest its effects depend on athletes’ interpretation of arousal and their confidence level. This study examined whether pre-competitive self-confidence and perceived fatigue predicted post-competiti…

IntroductionIn recent years, sports psychiatry and psychotherapy has developed rapidly. Under the umbrella of the International Society for Sports Psychiatry (ISSP), the first international consensus statement on sports psychiatry was recently published. Fields of sports psychiatry were identified. In the field of competitive and elite sports, the end of a sports career is a vulnerable phase. The…

Sports scientist Mogammad Sharhidd Taliep in TheConversation article  discusses difference between chokers and clutchers: In sports psychology, choking has been defined as: An acute and considerable decrease in skill execution and performance when self-expected standards are normally achievable, which is the result of increased anxiety under perceived pressure performance decline when highly moti…