O efeito da ansiedade pré-competitiva em corredores de rua de Curitiba

Abstract

Street running is one of the most practiced sports in the world and is increasingly gaining prominence on the world stage. As in the most varied daily activities, street running is also influenced by emotions and how the stimuli generated by them are faced, positively or negatively. This research is a quantitative, descriptive and crosssectional study which analyzes the effect of pre-competitive anxiety in street runners in the city of Curitiba, as well as the variables that can influence the practitioner’s anxiety levels. The study included 95 athletes of both sexes, aged between 18 and 69 years (mean 37.9 ± 7.7 years), street race practitioners and with different training volumes, where they answered two questionnaires, one personal and the SCAT, thus making all correlations possible. To verify whether there were significant influences of the variables, Spearman’s correlation analysis and linear regression analyzes (Stepwise method) were performed between all variables. The average level of anxiety was 38.319 ± 8.7 considering the results as a moderate level of pre-competitive anxiety for the studied sample. Significant values were also found between anxiety and the variable age (p=0.0117) and significant values between anxiety and the variable length of practice (p=0.0038). A Mann-Whitney U statistic was applied and no significant differences were revealed in the variables between men and women (p>0.05). The results show that older athletes and more experienced athletes have lower levels of anxiety when compared to younger athletes or practitioners with less time of practice. Younger and less experienced athletes have more difficulty interpreting the signs of anxiety and self-confidence.