Level of Precompetitive Anxiety and Self-Confidence in High Level Padel Players

Alfonso Castillo-Rodriguez; Antonio Hernández-Mendo; José Ramón Alvero-Cruz; Wanesa Onetti-Onetti; José Carlos Fernández-García

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2022.890828

Level of Precompetitive Anxiety and Self-Confidence in High Level Padel Players

Front Psychol. 2022 Jun 3:13:890828. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.890828. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Alfonso Castillo-Rodriguez¹, Antonio Hernández-Mendo², José Ramón Alvero-Cruz³, Wanesa Onetti-Onetti⁴, José Carlos Fernández-García^{5

6

7}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Physical Education and Sports, University of Granada, Granada, Spain.
² Department of Social Psychology, Social Work, Anthropology and East Asian Studies, University of Málaga, Málaga, Spain.
³ Department of Human Physiology, Histology, Pathological Anatomy and Sports Physical Education, University of Málaga, Málaga, Spain.
⁴ Facultad de Ciencias de la Educación, Universidad Internacional De La Rioja, Logroño, Spain.
⁵ Facultad de Ciencias de la Educación, Universidad de Málaga, Málaga, Spain.
⁶ Andalucía-Tech, Málaga, Spain.
⁷ IBIMA, Málaga, Spain.

Abstract

The objectives of the present study were firstly to evaluate precompetitive anxiety and self-confidence (SC) in padel players according to their playing level; and secondly, to study the factors that influence the levels of precompetitive anxiety and SC. One hundred padel players, all of whom were federated men (age: M = 27.6, SD = 7.5 years; weight: M = 73.4, SD = 9.8 kg; height: M = 175.6, SD = 7.5 cm) participated in the research. The CSAI-2 (Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2) questionnaire was used and a one-way ANOVA and a two- and three-ways MANOVA were conducted. The results show that the players from a better category had higher scores in SC and lower scores in somatic anxiety (SA) (η ² = 0.10 and η ² = 0.12, respectively). Moreover, the factors of category, body mass index (BMI) and experience, predicted 82% of the variance explained by the SC of the player. As a conclusion, this study has made it possible to ascertain that the playing category, understood as the level of the padel players, determines the levels of anxiety and SC and represents a key factor for the prediction of sports performance.

Keywords: anxiety; category; competition; padel; raquet sports; self-confidence.