Competitive anxiety or Coronavirus anxiety? The psychophysiological responses of professional football players after returning to competition during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

\n Objective\n This study aimed to examine the relationship between competitive anxiety, fear/anxiety of COVID-19, and autonomic and endocrine stress responses in professional football players after returning to competition during the COVID-19 pandemic.\n \n Methods\n Ninety male professional football players (age: 26.33 ± 2.48 years) volunteered to participate in this study, which included an official competition. Psychophysiological responses, including the Fear of COVID-19 Scale, the Coronavirus Anxiety Scale, and the Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2 Revised, were collected 30min before the competition. In addition, salivary alpha-amylase (sAA) and salivary cortisol (sCort) were collected at 8a.m. and 15min before the competition.\n \n Results\n The main findings, based on the Pearson correlation, showed significant positive correlations between COVID-19 anxiety and somatic competitive anxiety (p = 0.01), cognitive competitive anxiety (p = 0.01), and competition response of sCort and sAA (p = 0.01). Moreover, fear of COVID-19 was positively correlated with COVID-19 anxiety (p = 0.01). On the contrary, the awakening response of sCort and sAA was not found to be correlated with psychological parameters (all p ˃ 0.05). The analysis also indicated that there was no significant correlation between self-confidence with other psychological and physiological variables (all p ˃ 0.05). The regression analysis showed that cognitive anxiety was a relevant predictor for the competition response of sCort and sAA (p ˂ 0.05). Moreover, COVID-19 anxiety was the only predictor of somatic and cognitive anxiety (p ˂ 0.05).\n \n Conclusions\n The present study provides the first preliminary evidence that COVID-19 anxiety and competitive anxiety might pose a negative impact on the athletic performance of professional football players during COVID-19 pandemic competitions. Thus, research is needed to build a strategy to reduce the psychophysiological stress related to COVID-19 and competition response.\n