Comparison between progressive muscle relaxation and guided imagery relaxation on competitive state anxiety and psychophysiological parameters among junior tennis players during precompetition stage / Mohamed A. Alwan

Relaxation technique is one of the basic skills to reduce the level of anxiety. There are many types of relaxation techniques. Each of them has a different effect on different players. Therefore, the aim of this study was to compare the effects of two relaxation methods “guided imagery relaxation with deep breathing (GIR)” and “progressive muscular relaxation with deep breathing (PMR)’\ on somatic anxiety, cognitive anxiety, self-confidence, heart rate and breathing rate among 42 junior tennis players during pre-competition stage. Two different mental relaxation methods were conducted for a period of six weeks during training preparation for the competition. The participants, between the ages of 11 to 14 years old, were assigned randomly to three groups PMR (n=14), GIR (n=14) and control (n = 14). Pre and post-test was used to investigate the effect of the relaxation techniques during pre-competition stage. Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2 for Children Questionnaire (CSAI-2C), and psychophysiological parameters including heart rate and breathing rate were recorded one hour prior to competition for each test. The data were analyzed using the paired t-test to compare between pre and post intervention, and the one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) to compare among the three groups. Paired t-test showed there were significant differences between relaxation methods in both CSAI-2C and psychophysiological parameters, while ANOVA showed significant differences between the groups in self-confidence and heart rate. This study showed that the GIR were more effective than the PMR in reducing cognitive anxiety, increasing selfconfidence and reducing the heart rate. This finding suggests that besides the normal physical training, coaches can include the guided imagery relaxation method as a daily mental training program to reduce competitive anxiety among the tennis players.