Archers who feel their anxiety in the body choke more often in competition

The summary today

There is a single study on archers alone, and it is Italian: among a hundred and fifteen competitive archers licensed in Lazio, those who report more somatic anxiety, meaning nervousness, tension and a racing heart, also report more choking episodes over the previous six months, with a correlation of 0.24. It is a small link, worth about six per cent of the differences between one archer and another, and in the same sample trouble concentrating weighs slightly more (0.27), while social anxiety is not linked to choking (0.13, not significant). One detail changes the reading: the model the authors use to predict choking does not contain somatic anxiety. Anxiety, with its three forms added together, is linked to rumination and to a weaker ability to step back from one's own thoughts, and it is these that sit next to the episodes. Everything was collected with a questionnaire at a single moment, with the episodes recalled by the archer, and the authors themselves call the study exploratory. An earlier survey of archers and golfers pooled together finds that those who have choked fear the physical sensations of anxiety more, but it measures the fear of the symptoms rather than the symptoms, and does not separate the archers.

Also phrased as: "somatic anxiety and choking"; "shaking body in competition"; "racing heart in competition"; "choking in archery"; "collapsing under pressure"

Evidence

• 2020
  Context Archers Published later

  155 competitors, 69 archers and 86 golfers, with an online questionnaire: those who report at least one sudden, uncontrollable collapse in performance score higher on all three anxiety sensitivity scales, that is the fear of the physical, mental and social symptoms of anxiety, with an overall effect of choking on the traits measured of F(20,128) = 2.55, p = 0.001, partial eta squared 0.28. The comparisons are on the two sports pooled, and choking is a recalled yes or no, not a frequency.

  Personality Predictors of Yips and Choking Susceptibility · Philip Clarke, David Sheffield, Sally Akehurst

• 2021
  For Archers Published later

  115 competitive archers licensed in Lazio, an anonymous questionnaire collected in June and July 2019 with how often they had choked over the previous six months: the Spearman correlation is 0.241 with somatic anxiety on the Sport Anxiety Scale (p < 0.01), 0.266 with trouble concentrating (p < 0.01) and 0.126 with social anxiety, not significant. A correlation of 0.24 is worth about six per cent of the variance.

  An Exploratory Pilot Study on Choking Episodes in Archery · Pierluigi Diotaiuti, Stefano Corrado, Stefania Mancone, Lavinia Falese, Fábio Hech Dominski, Alexandro Andrade

• 2021
  Context Archers Published later

  In the same study somatic anxiety is the first predictor entered in the model of rumination (beta 0.216; on its own it accounts for 35.5 per cent of the variance, in a model reaching 63.8), but the authors do not put it in the model that predicts choking, which holds rumination (beta 0.230), coach support in competition (-0.231) and the ability to step back from one's own thoughts (-0.250). That model accounts for 19.3 per cent of choking frequency, 17.2 adjusted: the link between body and choking runs through thinking, and it is a small part of the picture in any case.

  An Exploratory Pilot Study on Choking Episodes in Archery · Pierluigi Diotaiuti, Stefano Corrado, Stefania Mancone, Lavinia Falese, Fábio Hech Dominski, Alexandro Andrade

• 2021
  Context Archers Published later

  Again in the same 115 archers: those more attentive to the image they give others report more choking (0.234, p < 0.05), and this attention goes hand in hand with social anxiety (0.722); those attentive to their own inner states do not (0.161, not significant), and this attention is not linked to somatic anxiety either (0.075).

  An Exploratory Pilot Study on Choking Episodes in Archery · Pierluigi Diotaiuti, Stefano Corrado, Stefania Mancone, Lavinia Falese, Fábio Hech Dominski, Alexandro Andrade

Status history

1. 2020 Not studied The first piece of data touches the question only from the side. Among a hundred and fifty-five competitors, sixty-nine archers and eighty-six golfers, those who say they have had at least one sudden collapse in performance fear the physical sensations of anxiety more, along with the mental and social ones. But this is the fear of the symptoms, not the symptoms, and the comparison is made on the two sports pooled: nobody has yet asked archers how much anxiety they feel in the body and how often they choke.
2. 2021 Reported Among a hundred and fifteen competitive Italian archers, how often they choked over the previous six months is linked to somatic anxiety (0.24) and to trouble concentrating (0.27), while social anxiety plays no part (0.13, not significant). Somatic anxiety does not appear in the model that predicts choking: it is one of the predictors of rumination, which in turn goes with the episodes, and all the factors in that model together account for less than a fifth of the differences between archers. An association collected with a questionnaire at a single moment, in a study its authors call exploratory: reported.

Related

Related articles

• Choking in archery: how common it is, who it happens to and what goes with itHow many archers say they fall apart in competition, what those who choke most often have in common, and how much pressure costs on measured scores.

Research lines

• 56 studiesAnxiety and confidence in archery competition since 1986
• 8 studiesChoking and competitive pressure in archers

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