Anxiety induction and precision of the kick in soccer penalties.

In the present research we investigated the relationship between shot precision and anxiety level, in a penalty kick simulation. In a women’s team we tested the precision in the players’ performance under different anxiety conditions. The participants were 10 amateur athletes (5 were trained to kick penalties, 5 were not)and the task was to kick a number of penalties in each of the 8 sectors in which the goal was divided, following the experimenter’s indications. There were 2 conditions: “No anxiety” and “anxiety”. In the first condition (no anxiety) the task went on without putting pressure on the participants. In the second condition (anxiety) a professed selector that was a collaborator of the tester and that was supposed to evaluate the performance was introduced to the participants. The athletes wore for the entire first and second condition length an heart rate monitor and a state anxiety questionnaire was completed. We found an higher precision of the participants after the anxiety-provoking stimulation and an higher shot precision for the players that were penalty kickers. There was a tendency towards significance of the difference in the heart rate between the two conditions. Since the penalty kickers had higher heart rates in the “anxiety condition” it seems that the players who have been selected to kick penalties are able to use this extra physiological activation due to anxiety to improve the precision level of their performance.