Overview

The course is delivered by two sport and exercise psychophysiologists who have worked with elite level athletes, coaches, and applied practitioners. You will be taught the most up-to-date theories and applied interventions in the stress and performance literature.

Practical work in lectures will cover four main areas of stress and performance: Attentional Control e.g. why are we distracted by threat? Reinvestment e.g. why do we attempt to consciously control movements under pressure? Psychomotor Efficiency e.g. how do our brainwaves change under duress? Challenge and Threat perceptions e.g. what do our psychophysiological responses to stress mean, and how can we optimally control them?

Learning Outcomes

• Apply the contemporary stress and performance theory and research to explain performance slumps present in real-life athlete case studies

• Construct theoretically driven interventions to help alleviate adverse effects of stress on performance.

• Critically analyse stress and performance research.

• Describe the key theories used to explain the relationship between stress and motor performance