Psychological Intervention Based on Mental Relaxation to Manage Stress in Female Junior Elite Soccer Team: Improvement in Cardiac Autonomic Control, Perception of Stress and Overall Health

Eleonora Pagani, Naomi Gavazzoni, Giuseppina Bernardelli, Mara Malacarne, Nadia Solaro, Emanuele Giusti, Gianluca Castelnuovo, Piero Volpi, Giulia Carimati and Daniela Lucini ()
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Eleonora Pagani: Department of General Psychology, Catholic University, 20123 Milan, Italy
Naomi Gavazzoni: DISCCO Department, University of Milan, 20122 Milan, Italy
Giuseppina Bernardelli: DISCCO Department, University of Milan, 20122 Milan, Italy
Mara Malacarne: BIOMETRA Department, University of Milan, 20129 Milan, Italy
Nadia Solaro: Department of Statistics and Quantitative Methods, University of Milano-Bicocca, 20126 Milan, Italy
Emanuele Giusti: Psychology Research Laboratory, Istituto Auxologico Italiano IRCCS, 20149 Milan, Italy
Gianluca Castelnuovo: Department of Psychology, Catholic University, 20123 Milan, Italy
Piero Volpi: IRCCS Humanitas Research Hospital, 20089 Milan, Italy
Giulia Carimati: IRCCS Humanitas Research Hospital, 20089 Milan, Italy
Daniela Lucini: Exercise Medicine Unit, Istituto Auxologico Italiano, IRCCS, 20135 Milan, Italy

IJERPH, 2023, vol. 20, issue 2, 1-12

Abstract: Chronic stress may represent one of the most important factors that negatively affects the health and performance of athletes. Finding a way to introduce psychological strategies to manage stress in everyday training routines is challenging, particularly in junior teams. We also must consider that a stress management intervention should be regarded as “efficacious” only if its application results in improvement of the complex underlying pathogenetic substratum, which considers mechanistically interrelated factors, such as immunological, endocrine and autonomic controls further to psychological functioning and behavior. In this study, we investigated the feasibility of implementing, in a standard training routine of the junior team of the Italian major soccer league, a stress management program based on mental relaxation training (MRT). We evaluated its effects on stress perception and cardiac autonomic regulation as assessed by means of ANSI, a single composite percentile-ranked proxy of autonomic balance, which is free of gender and age bias, economical, and simple to apply in a clinical setting. We observed that the simple employed MRT intervention was feasible in a female junior soccer team and was associated with a reduced perception of stress, an improved perception of overall health, and a betterment of cardiac autonomic control. This data may corroborate the scientific literature that indicates psychological intervention based on MRT as an efficacious strategy to improve performance, managing negative stress effects on cardiac autonomic control.

Keywords: stress management; autonomic nervous system; sport performance; mental training; soccer; psychology; HRV (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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