Emotional regulation and physical recovery in young athletes of individual and collective sport modalities

Due to the influence of positive and negative affects experienced during competition on sports performance, emotional regulation is one of the psychological variables that are more interesting to the sport psychology field. In this sense, this study analyzes how the use of reappraisal and suppression stimulates or hampers the physical recovery of young athletes. All of this taking into account the mediating role of self-efficacy and cognitive anxiety experienced during competition. Three hundred Chilean athletes with ages from 11 to 18 years old participated in this study (M = 15.15; SD = 2.38). Specifically, 139 of them practiced individual sports (boating, athletics, swimming, rhythmic gymnastics and tennis) and 161 collective sports (basketball, volleyball, soccer and rugby). Results show that the use of cognitive reappraisal as a dispositional strategy is associated with positive affect. In addition, cognitive reappraisal promotes self-efficacy in athletes during competition and stimulates their physical recovery. Emotional suppression produces the opposite effect, being associated to negative affect and impairing physical recovery by cognitive anxiety. Results are also discussed related to differences observed in the use of these two emotional regulation strategies in individual and collective sports, along with their practice implications for the training of young athletes in both modalities.