Anxiety, satisfaction, perception and beliefs about the causes of success in Spanish master athletes

The aim of this investigation is to understand precompetitive anxiety, intrinsic satisfaction, perception and beliefs regarding the reasons for the success of experienced Spanish athletes (aged 35 and above) who are track competitors, to study how these constructs are related, and also to form, according to sex, sufficiently solid predictive models for precompetitive anxiety. Both sexes exhibit moderate precompetitive anxiety (cognitive and somatic) and high self-confidence, there being positive correlation between the two states of anxiety and negative correlation between these and self-confidence. For both sexes, perception of the task s success is similar to the perception of ego, as using deceptive techniques is not important. Solid predictive models for anxiety and self-confidence were formed, with slight differences between the sexes, leading to the conclusion that self-confidence can be predicted by a high score for enjoyment. Whereas in both men and women the two states of anxiety can be predicted by high scores in ego orientation and use of deception techniques, the rest of the predictive variables showed some differences according to sex.