Chasing Fulfillment Instead of Perfection:

Providing Coping Mechanisms to Reduce Anxiety in Long Distance Runners

Emily Henson

University of Mount Union: Cross Country

Site Mentor: Kevin Lucas

Capstone Supervisor: Dr. Donna Bishop

October 10th, 2021

Introduction

As a Cross Country/ Track and Field Coach at the University of Mount Union I deal with

young adults every day. I work mainly with our female distance runners- designing their training,

preparing them for races, recruiting and building a strong relationship with the athletes. Being in

my third year as a coach for this program I have seen a growing trend in each of our incoming

freshman classes; a trend in more and more athletes dealing with anxiety. Through getting to

know these athletes and many conversations, I have observed their desire for perfection as a

possible source of their anxiety. Through a series of surveys I hope to help each athlete identify

where their anxiety is coming from. When we have identified some of the problem areas I will

share some coping mechanisms with them. I plan on using the app Headspace as a guided

meditation tool once a week to help with performance anxiety and dealing with standards of

perfection.

Current Condition

Currently we, as a University, do not have a lot of things in place to help our students

with sports anxiety or the desire for perfection. There are counseling services on campus that I

often take our athletes to, hoping that talking through some things with a professional may help.

The feedback I have gotten from athletes that have gone to counseling services is that it helps,

but it’s not enough. We need someone who understands the sports mentality. Someone who

understands what it’s like to work towards a goal for years and then feel like you have to do well

on one day or it was all for nothing. I will have athletes have panic attacks during the middle of

workouts, pass out during workouts and races pushing themselves to the limit, and burst into

tears when they don’t perform how they want to.

Baseline Data

Utilized frost anxiety survey to create my own 25 item survey. (Talk about the survey),

sent survey out anonymously. Describe what I did (Insert some graphics of anonymous

reporting) some important items of showing what their most anxious about.

Goal

By introducing the headspace app to my athletes, 90% of my athletes will say their

anxiety levels have lessened. I will also implement a coaching strategy that uses the same verbs

and similar talk to the headspace app. Keeping my coaching strategy in line with the headspace

talks, 90% of my athletes will say their perception of what is expected from them has become

more positive.

Vision Statement

My hope is that through this project I can help each athlete feel empowered and proud of

who they are, no matter what season of life they are in. My vision for this program is to have

young women become strong independent women who feel that they can take on the world.

These athletes are facing so many challenges as they grow up, these things can be stressful and

cause a lot of anxiety. Yet, on social media, many like to portray their lives as having it all

together. I want each athlete to know that life isn’t always perfect, things aren’t always pretty,

and we can learn to focus inward. I want them to find themselves through the trials of these years

and feel that they have support in dreaming big dreams.

Project Alignment
 The mission of the University of Mount Union is to prepare students for fulfilling lives,

meaningful work, and responsible citizenship. My job at it’s core, in a very plain sense, is to get

the team to run faster. The University wants me to do more than that. They want me, in the

process of getting each athlete to run fast, to also help them develop skills that will prepare them

for life. Distance running is not easy at all. We ask them to spend at least an hour and a half

every day training. They train all year round hoping to run really well only a handful of times.

There are more disappointing days than exciting ones. We hope that through this strenuous

process they have developed skills and characteristics that they can use in every aspect of their

life. Each athlete has some level of anxiety related to their athletic career and life. If we can teach

them, in an athletic setting, how to control their anxiety and cope, hopefully they can use those

same coping mechanisms to reduce anxiety in their everyday lives.

Research

Perfectionism, anxiety and distance running seem to go hand-in-hand. An article

published by “Psychology of Sport and Exercise”, claimed that self-oriented perfectionism had a

direct positive effect on exercise dependance (Hall, H. K., Hill, A. P., Appleton, P. R., & Kozub,

S. A., 2009). This sparks the idea that maybe the athletes that I work with have found their way

into the sport of distance running because of their need for perfection, instead of being a result of

the mental aspects of the sport. We often see the athletes need for perfection come to the

forefront in workouts and races. They want to perform so well in these situations that they often

become very anxious leading up to workouts or races.

An article published by PAN journals states “...anxiety is directly related to the

individual’s subjective perception of an event or situation” (Bebetsos, E., & Goulimaris, D.,

2017). My interpretation of this is that every athlete will perceive an event differently and
therefore will have different levels of anxiety or stress depending on how they view the situation.

Almost everything in life is left to perception. If I can help change how the athletes perceive

workouts and races, if I can chance their mindset to see it as an opportunity to test their fitness

and to accept the possibility of failure as another learning opportunity, then maybe the athletes

anxiety levels will lessen.

Profession Development

To create a lasting improvement on the athletes anxiety levels I, and the other coaches in

the program, will have to change the way we speak to our athletes. I need to make a habit of

using phrases such as “this doesn’t need to be perfect”, “do the best you can today”, “we don’t

need an A+ workout, we can have a B- day”, etc. At the beginning of every year, as coaches, we

are required to do a series of online training. I believe it would be a good use of resources to add

a section to the training that deals with coping mechanisms for anxiety. Learning some coping

mechanisms for anxiety with help the coaches and staff be ready to handle situations that may

arise with athletes. This training is to be completed before the students arrive on campus in the

fall. These training question should be created by a psychologists, preferably one who has a

background in the world of sports.

Action Plan Narrative and Implementation of Actions and Responsibilities

To improve my athletes anxiety and desire for perfection I will do an initial survey. In this

initial survey I will identify where the athletes needs for perfection stem from and how they

perceive others expectations of them. After the survey I will have a sports psychologist talk to

the team as a whole. I will also have two team meetings where we listened to Headspace talks

about dealing with performance anxiety. My hope is that these meetings give them some of the
tools they need to cope with their anxiety and perfectionism. I will send out a final survey to see

if their perception of expectations have changed.

Action Steps/Tasks Person(s) Responsible and/or Timeline

stakeholders that need to be
involved Begin To be Or Completed
Date completed ▪
by

1. Conduct SWOT analysis and/or Self

2. Brainstorm ideas
3. Begin researching 3. Self 9.13 9.15
ideas/strategies related to the
4. Team
sought improvment
4. Send out survey to team

5. Set goals and vision Self 9.13 9.26

6. Hold psychology meeting Sports Psych 9.15 10.1

7. Have team headspace meetings Self 9.15 10.1

8. Send out conclusion survey Team 10.2 10.4

9. Compare surveys self 10.4 10.9

Evaluating Effectiveness

To determine the effectiveness of my improvement efforts I will compare my initial

modified frost survey and my follow up modified frost survey. If their is a 75% positive increase

in results- meaning 75% of the survey questions are reported as disagree with feelings of anxiety

and pressure to be perfect, than my efforts have been successful.

Reflections
References

Bebetsos, E., & Goulimaris, D. (2017, February 09). Examination of "Pre-competition" anxiety

levels, of mid-distance runners: A quantitative approach - Polish Psychological Bulletin -

PAS Journals Repository. Retrieved from

https://journals.pan.pl/dlibra/show-content?id=99894

Frost Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale (FMPS). (2021, July 04). Retrieved from

https://novopsych.com.au/assessments/formulation/frost-multidimensional-perfectionism-

scale-fmps/

Hall, H. K., Hill, A. P., Appleton, P. R., & Kozub, S. A. (2009). The mediating influence of

unconditional self-acceptance and labile self-esteem on the relationship between

multidimensional perfectionism and exercise dependence. Psychology of Sport &

Exercise, 10(1), 35–44.

Meditation and Sleep Made Simple. (n.d.). Retrieved from

https://www.headspace.com/?gclid=Cj0KCQjw18WKBhCUARIsAFiW7Jy-QkeKO32Kb

9y0Gq9ZMyi28JiutU2V0diX7oWjBGwETN6UjOByrUMaAgc9EALw_wcB

Mission and Vision. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.mountunion.edu/vision

Credits

At end of paper put survey as appendix A

Anxiety Survey