Yesterday I attended a webinar ”Stress and coping unpacked- exploring the myths, mysteries, and magic of coping” held by Dr. Tracey Devonport. She is a sport and exercise psychologist working at the University of Wolverhampton. It was one of the many great free webinars organized by Bases and Human Kinetics.

I will not go into too many details, I'll just recap a few of points:
 
1. Myth: Stress is always negative and should be eliminated
Stress is needed for growth. Changes happen when stress is paired with adequate recovery. There are several types of stress, namely distress and eustress (positive). Distress can be acute or chronic, while eustress is only experienced in short-term intervals.
 
2. Where there is stress, there are emotions
This is important to recall when planning ahead to deal with stressful situations- it is highly unlikely that you will be in a calm state of mind, so prepare for that!
 
3. There are no bad coping strategies
The appropriateness of a coping strategy is dependent on the individual and the situation. Seemingly "bad" strategies can do the trick for some people, in a specific situation. 
 
A lot more was discussed. Feel free to ask if you’d like more information on the topic. 

I am currently in Germany working at Ruhr University Bochum and writing my Phd dissertation around the topics of stress and recovery in sport. Since I'm gaining some more expertise in this field, I thought I'd try  to blog a bit about the topics. The focus of this first post will be an introduction to what I'm doing on a daily basis. 

"Stress and recovery" as a topic is very VERY broad and both concepts are very complex- so there is no way I could come even close to covering everything. My focus is on measuring and monitoring recovery and stress states in athletes. Naturally, I place greater emphasis on psychological markers of stress and recovery. One of the easiest ways of doing this is by using self-report questionnaires. I'm in the process of validating two such questionnaires, and I'll be sure to post a link when I finally get something published. In short, my days are spent either writing, reading/researching + taking notes, analysing data and looking for participants. 

In the next post, I'll go over the importance of monitoring the recovery stress state.