Competition Anxiety in Elite Filipino Taekwondo Athletes C. Ampongan* & W.

Pieter** * Assumption College - Philippines ** Science University of Malaysia - Malaysia

The purposes of this study were to assess competition trait and state anxiety in Filipino elite taekwondo athletes and to determine to what extent trait anxiety (A-trait) can predict somatic state anxiety prior to competition. Subjects were members of the Philippine national taekwondo teams (6 males, 7 females) competing in the Southeast Asian Games. The SCAT was administered 1 week before the Games and the CSAI-2 1 hour prior to and 1 hour after the tournament. To determine the difference in A-trait between men and women, an independent ttest was used. A 2-way (Sex*Time) ANOVA with repeated measures on the second factor was utilized to assess the differences between gender in A-state prior to and after competition. Simple regression was used to determine to what extent A-trait predicted somatic A-state. No differences were found between gender in A-trait (p>0.05) and A-state components (p>0.05). A-trait accounted for 64.3% (SEE=0.12) of the variance in somatic A-state in the men (p=0.030) and for 58.2% (SEE=0.26) in the women (p=0.028). It is suggested that coaches employ psychological skills training to more optimally prepare their athletes for international taekwondo competition.

Ampongan, C. and Pieter, W. (2004), Competition anxiety in elite Filipino taekwondo athletes, II International Conference for Physical Educators, Hong Kong, China, July 7-10.