Archery: Emotion Intensity Regulation to Stay in the Zone during Olympic Competition

Understanding emotional influence that affect sport performance in archery helps to design the appropriate intervention in athlete’s preparation. The present study examined the effect of emotion intensity from four Olympic level recurve archers on error scores and performance outcomes; compared individual emotion intensities of three competing archers during Olympic competition with previously established individual optimal zone; and examined the influence of being “in or out of individual zone ” relating the archer’s achievement with the individual target set by the coach and performance outcome during Olympic competition. The results revealed that unpleasant dysfunctional emotion (N-) had the most influence on performance score. The in-out of zone results derived from the archers data lend support to emotion-performance relationship