Abstract
Emotions significantly influence physiological processes in the athlete’s body. The level of his/her mental stress during training, competitions and recreation is obviously not the same. Taking into account the athletes’ well-known predisposition to alexithymia, there is a need to search for objective ways of the level of psycho-emotional stress assessment. Using the calculated Stress Index (SI), based on electroencephalogram indicators and level of situational anxiety as per the standard Spielberger-Hanin test, our work assesses and compares the differences in the athletes’ psycho-emotional state in various phases of the annual macrocycle. The study involved 155 athletes doing various sports. 96 athletes were males, their average age being 24.34 ± 3.54 years; 59 athletes were females with the average age of 23.12 ± 2.3 years. The control group consisted of 101 individuals who did not experience systematic high physical exertion, 53 of them being males with the average age of 23.17 ± 2.54, 48 — females with the average age of 22.12 ± 3.01 years. The athletes’ SI values are significantly different from those in the control group, as well as among themselves at various stages of the annual macrocycle. In the preparatory and transitional periods, the SI is significantly lower than in the control group. However, during the competitive period this index increases considerably. This is characteristic of a significant increase in the athletes’ psycho-emotional stress. There is a high positive correlation (r = 0.81) between the SI value and the number of points scored in the Spielberger-Hanin situational anxiety test