Social physique anxiety levels of Turkish combat sports (martial arts) athletes and sedentary individuals

Abstract

Background and Study Aim: Anxiety is one's threat perception and fear of an outer situation-specific event generally accompanied by an expectation of future threat. It is defined as mental and somatic indications of one's perception of emotional and physical situations by psychologists. This paper aim is social physique anxiety levels of combat sports and martial arts athletes in comparing sedentary individuals in similar age. Material and Methods: Research group of this study was 147 individuals (81 male and 66 female between 16-24 years old), 24 of which are sedentary and 123 are combat sports and martial arts athletes in Turkey: 70 taekwondo; 30 judo; 23 kung fu. The research data was obtained by the questionnaire administered by the researcher to the sample group in various competitions in 2014. Social Physique Anxiety Inventory was used as a data collection tool in the research SPSS 17.0 software package was used to analyse the obtained data using descriptive statistics and Kruskal Wallis H test methods. Results: Significant difference was determined between the group of combat sports (martial arts) and the sedentary group in the physical appearance easement and total scores between in the negative evaluation expectancy scores at 0.01 level. The combat sports and martial arts athletes had a lower level of social physique anxiety compared to the sedentary individuals of same age group. Conclusions: That self-esteem and self-confidence gained by athletes through struggling with others in training and competitions have a deterministic effect on the results concerning physical appearance easement, negative evaluation expectancy, and social physique anxiety scores is an important outcome. This is an important proof that martial arts and combat sports training has a positive effect on personality.