{"id":263884,"date":"2020-06-12T02:45:39","date_gmt":"2020-06-12T02:45:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/elite-gamers-share-mental-toughness-with-top-athletes-study-finds\/"},"modified":"2020-06-12T02:45:39","modified_gmt":"2020-06-12T02:45:39","slug":"elite-gamers-share-mental-toughness-with-top-athletes-study-finds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/elite-gamers-share-mental-toughness-with-top-athletes-study-finds\/","title":{"rendered":"Elite gamers share mental toughness with top athletes, study finds"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A new study, published in <em>Frontiers in Psychology<\/em>, indicated an overlap between the mental toughness and stress-coping processes in traditional sports and competitive esports athletes.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Competitive esports athletes appear to cope with stressors similarly to high-performing sports athletes<\/li>\n<li>esports players with higher ranks tended to have higher levels of mental toughness<\/li>\n<li>sports psychology interventions for high-performing sports athletes may also be beneficial to competitive esports athletes.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>QUT esports researcher Dylan Poulus said 316 esports players aged 18 and over were studied from among the top 40 per cent of players.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;A disposition considered to be influential in sporting success is mental toughness and it appears to be important for success in esports,&#8221; Mr Poulus said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;To be a millionaire esports gamer you deal with stress similar as if you are getting ready to go to the Olympics.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It is one of the fastest growing sports in the world, and with the coronavirus pandemic there has been huge interest.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The study used athletes who played Overwatch, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Rainbow Six: Siege, Defence of the Ancients 2 and League of Legends competitively.<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<!-- BEGIN mobile-middle-rectangle --><\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<!-- END mobile-middle-rectangle --><\/p>\n<p>Events can draw more than 60 million online views.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Poulus said the study identified some of the mental skills required for optimal performance among gamers, including high levels of mental toughness, emotional control, and life control.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Similar to traditional sports athletes, esports athletes with higher mental toughness employed more problem-focused coping strategies which aided in their success,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>However, the findings also showed how esports athletes with high mental toughness employed emotion-focused coping strategies like acceptance coping.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;By accepting the elements of their game that are beyond their control could lead to better performance,&#8221; Mr Poulus said.<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t<!-- BEGIN mobile-bottom-rectangle --><\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t<!-- END mobile-bottom-rectangle --><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Everything we see in sports psychology interventions that work with traditional sports is likely going to work with esports athletes.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Mr Poulus is completing his PhD at QUT&#8217;s Faculty of Health school of Exercise and Nutrition Sciences.<\/p>\n<p>The research, titled Stress and Coping in Esports and the Influence of Mental Toughness, was co-authored by Michael Trotter, Dr Tristan Coulter and Professor Remco Polman.<\/p>\n<p>This study was one of the first studies to investigate mental toughness and stress and coping in performing esports athletes.<\/p>\n<p>Further research is investigating what specifically causes stress to high performing esports athletes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A new study, published in Frontiers in Psychology, indicated an overlap between the mental toughness and stress-coping processes in traditional sports and competitive esports athletes. Competitive esports athletes appear to cope with stressors similarly to high-performing sports athletes esports players with higher ranks tended to have higher levels of mental toughness sports psychology interventions for <a class=\"read-more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/elite-gamers-share-mental-toughness-with-top-athletes-study-finds\/\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-263884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=263884"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263884\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}