Structural Relationship between Sport Mindfulness and Emotion Regulation Strategies with Athlets' Competitive Anxiety

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the structural relationship between sport mindfulness and competitive anxiety, and the mediating role of emotion regulation strategies. The method of this research was descriptive and correlational. Two hundred volunteers from different teams participated in this research. Sports Mindfulness Questionnaire (Thienot et al 2014), Cognitive Emotional Regulation Strategies Questionnaire (Garnefski et al 2002) and Competitive State Anxiety Inventory (Cox et al 2003) were used for data collection. Data were analyzed using the structural equation modeling method using Smart PLS 2.0 software. The results showed that there was a significant negative correlation between sports mindfulness and competitive anxiety. Also, the sport mindfulness through adaptive strategies of emotional regulation had a significant relationship with competitive anxiety of athletes. Overall, the findings of this study showed that special attention to the sport mindfulness is important, because the sport mindfulness is not only directly, but also indirectly could reduce the competitive anxiety of athletes by increasing the use of adaptive strategies of emotional regulation as a mediator variable.