Abstract
Elite athletes routinely face intense psychological pressure before competition, yet evidence on how they experience and regulate it remains dispersed across qualitative, correlational, and intervention research. This systematic review aimed to synthesise the sources and forms of pre-competition pressure reported by elite athletes, the coping strategies and mental skills they use, and the links between these strategies and performance readiness. The review followed the PRISMA 2020 framework and used a SPIDER-informed Boolean search of Scopus combining terms for elite athletes, psychological pressure, coping, and competition. The search identified 217 records. After removing 12 duplicates, 205 records were screened and 92 full-text reports were assessed against predefined criteria covering English-language primary empirical journal articles on elite or high-performance athletes published between 2005 and 2025. Fifteen studies were included and appraised with design-specific tools. Pressure arose from performance, organisational, and team-climate demands and was shaped more by appraisal and symptom interpretation than by anxiety intensity. Elite athletes combined imagery, self-talk, goal setting, routines, social support, and problem-focused coping, while mindfulness and hypnosis interventions reduced competitive anxiety and physiological stress. These findings support appraisal-based, individualised mental preparation. Future research should adopt longitudinal, ecologically valid, and culturally diverse designs.
Keywords
Competition stressors; Competitive anxiety; Coping strategies; Elite athletes; Mental preparation.