Effects of psychological skills training on exercise imagery and competitive anxiety in adolescent athletes

Psychological skills training (PST) is playing an increasingly vital role in enhancing athletic performance and mental well-being, particularly during critical developmental periods. This study examined the effects of an 8-week PST program grounded in positive psychology on exercise imagery and competitive anxiety in adolescent athletes. We recruited 31 male adolescent athletes from a middle school in China, assigning 16 to a PST group and 15 to a control group, and assessed psychological variables at preintervention, postintervention, and a 3-month follow-up. The results of a repeated measures analysis of variance indicated that both immediately after the intervention and at 3 months postintervention, athletes in the PST group demonstrated significantly greater improvements in exercise imagery and reductions in competitive anxiety compared to the control group. These findings provide preliminary evidence supporting the efficacy of PST in promoting mental health among adolescent athletes, although generalizability is limited by the small, single-sport, single-gender sample.