Anuario de Psicología Clínica y de la Salud / Annuary of Clinical and Health Psychology, 5 (2009) 63-69 A history of injuries and their relationship to psychological variables in tennis players Aurelio Olmedilla Zafra 1 , Joel M. Prieto Andreu 1 and Amador Blas Redondo 2 1 Universidad Católica San Antonio (UCAM) de Murcia 2 Sociedad Murciana de Psicología de la Actividad Física y el Deporte ABSTRACT This study seeks to establish relationships between injuries in tennis players and psychological variables such as stress control, assessment of performance, motivation, mental ability and team cohesion. It specifically aims at finding out whether the seriousness and type of the injuries suffered by tennis players are related to the psychologcical variables studied. Sixty-three tennis players aged 16-49 participated in the study (M = 31.62; SD = 8.93). The findings indicate that those tennis players with fewer moderate injuries showed higher levels of motivation. In addition to this, the tennis players with a lower number of muscular injuries manifested greater self-control which is needed in sports performance. When the incidence of a tendinitis was lower, the tennis players were able to assess their performance better, and when the number of fractures was smaller, they showed greater team cohesion. Key words: Sports injuries, tennis players, psychological variables Received: 9 May 2009 Accepted: 17 June 2009 INTRODUCTION An injury can be regarded as a inherent fact in the practice of sport which, in one way or another, affects a great number of sportspeople. On most occasions, perhaps as a result of the increase of sports demands on high level and performance sportspeople (Bahr and Krosshaug, 2005; Ekstrand, Walden and Häglund, 2004), injuries provoke negative and stressful situations. An injury can be regarded as “a work accident” (Buceta and Bueno, 1995), since getting injured may give rise to really important negative consequences for professional sportsmen in addition to those related to their health itself, such as interrupting their sports career, losing professional status or a loss of income, etc. Furthermore, anyone practising sport, even if they are not considered high performance sportspeople, may also be affected by the negative consequences of an injury. Research on the correlation between injuries and psychological factors has increased dramatically over the last few years. One of the most remarkable perspectives of this study has been analysing how psychological factors influence the vulnerability of sportspeople in the face of injuries (Udry and Andersen, 2002). Whereas the first studies centred on searching for a type of personality prone to injuries (Coddington and Troxel, 1980; Valliant, 1981), the Corresponding author: Aurelio Olmedilla Zafra. Universidad Católica San Antonio. Facultad de Ciencias de la Salud, de la Actividad Física y del Deporte. Campus de los Jerónimos, s/n. 30.107 GUADALUPE (Murcia) ESPAÑA. E-mail address: aolmedilla@pdi.ucam.edu most recent research has focused on the analysis of specific aspects of the sportsperson’s psychology and on how they are related to the risk of injury (Ali, Marivain, Hèas and Boulvais, 2007; Díaz, 2001; Díaz, Buceta and Bueno, 2004; Olmedilla, García- Montalvo and Martínez-Sánchez, 2006; Williams and Andersen, 1998; Williams and Roepke, 1993). The theoretical models proposed for the study of relationships between psychological aspects and injuries emerged in the 1990s. The model of stress and athletic injury by Andersen and Williams (1988), revised one decade later (Williams and Andersen, 1998), incorporated the study of those psychological factors that might make a sportsperson suffer an injury. This model puts forward the hypothesis that, in face of a stressful situation, a sportsperson gives a response, known as a stress response, which is the product of the cognitive assessment he or she makes of the situation, provoking physiological changes, such as increase of muscular tension, and changes in attention, such as inadequate focusing of attention, which increase the probability of getting injured. In addition to this, other components of the model such as personality, the history of the sportsperson’s stress and coping resources, measure the type of response and so increase stress or help to control it. Starting from the proposal of this model, most of the studies have focused on examining the relationship between stress and injuries (Díaz, 2001; Junge, 2000; Udry and Andersen, 2002) on using this as a theoretical basis. A number of personality aspects have been studied (Currens, 2001; Hanson, McCullagh and Tonymon, 1992; Rogers and Landers, 2002; Smith, 2001), such as self-confidence, anxiety or locus of control. Some studies have found a