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Anxiety and Resilience of Exercisers and Athletes during the COVID-19 Pandemic – The Role of a Physical Activity Routine

Recent pandemic and quarantine conditions have brought new challenges for exercisers and athletes and opened essential scientific and practical questions on how the adjustment of a physical activity (PA) routine impacted the possible benefits of PA. To provide empirical data on this question, we comprised 426 late adolescents and young adults (Mage = 24, 04 ; TR = 18 - 40 ; Nmale = 174, Nfemale = 252) who completed online questionnaires measuring anxiety (Beck Anxiety Inventory) and resilience (Brief Resilience Scale) and reported on their physical activity level and PA routine in the pandemic period. The results of the factorial ANOVA showed the effect of higher PA level and not changed PA routine on lower anxiety of exercisers and athletes. However, the interaction showed the dependence of the PA routine effect on the PA level. No change in the PA routine compared to more or less PA during the pandemic was beneficial for lower anxiety of those who are rarely or not physically active and those less active recreationists. The effect of a PA routine on the anxiety of more active recreationists and athletes was not statistically significant. The resilience was also positively affected by the level of PA, whereby athletes and more active recreationists showed higher resilience compared to the rarely or not physically active individuals. The main effect of the PA routine was not significant. However, at a lower level of statistical significance effect of the level of PA was dependent on the PA routine (p = .1). The results suggested that no change of the PA routine may be beneficial for the resilience of the rarely or not physically active individuals and less active recreationists. In other words, resilience possibly decreased if they were less or strived to be more physically active during the pandemic. On the contrary, the not changed routine of athletes potentially led to lower resilience. The findings of our study confirmed the hypothesized beneficial effect of PA on psychological health and indicated the importance of an unchanged PA routine for, in general, less physically active individuals. We discuss the findings within the Belief-attitude and Control- based theories.

Anxiety, Resilience, Physical Activity, Physical Activity Routine, COVID-19

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