Arousal is referred to as a physiological state of alertness and anticipation that prepares the body for action.  It is considered to be neutral because it is neither positive or negative.  It involves both physiological activation (increased heart rate, sweating rate or respiratory rate) and psychological activity (increased attention).  Arousal is typically viewed along a continuum, with deep sleep at one extreme and excitement at the other.  Individuals who are optimally aroused are those who are mentally and physically activated to perform.

Different positions across different sports will have different optimum levels of arousal.  Also, an athlete may require different arousal levels to perform depending on the situation within a single game.  In touch, there will be times when you need to be more aroused than other times.  As touch is a game of tactics and continual thinking, each player must be aroused enough to respond physically to a stimulus but also not aroused so much that they are not able to process thoughts, tactics or patterns of play.  Every player is obviously very different - some need to increase their arousal levels to play their best as they may be just too relaxed, whilst others need to decrease theirs as they are too stressed and anxious and their muscles are too tense.  the latter is a more common situation in touch where players can 'choke' by not thinking clearly or making the right decision because they are too stressed and therefore over-aroused.

Below are some PST methods to help deal with both over-arousal and under-arousal.  If you need more information or help with these techniques, please see your coach, sports psychologist or do some more reading!

Muscle tension can severely hinder performance due to losses in coordination.  It can lead to an increased risk of injury due to vastly decreased flexibility.
Progressive muscular relaxation (PMR) is an easy to use technique that helps reduce muscle tension.  It increases an individual's awareness of their levels of muscle tension, and through the relaxation phase, helps to distinguish the difference between a state of tension and relaxation.

The technique involves tensing and relaxing groups of muscles in turn over the whole body.  The process involves tensing a group of muscles for 5 seconds, taking a deep breath and repeating.  The athlete progresses from one muscle group to the next until all muscles have been tensed and relaxed.

When you start to experience an increased pressure during your touch game, an automatic tendency is to hold your breath.  Unfortunately, this increases factors that are detrimental to performance, for example, muscle tension.  Use breathing control when you are in the sub box or if there is a natural break in the game to help you calm down and relax.  You can use control your breathing in conjunction with self-talk.

To help to focus in on the task at hand and cut out crowd noise or an intimidating sub box a touch player can narrow in on the feel of the ball in his/her hands, the sound and smell of the grass under foot and the exact position where he/she is going to initiate the touch on the defender.  By imagining what you want to achieve and what you need to be able to achieve it, you can prevent your attention from focusing on irrelevant aspects, and focus instead on the relevant aspects.  

It is tap off for the final of the European Championships.  The player tapping off has practised the play many times but the stress and over arousal of the situation is causing a mind blank.  She just needs to relax!  By imagining emotions associated with relaxation, together with other techniques such as breathing exercises, she can control this anxiety, stress, and over-arousal to remember the play and perform it accordingly.

These are routines that a touch player can go through before a competition to help them focus their attention, increase arousal or decrease arousal.  For example, the routine could be the individual warm up that you do, or the way you pull your socks up and then bounce up and down just prior to tap-off.

You may know this as 'psyching up' and we have all seen and maybe even experienced examples of this.  Acting energised is particularly popular amongst contact sports such as rugby and in particular, positions requiring high physical contact.  In touch, some players may need to 'psych up' in order to get their head in the game by yelling out or getting a slap from a fellow player etc.  It is important to note that very few (if any) other players in your team would want to 'psych up' in these ways, so ensure you respect each player's individuality and psychological needs/preferences. 

Another way to increase arousal by energising is through imagery.  This can be achieved through the use of high energy images of competition (e.g. making a strong front-on touch), playing well (e.g. scoring a diving touchdown), and high levels of effort (e.g. being able to lift a new weight in the gym).
 

The use of music increases arousal.  Music can narrow a perfromer's attention and divert it from tiredness.  Exciting music can increase body temperature, heart rate and breathing rate, all of which improves sport performance.  For example, motivating music at the gym can help an athlete achieve a powerful repetition.

This requires an athlete to think about an elite performer in touch and remember how they have performed a particular skill.  Visualising themselves performing that skill in touch before trying to copy what they did will help the athlete to perform the skill.  This is just one example of how imagery may be used to help improve technique.  Imagery can be used in other ways too.  Imagery is a polysensorial and emotional creation or recreation of an experience that takes place in the mind.  It should involve as many senses as possible, as well as recreating emotions experienced throughout the game of touch.  The most effective imagery uses the following senses: Kinaesthetic (feel of the movement), visual (the different things you can see during the movement), tactile (the sense of touch through the movement), auditory (the sounds you may hear during the movement) and olfactory (the different smells you may experience during the movement).  The two common types of imagery are internal (imagining yourself doing the movement from inside your body and how everything feels, smells etc) and external (imagining yourself doing something as though you are watching it on a film so that you can develop an awareness of how the activity looks).

Mental rehearsal is one aspect of imagery.  It is a strategy for practising something in your mind before performing the task.  The difference between mental rehearsal and imagery is that mental rehearsal does not take into account how the skill is rehearsed, or what senses and emotions are used throughout the skill.  It is the cognitive rehearsal of a skill without any physical movement.

Using mental rehearsal in the lead up to, during, and after competition, as well as in practice settings, benefits skill practice and development.  It gives the athlete the opportunity to practice 'what if' scenarios to assess whether something different would work in the same scenario.  This is often combined with replaying the performance in their mind.  The athlete goes through previous performances to detect errors using mental rehearsal.  As touch requires many technical plays, mental rehearsal is ideal for testing out how the defence may react to an attacking play.  It is also useful for players to familiarize themselves with and understand their team plays.

Although not as effective as physically practising a skill, mental rehearsal is more beneficial than not practising the skill at all.  It helps to develop neuromuscular patterns associatied with different movements.