Anxiety, as negative emotion, affect perceptions in sports competitions, where a large majority of athletes consider anxiety to be debilitative towards performance, which may result in decreases in performance. Several researches on anxiety among athletes indicated that athletes take drugs to combat anxiety and enhance performance. There are many researches indicating that relaxation techniques benefits athletes by enhancing self-confidence, concentration, performance, reducing anxiety and stress, blood pressure as well as muscle tense. The aim of this research was to find the correlation between different kinds of relaxation techniques and sports performance. The sample consisted of 122 athletes. The sample was drawn from athletes who competed in Sports between University (MASUM). The Questionnaire of Imagery, The Questionnaire of Meditation, The Questionnaire of Progressive Muscle Relaxation and The Questionnaire of Techniques of Breathing, was used in this study. Besides that, Sports Performance Questionnaire also has been used in this study to correlate the relationship between the relaxation techniques and performance of athletes. The result showed that there are positive correlation between imagery and sports performance, meditation and sports performance, progressive muscle relaxation and sports performance, breathing techniques and sports performance. Sport psychologist and coaches should use these findings to practice various kinds of relaxation techniques on athletes. Practicing relaxation techniques can reduce the number of athletes taking drugs to reduce anxiety and enhance performance. For sport industry, relaxation techniques product can be sold through the form of CDs, VCDs, DVDs and audio.

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The present study has been conducted to investigate the effects of self-talk on free throw performance and the level of anxiety among male novice basketball players. Forty-eight (48) male novice basketball players (22.27 ± 1.47 years) was selected. The participants were assigned into four matched groups of twelve (12) participants: instructional self-talk (IST), motivational self-talk (MST) and the combination of instructional and motivational self-talk (CIMST) and control. Throw accuracy and anxiety’s level were measured on a 5-point scale and State-Trait Anxiety Inventory for Adults (STAI). Training protocol contains a pre-test and post-test to indicate the intervention effect on anxiety level and free throw performance. The participants compete against each other to get the highest score in post free throw performance. The data were analyzed by using mixed between-within subjects analysis of variance (ANOVA). The finding showed that state and trait anxiety level of post-intervention was significantly lower than pre-intervention in all groups (p<.05). The results of free throw performance showed the instructional self-talk intervention group was significantly improved from pre-intervention to post-intervention followed by the combination of instructional and motivational self-talk intervention group, motivational self-talk intervention group and control group (p<.05). However, there was no significant differences in anxiety level and free throw performance among all groups (p>.05). Therefore, it is recommended that self-talk can be used to enhance the free throw performance and reduce the anxiety’s level for the novice athletes.