Self-efficacy and anxiety and their relationship to training and race performance.

The purpose of this study was to examine the validity of task-specific and general measures of physical self-efficacy in a competitive sports setting and how these measures relate to anxiety and actual running performance. 47 members of a running club and 16 members of a university track team completed measures assessing general and task-specific self-efficacy, anxiety, and training experience and were asked to run in three running events. Associations among these variables and running performance, examined by correlational and regression analyses, indicated that race finishing time was significantly related to a number of training variables, predicted performance, and measures of self-efficacy; however, state and trait anxiety were not significantly related to pace of race. Results suggest that a task-specific measure of self-efficacy is the better predictor of performance in a race than a general measure of self-efficacy.