Lifestyle of the elite national karate-ka (karate practitioner) and its effect on controlling the pre-competition stress

This research aims to study the lifestyle of elite national Karate-ka and its effect on controlling the pre-competition stress. The current research participants include all of the participating athletes in the State Karate Championships (n=185). According to the small amount of the population, the whole society was chosen as the participants. The current research information were collected by the use of two questionnaires of the lifestyle standard questionnaire (SF-36) and questionnaire of sports stress coping strategies (two main dimensions, approach coping style and avoidant coping style). The questionnaire reliability (R= 0.87) was reported by Besharat. The research data were analyzed by the use of Spearman rank correlation in significance level p≤ 0.05. Mean and standard deviation of two coping styles of avoidant (71.6 ± 3.4) and approach (64.9 ± 2.8) showed that most of the times Karate-ka use the avoidant coping style in the stressful situations. The current research results showed that a significant correlation exists between the lifestyle and its components with the stress coping styles in level P ≤ 5%. Also these results showed that a positive and significant correlation exists between the lifestyle and approach coping style (R= 0.71) with the avoidant coping style (R= 0.78).