Pre-competitive anxiety, self-confidence, and technical-tactical performance in professional kickboxing athletes

The medical question

Does anxiety before a bout differ between fighters who win and fighters who lose?

The Fight Medicine Research Institute uses this evidence to frame questions about anxiety and self-confidence in fighters on the day of competition. The study’s small sample, 20 professional kickboxers at one event, determines which questions it can inform.

Summary

Anxiety and self-confidence measured about 60 minutes before a professional kickboxing bout did not differ significantly between 10 winners and 10 defeated athletes.

What the work reports

• At one professional kickboxing event in Cuiabá, Brazil, 20 athletes completed the Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2 about 60 minutes before their bouts. A researcher then counted attacks and scoring actions from video of the 10 bouts.
• Somatic anxiety, cognitive anxiety and self-confidence did not differ significantly between winners and defeated athletes. Winners made more attacks (a mean of 178.15 against 108.35) and had higher attack efficacy, while attack efficiency did not differ.
• The authors conclude that competitive success in this sample was related to a higher volume of attacks and greater efficacy, and that the psychological measures taken before the bout did not distinguish winners from defeated athletes.

Limits to keep in mind

• Small sample: 20 athletes from one event. The authors state that the design could detect only very large differences between groups, so the lack of a difference in anxiety or self-confidence is not evidence that none exists.
• Only one woman took part. The authors say the findings mainly reflect male professional kickboxers.
• Anxiety and self-confidence were self-reported once, about 60 minutes before the bout. The authors note possible response bias and that measurements taken immediately before competition might differ.
• Not all athletes at the event volunteered, which the authors note may imply selection bias.

Source issues recorded

• The article’s funding statement says no financial support was received. Its acknowledgments thank CAPES for a scholarship, and the publisher’s Crossref deposit lists CAPES as a funder.

Publication status and notices

Published in Frontiers in Sports and Active Living, a peer-reviewed journal. Original research article in Frontiers in Sports and Active Living.

Form of this work: Version of record. The version of record is the final article as issued by its publisher.

No correction or retraction notice was found in Crossref or Europe PMC when this record was checked.

Fight Medicine Research Institute contribution

Fight Medicine Research Institute selected and catalogued this study, prepared an original research summary, verified its bibliographic details, and maintains the associated citation record.

PDF files

Article details

Relationship

External research catalogued by the Fight Medicine Research Institute. The original authors, journal and DOI are unchanged.

Published online

14 September 2026

Repository date

14 September 2026 (Europe PMC first-publication date)

Date used here

14 September 2026 (Crossref publisher deposit, online publication date)

Rights

CC BY 4.0. Open access under a Creative Commons Attribution licence (CC BY 4.0), as recorded by Europe PMC and the licence link in the source record. The summary on this page is Fight Medicine Research Institute’s own wording. No text or figure from the article is reproduced here. Licence terms.

Source check

12 November 2026, against PubMed Central full text, Crossref and Europe PMC. Checked under the direction of Casey C. Sears, Founder. An LLM was utilized as a research tool with direct human oversight.

Appraisal

The check covered bibliographic details, links, licence and notices. It is not a formal critical appraisal of the full paper.

Clinical review

None. This record is a research summary, not clinical education.

Funding and conflicts

The funding statement says no financial support was received, while the acknowledgments thank the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) for a scholarship. The authors declare no competing interests and state that generative AI was used to help with the English.

Catalog

FH-052, added 12 November 2026

Cite the original work

These files cite the work by its own authors, journal and DOI. Fight Medicine Research Institute appears only in a note, as curator of this catalog page.

Jonatas Deivyson Reis da Silva Duarte, Johan Robalino, Gennaro Apollaro, Cebrail Gençoğlu, Süleyman Ulupınar, Serhat Özbay, et al.. Pre-competitive anxiety, self-confidence, and technical-tactical performance in professional kickboxing athletes: differences between winners and defeated athletes. Frontiers in Sports and Active Living. 2026;8:1904878. https://doi.org/10.3389/fspor.2026.1904878

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Related on this website

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