Highlights • Various psychological well-being measures are related to neuromuscular performance in elite female volleyball players. • Pre-Exercise anabolic and catabolic hormone levels are not consistently related to performance. • Greater sport competition anxiety was related with faster sprint time. • Greater somatic anxiety was predictive of lower crunch test performance. • Insomnia was negatively related to jump performance. Abstract The purpose of this study was to examine relationships between pre-training psychological well-being assessment scales (General Health Questionnaire-28-GHQ-28, Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2-CSAI-2, Sport Competition Anxiety Test-SCAT, State-Trait Anxiety Inventory-S-STAI-S, Oviedo Sleep Questionnaire-OSQ and Psychological Characteristics Related to Sport Performance-PCSP), and pre-training stress hormone concentrations (cortisol-C, total testosterone-TT, free testosterone-FT, adrenocorticotropic hormone-ACTH and testosterone/cortisol-T/C ratios), on acute neuromuscular performance (ANP) in female volleyballers. Forty elite female volleyballers (27 ± 4 yrs.; 178.3 ± 8.5 cm; 67.9 ± 7.2 kg) participated. Bivariate correlations were performed between psychological assessments and hormone levels with ANP. All psychological scales presented at least one significant (p < 0.05) relationship or prediction of ANP. Contrastingly, among hormones, the only significant relationship was between TT/C ratio and Overhead Medicine Ball Throw (r = 0.34; p < 0.05). Therefore, our data shows that results of general and sport-specific psychological well-being scales prior to training are more consistently related to performance in elite female volleyballers than pre-training stress hormone concentrations.
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