Introduction

Volleyball is the sixth most popular sport and the most widespread sport in some countries of the world, in which players are placed in two teams of 6 people on both sides of the net and try to hit the ball over the net according to the rules of the game. Land the opposing team's field. Stress is one of the important issues that affects people's mental health. Nowadays, there is a lot of stress in sports and competitions between athletes. Stress is a complex phenomenon that increases silently and contributes to mental health disorders and chronic diseases, reduced work productivity, decreased quality of life, and exponentially increased medical costs. Chronic stress experienced for a long time overcomes the body's coping mechanisms. We should not always think of stress as negative. A certain amount of stress is positive and useful for performance; apart from a certain amount of stress that is productive and stimulating for a person; What should be controlled are harmful and disturbing stresses. Athletes can perform very well when they are in a good physical and mental condition, such as when an athlete has both proper training and controls psychological factors such as stress. Perceived stress is a psychological process during which a person perceives his physical and mental health as threatening. Another component that plays an essential role in mental and physical health is coping skills. Stress coping skills are cognitive and behavioral efforts that people use in stressful situations to cope with their problems. Each person reacts in a special way when dealing with stressful situations. This particular way of coping can be emotion-oriented, problem-oriented, or avoidance. Problem-oriented coping strategies include searching for more information about the problem, changing the structure of the problem cognitively, and prioritizing its solution. Emotion-oriented coping strategies include focusing on oneself instead of the problem and trying to reduce one's unpleasant feelings. Emotion-oriented coping responses also include crying, being upset, fantasizing and Employment is mental. And in another style of coping, that is, avoidant coping, the person tries to avoid the problem and ignore it. One of the appropriate methods that seems to be The ability to control stress in athletes is useful for cognitive-behavioral stress management therapy. The cognitive-behavioral stress management method is a multifaceted approach in which techniques such as relaxation, diaphragmatic breathing, meditation, identification of negative automatic thoughts, cognitive distortions and its reconstruction by replacing logical thoughts, coping training Effectively, anger management and expression are taught to people. Therefore, considering the effectiveness of stress management training on stress perception and coping skills in different groups, the main goal of the present study is to investigate the effectiveness of stress management training on stress perception and coping skills of volleyball players.

Materials and Methods: The research method was an experimental type with a pre-test and post-test design with a control group. A sample of 24 volleyball athletes was selected from among the athletes of different sports according to the entry criteria, using available sampling method from the research community, which included all the volleyball players of Sabzevar city. Half of the people who were in the experimental group were trained in cognitive behavioral stress management in 8 sessions over a period of two months. During this period, the control group did not receive any training. The required data were collected through the Perceived Stress Questionnaire of Cohen et al. (1983) and the Coping Scale of Frydenberg & Lewis (1993), in two stages before the intervention and after the intervention. To analyze the data, multivariate covariance analysis (MANCOVA) and univariate covariance analysis (ANCOVA) were used using SPSS23 software.

Results: The results of the data analysis related to this hypothesis showed that stress management training has an effect on improving stress perception and coping skills of volleyball players by 0.58 units (p<0.01) and management training Stress on the increase of volleyball players' productive coping skills by 0.33 units, on the reduction of volleyball players' ineffective coping skills by 0.33 units, and on the reduction of volleyball players' perception of stress by 0.24 units. The results showed that cognitive-behavioral stress management training has been able to significantly increase the perceived stress and adaptive coping skills of the experimental group volleyball players compared to the control group in the post-test phase.

Conclusion: Stress management strategies are cognitive and behavioral efforts that are used in the face of stress and in order to cope with problems and can play a very important role in physical and mental health. In this research, it was also shown that stress management training is effective on volleyball players' perception of stress. One of the most important effects of stress management training is reducing negative emotions such as anxiety and worry. Athletes who undergo stress management training gain the ability to use the necessary techniques to reduce the perception of stress and focus more on the game when experiencing stress in sports environments. . Also, these trainings create conditions for athletes to have more self-confidence due to the successful experiences they gain in dealing with stress and challenges, and they can better maintain their mental balance in critical situations in the future. maintain and improve their performance. Therefore, it can be said that, through improving coping skills and creating a more positive attitude towards stress, stress management training helps athletes to manage the psychological tensions in their games and training with more effective strategies and reduce their stress perception. In relation to another finding of this research regarding the effectiveness of stress management training on reducing inconsistent style in volleyball players, it can be said that the purpose of stress management training is to rebuild people's thinking patterns so that they can evaluate an event as less traumatic. Teaching stress management to athletes will improve management skills, change negative attitudes, and strengthen effective methods of dealing with stress and sports challenges, thereby improving the quality of athletes' coping. Stress management training shows athletes how to improve the quality of coping in the face of sports challenges by focusing on solving problems, using positive ways and benefiting from social support, thereby reducing worry, tension and blaming themselves and others. reduce In stress management training, athletes learn to manage their negative emotions and deal effectively with stressful situations.According to the results of the research, it can be said that stress management training can have an effect on the stress of volleyball players. According to the available sampling method, it is suggested that a similar research should be conducted in athletes of different sports fields for the external validity of the research.

Keywords: Stress Management Based On Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy, Perceived Stress, Coping Skills.

Ethical Considerations

Compliance with ethical guidelines

The ethical principles observed in the article, such as the informed consent of the participants, the confidentiality of information, the permission of the participants to cancel their participation in the research. Ethical approval was obtained from the Research Ethics Committee of the University of Shahrood Branch, Islamic Azad University, Shahrood, Iran.

Funding

This study was extracted from the M.A thesis of first author at Department of Sport Psychology of University of Shahrood Branch, Islamic Azad University, Shahrood, Iran..

Authors' contribution

Authors contributed equally in preparing this article.

Conflict of interest

The authors declared no conflict of interest.