Physiological activity refers to the physical inner workings of the body. Often times, coaches or sport psychologists confuse readers by introducing several different terms that refer to the same concept. This is especially true of physiological activity and arousal. For our purposes, arousal and physiological activity will mean the same thing.

Physiological activity is a very important concept for success is athletics. It is also a very important part of many other topics found in this book. For instance, it is hard to have a discussion of muscle movement without considering physiological activity.

For every sport, there is an optimal level of physiological activity or arousal. If too little physiological activity is present in the body then performance will be sluggish or lazy. If too much physiological activity is present any of hundreds of performance debilitating effects can occur.

Normally, too little physiological activity is not a problem. Even athletes who freeze before an event are not suffering from lack of physiological activity. Rather, they have too much physiological based activity in their brains. This causes an over-ride in