An investigation of the emotion regulation processes of competitive indoor bouldering climbers.

The successful regulation of emotions is crucial in high-risk and competitive sports. One sport, competitive rock climbing, has seen a dramatic growth, which has resulted in increased development of systematic training and coaching approaches. An improved understanding of the underpinning psychological processes may inform these practices. This mixed methods paper investigates competitive indoor climbers', and specifically bouldering: an un-roped climbing discipline, and their emotions and emotion regulation processes. Ten advanced climbers completed the Sport Emotion Questionnaire and a semi-structured interview to identify the prevalent emotive factors associated with competition climbing, meta-emotion beliefs associated with performance, and climbers' emotion regulation strategies. Thematic analysis of the interviews revealed that the climbers deployed emotion regulation strategies, particularly attentional deployment, cognitive change, and response modulation strategies, to facilitate competitive performance and preserve emotional well-being. Most climbers in this study were motivated by intrinsic factors of enjoyment and self-improvement, which differs from higher-level, professional climbers. Interpersonal factors were central to these advanced climbers' emotion regulation processes, consistent with the non-competitive background of rock climbing. The performance of lower-level climbers may benefit from developing directed emotion regulation expertise, improved emotional intelligence and consistency when employing emotion regulation strategies. Future research should assess the effectiveness of emotion regulation strategies employed by competitive indoor climbers.