Castillo-Rodriguez, AlfonsoHernández-Mendo, AntonioAlvero-Cruz, José RamónOnetti-Onetti, WanesaFernández-García, José Carlos2023-05-032023-05-032022-06-031664-1078http://hdl.handle.net/10668/20728The objectives of the present study were firstly to evaluate precompetitive anxiety and self-confidence (SC) in padel players according to their playing level; and secondly, to study the factors that influence the levels of precompetitive anxiety and SC. One hundred padel players, all of whom were federated men (age: M = 27.6, SD = 7.5 years; weight: M = 73.4, SD = 9.8 kg; height: M = 175.6, SD = 7.5 cm) participated in the research. The CSAI-2 (Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2) questionnaire was used and a one-way ANOVA and a two- and three-ways MANOVA were conducted. The results show that the players from a better category had higher scores in SC and lower scores in somatic anxiety (SA) (η 2 = 0.10 and η 2 = 0.12, respectively). Moreover, the factors of category, body mass index (BMI) and experience, predicted 82% of the variance explained by the SC of the player. As a conclusion, this study has made it possible to ascertain that the playing category, understood as the level of the padel players, determines the levels of anxiety and SC and represents a key factor for the prediction of sports performance.enAttribution 4.0 Internationalhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/anxietycategorycompetitionpadelraquet sportsself-confidenceresearch article35726267open access10.3389/fpsyg.2022.890828PMC9206536https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.890828/pdfhttps://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9206536/pdf