**Preface to "Psychological Factors and Their Effect on the Health, Well-Being and Performance of Athletes"**

Regular sports practice has a positive influence on the physical, mental, and psychological health of athletes at different levels and in a variety of contexts. Sports performance depends not only on the physical qualities of athletes, but also on psychological variables. In a competitive context, knowledge and manipulation of psychological variables such as attention, self-confidence, stress control, anxiety, motivation, cohesion, self-control or emotional self-regulation, moods, and interpersonal skills can influence the performance and health of an athlete.

Even playing sports can generate feelings of fear of failure and the emergence of feelings of shame, creating a degree of insecurity, anxiety, or stress and avoidance behaviour in athletes, which can affect well-being, interpersonal behaviour, and sporting performance.

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic required the implementation of governmental restrictions, such as quarantine, to contain the spread of the virus. These restrictions may have caused additional fears and stress among athletes, since they were not able to train regularly and properly maintain their physical condition. In addition, competitive sport is a means of socialising, which has an impact on player training, the promotion of a balanced sporting context, and the intention to continue practising the sport. Therefore, the physical and psychological well-being of athletes depends mainly on the social environments in which the sport is practised; that is, their well-being is related to the significant agents in the environment, which social isolation due to the pandemic restrictions may have impaired.

This publication brings together the latest research on these psychological factors that influence sports performance, physical health, the mental and psychological well-being of athletes, and adherence to sport.

> **Manuel G ´omez-L ´opez, Antonino Bianco, and Carlos Marques da Silva** *Editors*
