Yuri Hanin, a noted Russian sport psychologist, presented an alternative view that he calls the individualised zones of
optimal functioning (IZOF) model. Hanin (1980, 1986, 1997) found that top athletes have a zone of optimal state anxiety in
which their best performance occurs. Outside this zone, poor performance occurs.
Hanins IZOF view differs from the inverted-U hypothesis in two important ways. First, the optimal level of state anxiety
does not always occur at the midpoint of the continuum but rather varies from the individual to individual. That is; some
athletes have a zone of optimal functioning at the lower end of the continuum, some in the mid-range, and others at the
upper end. Secondly, the optimal level of state anxiety is not a single point but a bandwidth. Thus coaches and teachers
should help participants identify and reach their own, specific optimal zone of state anxiety.
The IZOF model has a good support in the research literature (Gould & Tuffey, 1996). In addition, Hanin (1997) expanded
the IZOF notion beyond anxiety to show how zones of optimal functioning use a variety of emotions, such as
determination, pleasantness, and laziness. He concluded that for best performance to occur, athletes needed
individualised optimal levels not of state
anxiety but of a variety of other emotions as
well. A major coaching implication of the
IZOF model, then, is that coaches must help
each individual athlete achieve the ideal
recipe of emotions needed by that athlete
for best performance.