The problem of psychological characteristics of a sport
Sooner or later, coaches and athletes face the problem of determining the psychological conditions associated with improving training in a certain sport, competitive exercise (sports discipline, type of competition) or sports role.
In the "Explanatory Dictionary of Sports Terms", a sport is understood as a specific relatively independent type of competition that has historically formed in the course of the development of sports. All issues of holding competitions in a particular sport are usually managed by federations, committees of the international and national level. National and international competition rules have been developed for sports. A sport may include one (for example, ice hockey) or several (for example, athletics) types of competitions, competitive exercises, sports disciplines. Sometimes competitions in different sports are combined to hold Olympiads, Spartakiads, festivals. There are Olympic, professional-applied, winter, summer, water, military-applied, national, cyclic, speed-strength, complex coordination sports.
A competitive exercise (sports discipline, type of competition) is a type of a certain sport, which is considered as an independent type of competition program in this sport. For victory in competitive exercises, champion titles are awarded, medals and prizes are played out in competitive exercises, both individual and team.
For some few sports, this term is not used, since they do not have separate sports disciplines; however, titles and medals are played out in different age or gender groups. This also includes options for conducting competitions indoors or outdoors, day or night, which also increase the number of competitive exercises that take into account records and championship titles.
In case of coincidence of the concepts of sport and competitive exercise, we will use them as synonyms; in other cases, the difference in their use is related to the above.
The term sports role reflects the specifics of the functions of individual athletes in team sports (goalkeepers, attackers, defenders, pilots, navigators; those who breed; those who block; centers, rowers, helmsmen). Specialization in different sports is sometimes quite significant. For example, in a rugby match, some players do not manage to hold the ball in their hands throughout the game, and the helmsman of the academic eight does not have to apply effort to the oar during the race.
The problem of the psychological specificity of a sport, competitive exercise, sports role is becoming increasingly relevant, since the reserves of the human psyche are one of the hopes for further increasing sports achievements and reducing the duration of training periods for highly qualified athletes.
The theory and practice of psychological support for sports activities, when predicting its success with varying degrees of effectiveness, uses promising models of mental development, profiles of elite samples, and valid psychological tests.
Validity is one of the important criteria for the suitability of a test for research purposes, characterizing the correspondence between the expression of a certain property of the psyche and a specific method of its measurement.
There are examples of the use of complex and systemic prerequisites for psychological support, which implement a greater or lesser number of systemic features, and therefore, a greater or lesser consideration of various mental factors involved in a particular type of competition (and in preparation for it).
There is still no generally accepted psychological classification of sports, not to mention the specifics of competitive exercises or sports roles. Domestic and foreign classifications, as a rule, do not cover even half of the sports that exist now, and competitive exercises and roles are not even mentioned.
In sports psychology, a clear approach to solving the problem of psychological characteristics (classification) of sports has not yet been formed. Among the approaches that are currently used, two main ones can be distinguished: empirical (based on a comparative study of the characteristics of the psyche of athletes and people who do not engage in sports, athletes of different levels of training in one sport and people with similar professional skills, but limited by a clearly expressed competitiveness) and theoretical, which is based on taking into account the specifics of the requirements of different sports for the psyche of people involved in these sports.
The empirical approach is widely accepted in American and Western European sports psychology: our specialists do not refuse it either. It involves the selection (fixation) of the most stable personality characteristics. Which are characteristic of representatives of a particular sport. Such characteristics usually include motivation, activation, aggression, anxiety, sociability, emotional expressiveness and stability, intelligence, anticipation, level of aspirations.
Anticipation is the ability to predict, guess in advance the further development of events, phenomena, results of actions. This ability can be the basis for intuitive solutions to problems or reactions to an event before it occurs.
A certain personality profile, which is built on such characteristics, should, according to researchers, differ from the profile of a non-specific sample, and the characteristics themselves should have a tendency to develop as the person engages in a given sport.
Specialists are also well aware of the facts of mental differences between representatives of different sports or different roles in the same sport, which occur much more often than the differences between athletes of a particular sport and individuals who do not engage in sports. In addition, the samples of highly qualified athletes are small, which reduces the value of comparing them with numerous non-specific samples.
In our opinion, the development of any of the above personality qualities and their combination can be achieved in the field of activity that is not related to sports.
The theoretical approach to constructing a psychological characteristic (classification) of sports is usually combined with the establishment of a small (from 2 to 6) number of factors that allow comparing and ranking sports according to the degree of necessity of overcoming these mental obstacles while practicing this sport. These factors have the nature of objective requirements for the athlete's psyche. Such factors, as a rule, are: speed of action in unpredictable situations, probability of injury, direct or indirect contact with an opponent.
A similar classification was proposed by psychologist T.T. Dzhamgarov. It takes into account the nature of the confrontation (direct or indirect), the nature of contact with the opponent (hard physical, physical, conditional physical, lack of physical contact), as well as the nature of interaction with partners and rivals (joint interactions, individual actions, joint-synergistic actions.
Interaction is a feature of the joint action of several subjects, in which each, solving their tasks, simultaneously contributes to solving the tasks set for other partners.
The basis of the classifications considered above are factors that cause stress in a particular sport. According to specialists, such classifications do not cover all sports and do not touch the areas of sports roles. In addition, outside the data of theoretical models, there are factors that are quite significant for the result, but not stressful: emotional expressiveness, intelligence, complexity of coordination of movements, ergonomic features, cyclicity.
If we add to this the insufficiently developed socio-psychological aspects of the formation of sportsmanship in various sports, which ensure the status of the individual and its prospects, then the need for a more modern form of psychological characteristics (classification) of sports, competitive exercises and sports roles becomes obvious both from the standpoint of the humanization of sports and psychological monitoring.
Psychological monitoring is a regular, systematic monitoring of the dynamics of mental properties, processes and states over a long period of time. In this case, a set of methods is used that allow solving significant problems of mental health, reliability, management of sports form, etc.
In accordance with the structure of activity in the proposed psychological characteristics of sports (according to O.L. Popov), three factors are distinguished: - the factor of motives, which are the basis of all the athlete's activity, not excluding the shades of motives that are inherent in a particular sport; - the factor of goals, which determine the specificity of actions in a specific competitive exercise, where the main goal is to achieve a sports result; - the factor of conditions, which constitute a large group of requirements for the psyche, which are mandatory for consideration in operations.
Operation - this term in the theory of activity denotes completed and, as a rule, automated acts (motor, perceptual, intellectual, etc.), which are part of actions. Unlike actions, which are determined by goals and activities, which are determined by motives, operations are determined by the conditions of the objective situation, in which socially developed behavioral schemes are embodied, built into the form of values.
As a result of the allocation of these factors, the specificity of the requirements of a sport, competitive exercise or sports role can be represented by five levels (see diagram), three of which belong to motives: social responsibility (as a tribute to socially conditioned motives); the specificity of contacts with partners and rivals (as communicative motivation), as well as the main shades of the motive (motivational specificity) of a sport with an emphasis on ensuring cyclicity, movement control or situational confrontation. The target side of the activity is determined by alternative characteristics of actions from the standpoint of overcoming danger, social support, emotional saturation and ergonomics, and the conditions constitute the most typical components of the success or failure of operations within the activity (environment, weather, status, prestige, traditions, rules, experience, inclinations and talents, control, specialized perception).
In the analysis of a specific sport, competitive exercise or sports role, it is advisable to consider not only the traditionally obvious features of the selected sport, but also to pay close attention to all the above-mentioned requirements. As the experience of using this (extended) approach to the analysis of a specific sport shows, as a result, it is possible to identify significant reserves of psychological training of athletes through the use of techniques in other, even seemingly quite dissimilar sports. These paradoxes mostly make up the arsenal of "little tricks" of an experienced coach and athlete, since they rely on the traditional inertia of thinking and behavior of opponents.
In addition, quite often one has to deal with sports that cannot be fully included in one of the branches of the proposed classification.
It is also assumed that an athlete or coach, when psychologically analyzing a selected sport, competitive exercise or role, will proceed from a specific situation and real conditions: level of training, age, gender, availability of time to solve training tasks.
Motivational specificity of sports
The motivational specificity of sports is quite broad and multifaceted in its manifestations and forms. Here are various contact forms that implement the motives of the athlete, club, entrepreneurs, sponsors, state interests, cultural traditions. Here are the motives of knowing a person, the motives of communication in the field of sports and about sports, here is the satisfaction of aggressive inclinations in hard physical contacts, and many indirect, mediated contacts, forcing the opponent with the help of blows and throws of the ball, shuttlecock, puck. Finally, the complex and multivariate specificity of the formation of motives for the final choice of a sport, competitive exercise or role, that is, the desire to win precisely in cyclicity, movement management or situational confrontation.
When getting acquainted with the motivational specificity of sports, you are invited to choose one of the specific types of competition, preferably the one that is most mastered, and compare the material presented below with your idea of the mental characteristics of those involved in this sport (competitive exercises). But here you should take into account gender, age, sports qualifications, social status of the athlete or team and many other factors of preparation and participation in competitions.
Social responsibility as a motive for competitive activity in a particular sport can be individual or team in nature. As it seems at first glance, it will not be difficult for you to decide the question of the nature of the predominant responsibility (individual or team). However, the first glance changes to the next, and here you find out that in the most individual sports and competitive exercises, the share of team responsibility (responsibility to the club, team) is quite large. It increases as the athlete's skill grows and the club's contribution to his preparation and ensuring participation in competitions. For those who have doubts, it is enough to consider the contracts of professional athletes, in which there are many specially negotiated conditions of responsibility to the club, team. On the contrary, in team sports and competitive exercises, the motives of individual responsibility, readiness to take on the game, initiative, leadership at the turning points of a duel or match are significant.
Social responsibility can also be different in sports roles, according to the role that a given athlete plays in the competition. Contact with an opponent or partners is also an important motivational feature of the chosen sport. There are three main types of contact: direct, indirect and conditional.
Direct contacts, in turn, can differ in the degree of severity of physical effects. For example, in wrestling, boxing, rugby, hard physical contacts are provided for by the rules. Physical contacts can be episodic, not provided for by the rules, which, however, arise during the competition as a result of the presence of rivals on the same track, court. Sports psychologists have repeatedly revealed differences in athletes in their efforts to make hard physical contacts or, conversely, avoiding hard techniques.
Indirect contacts are characterized by the presence of an object common to rivals and partners: a ball, puck, shuttlecock, figures on the board. The athlete, in accordance with the rules of these competitions, performs his own actions with the object, directing it to a certain place on the court, into the goal, basket and thereby forces the opponent to perform actions in response. Here, a large role is played by visual afferentation and mental states, which allow an adequate response to the movement of the object in space. Direct and indirect contacts often alternate in those types where they are permitted by the rules.
Conditional contacts understand a wide range of possible influences on rivals and partners, while visual, auditory, and other distant information is not mandatory for rivals and partners to take into account, who may not react to it, but processing this information and including it in the activity increases the likelihood of success.
Remote information - information that can be obtained on the basis of sensations that do not require direct contact of the corresponding analyzer with the source of sensations (visual, auditory, olfactory, vibrational).
In sports where this information prevails, athletes compete on different tracks, take turns performing the exercise, may not even see each other. In a broad sense, conditional contacts can include information received through the media, various rumors, and much more. Of course, such contacts are also used in sports that are focused on direct and indirect contacts.
In general, the nature of contacts is associated with the implementation of interaction and counteraction, with the use of information of different modalities and personality properties that depend on the processing of information, with anticipatory reflection. More specific options for motivation associated with practicing various sports are reflected in the groups: ensuring cyclicity, movement control, situational confrontation.
Ensuring cyclicity of sports movements in walking, running, swimming, rowing, cycling, as well as in competitive exercises of other types that include locomotor acts (jumping - in athletics, vaulting - in gymnastics, running - in acrobatics, etc.), involves four main groups of motives: the implementation of natural coordination of movements, sprint-stayer choice, optimization of energy expenditure, synergism. Each of these four groups of motives is formed during training and competitions, reaching high development as sportsmanship improves.
The use of natural coordination of movements predetermines extensive and competent work to create an individual style of cyclic movements based on locomotor acts.
In most cyclic sports, an athlete is forced to make a choice between shorter and longer distances sooner or later. At the same time, this or that distance does not always coincide with the power zones known from physiology. The implementation of sprint-stayer relationships determines numerous forms of work and the selection of means in a narrower specialization of the athlete.
Optimization of energy expenditure forces the athlete to perform significant volumes of general physical and special work, learn to save strength, manage the body's resources.
Requirements for fiber synergy in the muscle, ensuring intermuscular coordination, as well as synchronous application of forces in crews are sometimes one of the main concerns of coaches and athletes, especially in team cyclic sports: in rowers, cyclists (on tandems), in bobsleigh.
Movement control involves other motivational accents: ensuring coordination of the highest complexity, optimizing movement according to such parameters as speed, strength, accuracy; implementation of a given attempt and all-around qualities. It should not be forgotten that this group includes most technical types of competitions in which athletes, together with crews, act as helmsmen (pilots, skippers), as well as types related to the accuracy of parachute and weapon control.
The acquisition and implementation of complex coordination of movements are associated with the mastery of skills, often quite far from natural coordination, with the formation of conditioned-reflex connections, "inconvenient" for the structure of the human nervous system in an obligatory sense, and also often dangerous in the event of an error in execution.
Obligatory learning - the formation of skills and abilities that advantageously use the features of the nervous system. Everyone knows the phenomena of a dexterous and clumsy hand, convenient and inconvenient sides of rotation, the role of innate properties of the nervous system in mastering a particular profession.
About the optimization of sports movements in terms of speed, strength and accuracy, we can say with confidence that this is one of the most important problems of modern sports, the cornerstone of many training methods and an essential motive not only for technical improvement, but also for tactics, and the development of physical qualities both with a general physical emphasis (in the early stages of training) and from the standpoint of specialization. It should be noted that this category of motives encourages actions at the limit of strength, speed and accuracy.
The implementation of an attempt, as a tribute to reliability in sports, as a manifestation of special tactics, as a way of selecting finalists and winners, generates a group of motives aimed at developing confidence in one's abilities, concentrating forces in a strictly allotted time, and managing mental states that ensure the result, taking into account the possible dynamics of events on the sports field.
All-around competition is one of the traditional motives of competitions, it is a sign of true athleticism. Knights of many qualities with incomprehensible for many athletes perseverance go to the heights of achievements in a combination of the most diverse competitive exercises in one of the sports (athletics, alpine skiing, swimming), or in a combination of several types (modern pentathlon, triathlon, polyathlon). The basis of their success is general abilities.
Situational confrontation as a manifestation of the specificity of motives is most often combined with the use of an arsenal of techniques and counter-techniques, ensuring variable intensity, mastering strategy and tactics, as well as with forecasting, in which the leading place belongs to a sudden assessment of the probability of the next action of the opponent and teammates. This group of motives is most characteristic of martial arts and game sports.
The training of athletes in these sports is aimed at using an arsenal of techniques and counter-techniques, each of which can be used to achieve victory, but not every one will necessarily be used. Here, the skill and the main motive of the competition, in particular, is to prepare the opponent for a mistake, and oneself - for the opportunity to make a "desired" technique, throw, kick at the goal, moving from technique to technique.
The competition is mostly associated with the ability of the team or athlete to rest during the match and quickly show decisive activity, with the ability to quickly restore strength during the substitution period, with the "game of speed" during the match or match, that is, with ensuring variable intensity. Intensity regulation is a subject of special concern in the training of high-class masters, a sign and motive of mastery of the sports situation, a guaranteed element of surprise for the opponent.
A lot of patience, work and time is spent by athletes on mastering strategy and tactics in any type of competition, but it is in situational confrontation that tactical and strategic techniques are formed, and motivation for conducting a smart duel develops.
Situational confrontation in games and other duels is always probabilistic in nature, requires a sudden assessment of the situation and forecasting of subsequent actions. In many techniques and counter-techniques, the skill of forecasting is formed. Each technique has the character of relative success - failure, it is a trial and error. At the same time, mistakes and successes are "contagious": a large number of opponents' mistakes makes the duel uninteresting, and a significant number of successes - beautiful.
In general, the considered motivational specificity reveals multifaceted opportunities for individualizing human activity in the field of sports, for choosing a sports specialization, for orientation in the world of sports and self-realization of the individual.
The above-mentioned motives can be simultaneously considered as properties of sports activity, as objective requirements for the psyche of those involved in sports, which have been formed culturally and historically. Thus, they can be considered as a source of generation of motives of a particular athlete as he mastered a particular sports activity.
We note once again that despite the obvious belonging of the chosen sport, competitive exercise or sports role to one or another category of motives considered above, it is always useful to consider all other options (other motives, other requirements for the psyche).
Target specificity of sports
The target basis of the specificity of various sports, competitive exercises and sports roles is formed by factors that have a dual, polar (ambivalent) character. These factors constantly put the athlete and coach in a situation of choosing between completely opposite approaches to building the training process and the style of the athlete's and team's performance during the competition.
In the psychological theory of activity, which implements the ideas of a systemic approach, a category of actions is distinguished in the structure of activity that is determined by goals that correlate with goals. In this case, goals are not invented, set, but organically emerge from future actions on the basis of anticipatory reflection. In the proposed version of the psychological specificity of various sports, the emphasis is on the categories of actions that constitute the core of the choice of means to achieve competitive goals. Goals can change significantly from competition to competition or be relatively constant over a long period of time.
Such goals are mostly: overcoming danger, social support, emotional saturation and ergonomics.
Danger, as one of the main stress factors in sports, has different meanings in different types and is represented by a developed range of troubles that await the athlete at every moment: from danger to life to the danger of losing the competition. There is always an alternative to take a risk, win due to an insufficiently mastered technique, increased speed, unprepared blow or "make your game", show your result, use the crown technique, without significantly risking. The problem of justified risk or extreme caution remains a constant problem for the coach and athlete, is a goal with which the corresponding arsenal of means is compared. Psychologically, it is a problem of realizing the intellect and the sensory fabric of consciousness, a problem of confidence and anxiety.
Social support, as a change in the athlete's behavior due to the presence of other athletes, judges, spectators, is an example of many unpredictable situations, a constant solution to the problem of obtaining approval, support or moving away from disapproval, dissatisfaction from others, including rivals and teammates. You can try to enlist this support using a variety of means: good play, correctness in relation to rivals and judges, the manifestation of strong-willed qualities, etc. The shortest path to victory is not always through approval. There are many examples in sports that are associated with the obvious choice of scandalous paths to the goal, which cause dissatisfaction of spectators, participants in competitions, coaches, courts (sometimes even all of them taken together).
Emotional saturation is another approach to the goals of a sports match. Among these goals is the realization of reserves of human emotions. As a result, the athlete needs to choose one of the alternatives: empathy (empathy, the ability to understand and accept the mood of another person, to understand their feelings) and expression (the inclination and readiness to convey one's emotions to others, the predominance of expressing one's emotions over accepting the emotions of rivals and partners). Different sports look at the problems of empathy and expression differently; equally successful performance programs can be built on their basis, aggressive or aesthetic directions of athletes and teams can be involved during competitions.
The ergonomics of a sport, as ensuring the maximum possible use of design achievements and reliable mastery of technical means of a given sport, constantly attracts the attention of coaches and athletes, forcing them to solve the eternal dilemma of the effectiveness of a sports device and some inconveniences that their use creates. As a rule, the creators of technical means are faced with the task of developing such devices, devices, structures that would be both effective and convenient. However, in practice, athletes use technical means that differ greatly in their effectiveness and ease of use, showing a selective attitude due to individual characteristics.
Conditions of sport and their psychological significance
For the analysis of the psychological specificity of a sport, competitive exercise or sports role, it is essential to consider the conditions of activity that correlate with operations that are part of the activity and actions. Operations are subject to high requirements regarding automatism, which is necessary for actions in conditions of time deficit, when it is necessary to perform a chain of motor acts in unison, etc. Conditions ultimately change little the motivational and target side of competitive actions, but significantly affect the specifics of operations. The conditions are: the environment of movement and the environment of resistance (they can be different), weather and climatic conditions, prestige and status of the sport and specific competitions, traditions and rules of competitions, experience, the presence of the athlete's predispositions and talents in relation to this sport, control (for example, anti-doping), the formation of a specialized perception in the athlete, such as the feeling of water, distance, ball, snow, boat movement. All these conditions act mainly as objective reasons for successes and failures. They are the subject of close attention of athletes and coaches when mastering new competition venues, water areas, when selecting beginners in groups, when correcting game plans or tactics.
In the most general form, conditions are specific requirements for building automated skills, and their consideration creates the prerequisites for a high degree of perfection of technique and tactics in sports.
The described psychological specificity of motives, goals and conditions of sports activity can and should be considered in two ways. First, as a set of cultural and historical requirements for the psyche of athletes, which are generated by sports activity, and these criteria must be observed by the athlete as he masters sports activity. Second, as activities, actions and operations, during the mastery of which the athlete "draws" for himself (in a personal sense) sports motives, goals and conditions.
Psychosportogram
The development of the problems of the athlete's mental preparation and its practical implementation showed the need for knowledge about the specific psychological characteristics of individual sports disciplines. Mental training is effective if it is aimed at the development of mental qualities and skills, the regulation of those mental states that are characteristic and necessary for a particular sport. Mental training in different sports disciplines has different tasks in terms of content.
The psychological characteristic of a given sport is called a psychosportogram. It resembles the psychological characteristic of individual professions - a professionogram, but differs from it in a different structure of professional and sports activities, which is explained by differences in their motives, goals and conditions in which these activities are carried out.
Attempts to develop psychological characteristics of individual sports have been carried out for a long time (Rudyk P.A., 1958; Puni A.Ts., 1959; Gagaeva G.M., 1979; Muller S., 1967; Khudadov N.A., 1968; Heron E., 1973, etc.).
The specific mental load on an athlete in each specific sport and the specific requirements placed on the athlete's mental activity are determined by two main factors:
a) the characteristics of the activity performed by the athlete;
b) the characteristics of the conditions in which this activity is carried out.
The specificity of the activity performed by the athlete includes its specific structure, specific requirements for its performance and the specificity of the difficulties that are overcome during this performance. The features of the activity performed by the athlete in different sports disciplines determine the activity of certain mental qualities and skills during its implementation.
Two main factors that determine the mental qualities, skills and states necessary for the athlete gave rise to the vertical separation of two main blocks-floors in the sportogram: the first of them groups the qualities that are caused by the characteristics of the activity in the corresponding sports discipline, and the second - the mental characteristics of the athlete, which are determined by the requirements of the competition conditions.
Both floors of the psychosportogram include four horizontally placed blocks one after the other, each of which has a different content. The first block of the sportogram includes those features of the activity itself and the conditions of competitions in the corresponding sports discipline that determine its specific requirements for the athlete's technique. The content of the second block follows from the features indicated in the first block. It includes mental functions, qualities, skills and states specific to this sport.
The third block reveals the specific characteristics of individual sports disciplines, the specific way in which each psychological function, quality or state manifests itself in them. When compiling psychosportograms and determining specific tasks that must be performed by psychological training, familiarity with these characteristics is of paramount importance. Positive or negative dependencies between psychological qualities in any sport are also one of their specific psychological features. They are also reflected in the third block of the psychosportogram model.
The fourth horizontal block includes indicators that control the development of the corresponding psychological qualities.
Thus, from the proposed model it is clear that the structure of the psychosportogram includes four horizontal blocks, which are located on two floors. The content of each of the four horizontal blocks is closely related to the content of the previous block. Each of them has its own specific content, and together they determine the psychological characteristics of the sports discipline. Familiarity with the psychosportogram of a given sport makes it possible to develop a scientifically based plan of psychological training and control its content.