Doctor of Education, Professor I.S. Kolesnik
Student D.A. Osipov
Ulyanovsk State Pedagogical University I.N.Ulyanova,Ulyanovsk, Russia

Keywords: boxing, sports training, student-oriented approach, the physical, technical and tactical preparation.

Creation of conditions for progressive improvement of competitive results is one of effective ways to increase sports skills and use boxer's kinesiological potential efficiently. The rise of fitness indices is defined by many factors, where the level of development of moral-volitional and ethical qualities is of special importance. The study of athlete's world outlook and character should be complemented by the continuous monitoring of his behavior after trainings, contribution to substantial expansion of the trainer and boxer interaction during training, along with control of the process of formation of individual's personal features (diligence, persistence, determination, purposefulness etc.), ensuring successful sports performance [3, 4, 6].

The purpose of the study was to design a system of educational effects intended to improve moral-volitional and ethical qualities of qualified boxers and check their efficiency in an educational experiment.

In boxing, associated with multilevel relationships of opposing athletes, combat is a model of conflict competition based on the use of specific features of the mechanism of body adaptation to stress situations, which includes:

- A real chance of a knockout with unpredictable consequences for health and further boxing career;

- The impact of various external and internal stimuli, significantly affecting the outcome of a combat;

- Shown moral-volitional and ethical qualities that enhance the body mobilization reserves.       

The studies of the scientific and methodological literature on the research issue, inspection of the advanced boxing trainer’s teaching experience and long-term observations of the course of sports events revealed the dominant orientation of training to improvement of the indices of common and special physical, functional and technical-tactical skills along with the underestimated role of implementing a set of educational objectives, ensuring development of moral-volitional and ethical qualities ​​[1, 3, 5 - 7]. The main goal of sports training is to identify and develop positive inclinations of an individual and to neutralize negative.        

According to the experimental data of V.I. Filimonov, 2000, A.G. Petrov, 2010, boxers keeping to different styles of conducting a combat are distinguished by the structure and tendencies of their behavior. For example, combatants with the attacking style of interaction with an opponent specific for them, characterized by high impulsivity, find it hard to control their actions, excessive emotions, prevent from selecting the most effective technical options and methods of their execution. Counterattacking boxers are mostly distinguished by underestimation of their potential and increased anxiety. These features are responsible for longer maneuvering without using impulse actions, which makes boxing less spectacular and provokes self-distrust. Showing hypercaution when selecting the best position and time for an attack indicates to the low level of development of determination, purposefulness, perseverance and other volitional powers.

Proponents of the power manner of conducting a boxing combat are characterized by excessive aggression, severity of combat, striving for victory at any cost. These athletes need special educational interventions intended to develop respect to an opponent, ability to see him as a person seeking to match strength, agility, resourcefulness in a fair contest with no intention to inflict undue pain, injury and maim.

The orientation to form the attitude to an opponent as a skilled combatant, who is to be defeated using more efficient methods of attack and defense via quick wits, space-time orientation, predicting motor actions, is one of the key educational objectives [4].

Intending to use a knockout blow or knock-down only in exceptional cases, when the opponent leaves no other choice with his actions, is among the results of highly organized teaching activity. Being capable of tuning in to people keeps a combatant within the high-tech reasonable contest for the championship without showing excessive, unjustified aggression.

The conditions during a boxing match contribute to manifestation of the self-awareness conation, which significantly expands the psychological-educational environment with its educational opportunities. Being an object of educational interventions, athlete finds himself in the conditions calling for showing stubbornness, persistence, determination, conation to solve set tasks, which consolidates the boxer’s need to continuous improvement of these qualities not only in sport, but beyond its limits.

A combatant as a subject of education while interacting with an opponent in the ring needs to estimate his level of development of personality traits, which indicators determine the nature of his behavior during a match. Extreme situations occurring during boxers’ combats determine the critical need to constantly control their psychoemotional state that requires persistence, self-control, patience and objective assessment of what happens in the ring.

Proceeding from the studies by E.V. Kalmykov (1996), A.G. Petrov (2010) et al., successful implementation of volitional powers among combatants is largely determined by stress resistance. Stressed psychoemotional state is caused by boxer’s age, genotypic characteristics and skill level. Excessive psychoemotional stress occurs in the situations more complicated than an athlete has anticipated, resulting in emotional stress and lower self-confidence. It indicates to the underestimated role of purposeful development and mastering of moral-volitional and ethical qualities in a sports training. According to A.G. Shiryaev (2002), the typological properties of the nervous system such as its strength and balance indices are the main individual features, characterizing boxers’ sports skills. Character manifestations; indicators of development of operatory thought, sustainability of sensomotor reactions are also important. But a personality is expressed most vividly via developed volitional powers, which level defines exercise working capacity, independence and discipline.

The problem of development and improvement of moral-volitional and ethical values ​​is one of the most urgent. Effective management of the sports training system depends on the level of development of combatants’ spiritual and volitional spheres when revealing the nature of their interactions and interdependencies. Considering boxing as a sport that gives an opportunity to win via strong aggression as accumulated volitional powers, some trainers use such patterns as "Imagine that a beast is in front of you". However, many experienced experts like N.A. Hudadov (1997), V.A. Sannikov, V.V. Nikolaev (2006), A.I. Garakyan (2003), S.S. Gorbachev (2007) et al. take shown aggression as a consequence of the lack of spiritual-moral education and low level of physical, technical and tactical skills.

The assimilation of the leading theoretical and methodological conditions, fundamental principles of teaching and training and main concepts ensures understanding of the nature of boxing as a specific sport, which is a model of one of the forms of human vital activity, promotes broadening of outlook, showing interest in the history of formation and development, introduction to cultural values. All this stimulates the process of self-awareness and self-development, which leads to recognition of the role and place of moral-volitional and ethical qualities in improvement of sports skills.

Materials and methods. The given conditions were tested using an educational experiment with 39 qualified boxers aged 14-16 as subjects. Two groups were organized: control group (CG) - 19 athletes and experimental (EG) - 20 persons. The test to determine input indices of physical fitness using a number of control exercises (30 m running (sec), 100 m running (sec), 3,000 m running (min), long jump (cm), pull-ups (reps), dip ups (reps), shot put of 4kg weight with right and left hands (m) preceded the educational experiment. Processing of the results has not revealed any significant differences in the combatants’ physical fitness indices in both of the groups (p>0.005).

The level of development of spiritual-moral and moral-volitional qualities was determined according to the following criteria:

Faith:

Evaluation criteria:

5 points – generosity shown towards an opponent, giving him an opportunity to improve self-confidence; 

4 points - understanding the need to help a young boxer in development of his sports skills;

3 points - showing a tough position, following the principle: let the strongest win;

2 points - the belief that all is fair to win;

1 point - the recognition of aggression as the boxer’s positive feature when interacting with an opponent.

Responsibility:

Evaluation criteria:

5 points - the ability to predict the consequences of personal actions and their adequate assessment;

4 points - control of personal psychoemotional state and actions;

3 points - understanding the need to control personal actions and deeds in case of their insufficiently objective evaluation;

2 points - the inability to predict the consequences of personal actions and deeds;

1 point – shifting negative consequences of personal actions and deeds to other shoulders.

Independence

Evaluation criteria:

5 points - responsible, creative approach to a training process, developed decision-making skills;

4 points - showing personal attitude in the issues of personality formation, readiness for self-discipline;

3 points - ability to control and evaluate personal decisions on specific issues of organization of sports training;

2 points - poor readiness to act independently;

1 point - unreadiness for personal opinion, actions and deeds.

Results and discussion. The analysis of the findings on development of the tested personality parameters has not revealed any significant differences between boxers of the CG and the EG (p>0.05). In the CG training sessions were conducted in accordance with the curriculum approved by the Boxing Federation of Russia (2007). In the EG much attention was paid to training key personal qualities like honesty, responsibility and independence.

The system of educational interferences intended to settle a set of educational tasks during a sports training of qualified boxers provided for using different types and forms of training. In the EG the training session started with allocation of the tasks of improvement of technique of the method being learnt, increasing muscle strength and motor responsiveness, agility and other motor-coordination qualities in view of the level of development for each boxer and compulsory indicating of the need to improve specific moral-volitional and ethical qualities. Thus, in the EG when changing motor modes, for example, after a sparring series while doing exercises to increase muscle strength: pull-ups, push-ups, dip ups with varying tempo and rhythm of movements, leap out of a squat with one leg etc. - the boxers were asked:

• How do you understand faith in a boxing match?
• The monitoring of the combatants’ responses to this question revealed difficulties with precise and clear answers. Athletes answered that in a boxing match one is to win using his advantage in physical and technical skills and this kind of victory will be undoubtedly fair. In this situation the researcher offered to choose from possible answers to clarify the point:
• If the level of your sports skills is enough to have an advantage in points, would you strive for knocking down or knocking out to win unconditionally?
• According to the findings, only 17% of athletes will not use breaking blows with unpredictable consequences for an opponent’s health, if it assures the victory via a higher level of intellectual, motor-coordination qualities, big competitive experience;
• If your opponent is a boxer clearly not ready for action, will you dare to give him psychological support, help to get back to normal and combat as an equal?
• Based on the results of the interview, most of the combatants (89%) said they came to the ring to win, but not teach an opponent. Only 11% of the boxers said it was not fair to seek a quick and easy victory in case of your clear advantage in all parameters of the match. Every match with an opponent should be taken as an opportunity to improve technical and tactical skills and thus it is appropriate to give a weaker opponent a chance to show himself in some situations in a boxing match so that he could gain self-confidence.
• In a combat with an elite, experienced combatant in the ring would you like him to pay special attention to you, not to inflict you severe pain and emotional stress, giving thus a chance for gradual and successive mastering of sports skills?

According to the analysis of the responses, all boxers would like to be under such conditions of a boxing match. This caused a serious discussion of the problem of establishing right relationship with an opponent. Boxers were explained that their perception of their opponent in the ring, the intention to win provokes the corresponding tough attitude towards them from a more experienced mature athlete with excellent technical skills. The combatants were also clarified that the behavior pattern they follow in the ring in the interaction with an opponent is automatically, on the subconscious level is transferred to the family members and other people around them.

The role of such a moral quality as responsibility was discussed at the next training session and when changing a motor mode. The higher the level of athlete’s spiritual-moral development is, the more he is to be responsible for and to control his behavior. A combatant with a strong sense of responsibility will not be able to use his advantage over other people who are not familiar with sport, to settle routine problems. The concept of boxer’s moral responsibility and honor will prevent him from doing that.

In order to clarify the attitude of qualified boxers of the EG to the problem of formation of responsibility, they were asked the following questions:

- Do you think you have the right to use your sports skills when dealing with street conflicts with strangers? Here are the answers we got to this question: 63% answered "yes", 24% - feel entitled to do so if strangers act provocatively, 7% - attain their advantage in a conflict situation, 6% - use their sports skills for self-defense;

- Do you set your physical and technical skills in boxing equal to swordsmanship? The responses to this question were: 84% - "no", 13% - "do not know" and 3% - gave a positive answer.

The findings prove that the system of sports training for boxers needs to be seriously reconsidered in its content, where a purposeful, well thought educational activity, providing spiritual and moral development of athletes is to be taken as one of the key components.

Physical fitness was re-tested after the experiment to identify the dynamics of key motor-coordination qualities using the same control exercises. The findings of the experiment showed that the level of physical fitness increased in both of the groups, but was significantly higher in the EG. Thus, the results in standing long jump have increased by 4.91% and 11.18% (p>0.05) by the end of the experiment (with the input data 194,11±11,30 cm and 193, 27±11,30 cm) for the CG and the EG respectively. As for pull ups - by 6.29% and 14.08% (p<0.05) (with the input data 7,83±0,58 and 7,88±0,52 reps) for the CG and the EG respectively. A similar trend was traced in other control exercises.

The boxers of the EG also dominated in the indices of development of spiritual-moral qualities. Thus, the result in faith formation have improved by 5.93% and 16.22% at the end of the experiment (p<0.05) (the input data 3,04±0,19 and 3,07±016 points) for the CG and the EG respectively. Concerning the results in development of responsibility - by 4.78% (p>0.05) in the CG (input data 2,73±0,17 points) versus 17.91% (p<0.05) (input data 2,68±0, 15 points) in the EG.

In formation of independence - by 7.12% (p>0.05) in the CG (input data 3,69±0,17 points) versus 19.03% (p<0.05).in the EG (input data 3,77±0,20 points).

Thus, proceeding from the findings of the educational experiment, trainers mostly do not have a clear idea of the essence of educational work, its orientation, forms, tasks and evaluation criteria. The present scientific and methodological literature reveals the issues proving the importance of educative work without indicating to the structural components of the given educational process; specific methods and ways of solution of educational tasks, recommendations on efficient forms and approaches etc. In accordance with our findings, specific educational tasks are to be set at every training session, that are to be solved by means of efficient methods using certain criteria.

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Author's contacts: Elena_funina@mail.ru