PhD, Head of department A.A. Banayan ¹
PhD, Associate Professor, Director S.A. Vorobev ¹
Researcher E.A. Kiseleva ¹
PhD A.S. Kryuchkov ^2
1Saint-Petersburg Physical Education Research Institute
²Federal Science Center for Physical Culture and Sports, Moscow

Corresponding author: abanayan@spbniifk.ru

Keywords: sports psychology, training system stages, Paralympic sports, top sportsmanship.

Background. Modern sports psychology tends to integrate elements of many knowledge fields (psychology, pedagogy, psychophysiology, physical education theory and practice) and different psychological service schools (prioritizing the cognitive, behavioral, individualized, gestalt, existential, clinical and other aspects) as demonstated by a wide range of issues addressed by the national and foreign research communities [1]. These variations result in contraditictions in many specific terms and definitions related to different phenomena and processes in the athletic psychological/ mental conditioning service with its test methods and focused impacts.

The approach we offer herein prioritizes the professional growth paradigms typical of elite sports that require the inborn gifts and qualities being advanced for the sport-specific purposes to shape up and excel necessary knowledgebase, skills and experiences for competitive successes. In this context, a training system may be interpreted as the progress facilitation environment and toolkit with the specific inherent principles, standards and requirements including training system periods, stages and cycles.

Modern sports discipline are rather specific and different in their requirements to the individual mental qualities and mental control skill sets. Multiiple relevant national and foreign studies offer athletic performance psychography analyses with psychosportograms and mental conditioning models that cover every aspect of the training and competitive processes; and we believe that it is the combined psychological and educational analysis of athletic progress that provides a basis for the most effective mental conditioning methods [4].

With emergence of Paralympic sports and some other specific sports disciplines, the research community has given a growing priority to the discipline-specific and diagnose-sensitive mental conditioning service at every athletic progress period and training system stage. The growing database of the Olymians’ psychosportograms can unlikely be fully applicable to the Paralympic sports elite and, hence, requires special research to find the most relevant and beneficial mental conditioning methods, models and tools.

Objective of the study was to analyze modern mental conditioning (service models for the Paralympic sports elite customizable for the individual diagnoses and progress stages.

Result and discussion. Since the overall competitive mental fitness is determined by the training system design and management and mental control improvement service plus the individual qualities, gifts,  skills experiences and the actual training progress – with a special priority to the staged mental conditioning skills mastering, the Paralympic sports elite mental conditioning service should be sensitively customized to the actual athletic progress stages.

Thus the sports specialization training system stage will be designed with a special attention to progress in basic mental control skills and sports-specific psychological qualities formed by the prior trainings. The mental conditioning models will be designed to develop due athletic discipline and determination for trainings, with growing reliance on the independent hard work supervised by an expert/ coach when necessary. Of special benefit at this training system stage may be the Russian version of the Swedish mental conditioning model by L.E. Unestal advanced by the Saint-Petersburg Physical Education Research Institute research team – that has proved effective by quite a few studies [2].

The mental conditioning systems applied in the elite training system with their growing competitive workloads and experiences will give a special priority to the competitive performance analyses in the mental fitness contexts. Individual psychological consulting and support will be designed to analyze successes and failures, particularly in the transitional athletic training periods when the training and competitive workloads are reduced.

To secure the modern mental conditioning service for the Paralympic sports elite being successful, its should be designed with respect to the Y.L. Khanin’s individual functionality peak zones concept that has proved effective in many elite sports as verified by some foreign studies [5]. Such mental conditioning service model requires the athlete to mentally immerse as full as possible in the past competition to reconstruct in full own feelings and emotional experiences prior to and during the starts, and comprehensively realize and analyze the causes and effects of the own solutions and actions under competitive stressors. This mental exercise should help the athlete find and fix the own individual functionality peak zone as the core target in the emotional flow – to effectively model thereafter the similar competitive situations and responses and, hence, forecast and manage own competitive performance within the actual mental fitness limitations.

We run a new mental conditioning model testing experiment on the Paralympic sports elite samples in archery and track and field athletics for two annual training cycles, with the mental conditioning service customized for the precompetitive and transitional training system periods. The mental conditioning progress tests included the galvanic skin response tests of the wheelchaired athletes with spinal cord injuries and multiple functional disorders of the trunk and limbs. The galvanic skin response tests found lower background galvanic skin response levels (p≤0.05, p≤0.01) and shorter relaxation-activation ranges (p≤0.05). It also found that in the transitional training system periods the background galvanic skin response levels were expressly different for the athletes with dysmelia and amputations after injuries versus athletes with the cerebral palsy related health disorders [3]. These test data demonstrate the need for the Paralympic sports elite training service to be prudently individualized with a special emphasis on the customizable mental conditioning tools to develop good mental control with the timely progress tests by experts.

Conclusion. The Paralympic sports elite trainings with mental conditioning models will be designed as required by the professional progress paradigms and training system staging concept applied on a discipline- and diagnose-specific basis, with due attention to the actual mental anf functional fitness. We recommend the target mental conditioning models with application of modern psychological and educational toolkits customizable for the innate individual qualities, gifts, skills and predispositions, athletic physical and mental performance, social relations and environmental impacts on the mental aspects of the training and competitive performance.

References

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2. Banayan A.A., Kiseleva E.A. Retrospective analysis of scientific research in sports psychology conducted at SPbNIIFK. Adaptivnaya fizicheskaya kultura. 2018. No. 3 (75). pp. 8-9.
3. Ivanova I.G., Banayan A.A., Yanina E.A., Pukhov D.N. Features of voluntary self-regulation in Paralympic athletes with musculoskeletal impairments of various sports classes. Uchenye zapiski universiteta im. P.F. Lesgafta. 2020. No. 6 (184). pp. 440-447.
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5. Ruiz M.C., Raglin J.S., Hanin Y.L. The individual zones of optimal functioning (IZOF) model (1978–2014): Historical overview of its development and use. International Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology. 2017. Vol.15, No. 1. pp.41-63.