Dr.Hab., Professor G.A. Gilev¹
V.N. Gladkov²
A.A. Pleshakov^3
1Moscow Pedagogical State University, Moscow
²Center for Sport Innovative Technologies and National Team Training, Department of Sport and Tourism, Moscow
³Moscow Polytechnic University, Moscow

Keywords: athlete’s character building, volitional qualities, mental skills, leader athlete, athletic training process planning.

Introduction. Though being physically fit and strong enough to work hard, at challenging moments an athlete sometimes lacks the qualities enabling him to demonstrate his best result in terms of a fierce competition.

Character building and masculinity training are in the main focus of the trainer’s work. This should not be an episodic work undertaken before competitions only, but a constant, long-term and painstaking work requiring great exertion, time, perseverance and enthusiasm throughout the athlete's multi-year training period [1].

Unfortunately, inadequate attention to competent pedagogical orientation contributing to athletes’ competitive spirit being built at children's and youth sports schools, Olympic reserve schools and other units training highly skilled athletes, including training for competitions in various sports as part of the national team, to a greater extent explains athletes’ unsuccessful performances in big competitions. For instance, performances of most of Russian swimmers on the world sports arena were constantly accompanied by poor sports results in major international competitions, especially in the finals, compared to the athletes’ best achievements [2].

This is mainly due to three reasons, the first of which was athlete’s training for the final race. As a rule, in terms of qualification for competitions, domestic leader athletes do not have worthy competitors at regional and national competitions during the heats and semifinal races. Whereas, in big international events, in terms of colossal psychological pressure, lasting two days, in order to make it into the final swimming race, it is necessary, in fact, to cover the distance twice with a close, if not the best, result, being unable to fully recover both physically and, first and foremost, psychologically before the finals. The second reason is fear in its explicit or latent subconscious form leading to the pre-start "burnout" of an athlete. The third and, in our opinion, the most significant reason is the little focus on the athlete’s leader qualities building. As four-time Olympic champion Alexander Popov aptly phased it: "One cannot go to the finals as a beaten dog! This is a mental problem. It is wrong. One must go on marks with the champion ambitions!".

A number of athletes suffer from the so-called "eternally second" syndrome, when their negative thinking, increased anxiety, reduced mental stability against the background of the negative behavioral stereotype, prevent them from taking the first place, despite their excellent functional fitness, that has been proved in preliminary control and qualifying starts [3].

Objective of the study was to scientifically substantiate the methodology of educational and psychotherapeutic impact on the athlete’s leadership qualities.

Methods and structure of the study. Athlete‘s competitive spirit of a leader athlete was supposed to be cultivated during the training sessions and competitions.

In practical psychotherapy sessions, the athletes were given the commands to be realized and “put on track”, i.e. helped to form the necessary mindset both for the nearest time following the session and for a longer term including training and competitive periods. With this purpose in mind, the psychotherapy sessions were designed with an emphasis on the subsequent autogenic training based on the relevant goal-setting at the end of each session. Thus the psychological and educational process goals were further pursued in the ideomotor training in the autogenic training process. A special emphasis was made on the volitional quality building and motivation adjustment aspects.

Introduction of this method had positive results. At that point, athletes received the corresponding attitudes not only during the psychotherapy session, but also during the autogenic training.

Theoretically, we can speak not about the formation of excitation focus in the central nervous system as a result of psychological and educational effects, but about the emergence of a dominant by A.A. Ukhtomsky (2002), which, in turn, can be in hypertonic (active, dictating), normotonic (active, balanced) and hypotonic (passive) activity states [4].

The educational experiment involved athletes having the following characteristics: fear, alertness before big events; unstable mental processes, nervous breakdowns caused by strenuous loads; unplanned alterations in the technique at the distance; severe fatigue, poor sleep after extensive training, mental unreadiness for subsequent training; frequent requests for recovery procedures (as an indicator of poor resilience ability); strong fatigue in the second half of the starting segment. The voluntary consent of the athletes and their trainers to participate in the experiment was taken into account.

The Study Group was composed of 7 athletes aged 16-20 including 4 males and 3 females. The psychotherapy sessions were designed for group and/or individual integrated psychological and educational effects (goal-setting) and were conducted according to the following plan: psychotherapy suggestion → hetero-training → autogenic training sessions. At the stage of post-suggestion discussion, rational psychotherapy and interviewing were applied, which contributed to the consolidation of attitudes, on the one hand, and elimination of the revealed negative after-effects of psychotherapy, on the other hand.

Psychotherapy prevailed in the first two sessions. In the third one, its share was approximately 50%, following sharply in subsequent sessions. Hetero-training was introduced from the first session. All suggestions were made from the first person with obligatory mental copying of trainer’s verbal formulas. The share of hetero-training by the end of the psychotherapy course also fell.

The emphasis was placed on the priority areas of correction of athletes’ personality, which had been earlier revealed during psycho-testing and design of athletes’ psycho-profiles. We detected their "weak" spots to be eliminated owing to the impact. We considered the athletes’ problems (for example, mental instability, poor resilience ability, poor sleep during competitions, etc.) and trainers’ desires. During the discussions with the trainers, the focus was on the psychotherapeutic command direction.

A special emphasis was made on the volitional quality building and motivation adjustment aspects.

Autogenic training was introduced from the very first training session. First, it was carried out in the form of 10-15-minute inclusions. During psychotherapy and autogenic training we used the "reporting" method proposed by V.P. Nekrasov in 1981, which proved to be highly efficient in athletic training.

In parallel with athletes, work with trainers was underway. The role of suggestion in the trainer’s teaching work was explained. The emphasis was on the rationality of their behavior, objectivity of judgments and behavioral philosophy in their interaction with athletes. The results achieved were then discussed.

Results and discussion. During the qualifying swimming race, held on the 24th day of the study, all swimmers demonstrated good results in the trial starts. After the start most athletes noted the following: "Five minutes before the start, they composed themselves, were confident, swam easily and at high speeds, although at first it was hard to believe that one could cover the distance at such a speed. It was easier to swim the last hundred than the previous one. It took them 5-10 minutes to recover after the race, instead of the usual 1-1.5 hours".

Trainers and athletes themselves admitted that, with the introduction of psychotherapeutic methods, they experienced the effect of superrecovery. We did observe them recovering rapidly after training. In some cases, 30-45 minutes of psychotherapeutic recovery was enough and substituted (not only in the athlete's perception, but for a number of psychophysiological indicators) a full night's sleep. The athletes changed their attitude towards training. They were excited about the beginning of the training session and felt satisfied after it. Their attitude to water changed, too. Being suggested the idea that ​​water is a source and accumulator of energy, athletes began to note the feeling of "energy boost" when contacting water.

Therefore, we managed to steer the athletes’ thoughts and actions in the right direction in order to achieve the desired result and reduce the duration of auto-training to 5 days. At the same time, the first tangible results were observed in certain cases after the first training session.

Conclusion. The combined application of psycho-pedagogical attitudes and autogenic training results in their mutual reinforcement. The use of autogenic training during the post-psychotherapy sessions contributes to better self-realization in sports. At the same time, at a certain stage of psychological and educational activities and during autogenic training, an independent extension of directives and possibility of additional regulation of own body resources may occur.

References

1. Gilev G.A., Ugolkova I.V. Problemy optimizatsii protsessa podgotovki sportsmenov vysokogo klassa [Highly-skilled athletes' training process: problems of optimization]. Mater. VII mezhdunar. natsionalnogo kongressa «Sovremenny olimpiyskiy sport i sport dlya vsekh» [Proc. VII Intern. National Congress "Modern Olympic Sports and Sport for All"]. Moscow: SportAkademPress publ., 2003, vol. 3, pp. 156-157.
2. Gladkov V.N. Psikhopressing liderstva: k voprosu o modifikatsii lichnosti: opyt kompleksnogo primeneniya psikhoterapevticheskikh metodov v sporte vysshikh dostizheniy [The psychopressing of leadership. On the issue of personality modification (experience of integrated use of psychotherapeutic methods in elite sport]. Moscow: Sovetskiy sport publ., 2007, 187 p.
3. Grin E.I. Psikhicheskoe vygoranie v sporte: teoreticheskie modeli i prichiny fenomena [Mental burnout in sports: theoretical models and causes of the phenomenon]. Chelovek. Soobschestvo. Upravlenie, 2009, no. 4 (73), pp. 68–75.
4. Ukhtomskiy A.A. Dominanta [Dominant]. St. Petersburg: Piter publ., 2002, 448 p.

Abstract

The study analyses mental skills building and mental conditioning for top-ranking events with a special emphasis on the mental status adjustment by the relevant psychological and educational methods; leadership qualities building process; and the mental self-control methods mastering process. In practical psychotherapy sessions, the athletes were “put on track” i.e. were helped to form the necessary mindset both for the nearest time following the session and for a longer term including training and competitive periods. With this purpose in mind, the psychotherapy sessions were designed with an emphasis on the subsequent autogenic training based on the relevant goal-setting at the end of each session. Thus the psychological and educational process goals were further pursued in the ideomotor training in the autogenic training process. A special emphasis was made on the volitional quality building and motivation adjustment aspects. The Study Group was composed of 7 athletes including 4 males and 3 females. The psychotherapy sessions were designed for group and/or individual integrated psychological and educational effects (goal-setting) and generally included psychotherapy suggestions followed by a hetero-training or autogenic training sessions.

The study data and analysis showed benefits of the psychological and educational methods as verified by the positive effects on the training process and competitive success rates; the benefits being largely due to the integrated approach to the athletic training and competitive process.