MENTAL TRAINING IN SPORTS PREPARATION FOR SKIERS

Abstract

The aim of the paper was to test the impact of mental training in sports preparation of skiers. The basic research group consisted of 12 skiers aged 7-11 years. To determine their mind set we used a non-standardized questionnaire, which was the basis for dividing the research subjects into two groups. The experimental group which consisted of 7 participants had a predominance of fixed mindset (FM). Their decimal age was 8.3 ± 1.3 years, body height 136.3 ± 8.8 cm, body weight 32.4 ± 11.3 kg, sports age 4.7 ± 1.4 years. The growth mindset (GM) control group consisted of 5 participants. Their average decimal age was 9.7 ± 2.2, body height 142 ± 14.6 cm, body weight 39.04 ± 9.2 kg, sports age 5.2 ± 2.6 years. Sports performance was evaluated using the gymnastic exercise test which is part of the general sports preparation of skiers. We used the Wilcoxon non-parametric test at the 5% significance level and the non-standardized FM and GM allocation key to evaluate the results of the gymnastics test. We used the Spearman correlation coefficient to determine the relationship between the GM points and the gymnastics test. By analysing the results, we found that due to mental training in the experimental group, there was an increase in GM points in 3 skiers compared to the control group where there was no increase. Analysis of the results in the gymnastic test showed that in the experimental group there was a statistically significant improvement (p<0.05) in average performance for all 7 skiers. In the control group, the improvement in the average performance in the gymnastics test was statistically insignificant (p˃0.05) in 4 out of 5 skiers. The pilot study pointed out the possible impact of using mental training in sports preparation for skiers.

Keywords

• gymnastics
• mental training
• skiers
• sport preparation