The need to change the organization of athletes psychological training for competitions

Abstract

The article considers the arguments about the need to rethink the concept of athletes’ psychological training for the competition. The idea of the article is the shift to the teaching the means of individual psychological training of athletes for the competition. The accuracy of this concept is grounded on the empirical data. The article presents the data of the comparative analysis of employing by athletes the means of psychological training for the competition and opinion of coaches about it. The authors explain the reasons why coaches do not prepare football players psychologically in the process of physical, technical, and tactical training. 5 reasons to explain it are considered in the article. In the process of coaches’ training they are taught to regulate the psychological condition and behavior of athletes, but they are not taught how to train the athletes to do that themselves. The necessity of training football players in the means of self-regulation of their psychological condition for the matches has been proved.