Pre-competition mental energy and performance relationships among physically disabled table tennis players

Abstract

Energy is essential to human daily functioning and performance. However, the association of mental energy with athletes’ performance has rarely been examined. We attempted to examine the pre-competition mental energy–performance relationships by two studies. Study 1 administered Athletic Mental Energy Scale (AMES, Lu et al., 2018) to nine elite physically-disabled table tennis players one day before competition in 5 international tournaments. Then, we collected their subjective performance after each competition. In Study 2, we sampled 77 National-level physically-disabled table tennis players and examined the pre-competition mental energy-performance relationship as the procedure in Study 1. Results from Study 1 provided initial findings of how pre-competition mental energy is associated with performance and portrayed in elite physically-disabled table tennis players. Results from Study 2 further confirmed the pre-competition mental energy- performance relationships. We suggested future studies to examine the mental energy–performance relationships in physically-disabled and abled athletes and different sports.

Keywords

• Physically-disabled athletes
• Optimal state of mind
• Competitive sports
• Psychology of sport excellence
• Psychological skills training