Basketbolistu psihiskās noturības un vispārējās pašefektivitātes pilnveide snieguma paaugstināšanai. Promocijas darba kopsavilkums / Improvement of Mental Toughness and General Self-efficacy of Basketball Players for Increase Performance. Summary of the Doctoral Thesis

Nowadays, people rarely compete for fun and active recreation. In the world we live in today, people seem more willing to succeed and win. Perhaps the knowledge that you are the best, the strongest or the smartest excites us and makes us persistently strive for victory. The continuous development of technology raises the bar of athletic results to unprecedented heights. In this era of rapid changes and challenges, athletes often find themselves under increased stress, which significantly affects their performance. High-performing athletes have realized that the winning formula involves much more than just good technical, physical, or tactical preparedness. When an athlete faces difficulties or gets into stressful situations, the ability to regulate one’s own positive and negative emotions can make the difference. During several interviews with high-performing athletes, coaches, and sports psychologists in 2002, US researchers came up with the term – mental toughness, which was explained as „an innate or developed psychological advantage over one’s opponent, which helps to maintain constancy and confidence in one’s abilities, as well as to operate effectively in situations of increased tension during the most responsible moments of competitions” (Jones, Hanton & Connaughton, 2002, p. 209). The ability to control one’s emotions and to apply one’s skills in high-stress situations separates good athletes from great ones. This conclusion was reached in a 2009 study by Gucciardi, Gordon and Dimmock, who applied the concept of mental toughness to athletes who possess superior mental traits. According to them, if the physical, technical, and tactical preparedness of athletes is at the same level, then these psychological traits play a decisive role in the case of victory or loss. It is important to note that developing the characteristics and traits necessary for an athlete does not reduce the role of physical and technical preparation in the training and competition process. An athlete who is endowed with good physical aptitude, abilities and has acquired the technical skills necessary for the sport, can become even better and increase his/her chances of achieving stable success in the competition in the long-term by improving his/her mental toughness indicators. In scientific literature, mental toughness is a frequently studied concept that has several definitions. Some sports psychologists associate the mental toughness of an athlete during the competition with mental regulation – the ability of an athlete to relax and regulate both the effects of mental stress and one’s own psycho-emotional state and behaviour (Weinberg et al., 2011). The athletes themselves define the state of mental toughness a bit differently: as the ability to maintain concentration for a long time in conditions of increased tension, and as the ability to control one’s emotions and influence the situation in conditions of tension (Nicholls et al., 2011). The growing interest in the concept of mental toughness in sports science shows the importance of this phenomenon among sports psychologists, coaches and athletes themselves. When an athlete is faced with a challenge, thoughts arise about whether they will be able to overcome the difficulties and achieve their goal. However, if the challenge is too difficult and one doubts own ability to cope with it, the result is that the athlete gives up and suffers defeat. Research indicates that mental toughness affects the performance of athletes in competitions (Gucciardi & Gordon, 2009). The concept of self-efficacy by the Canadian and American scientist Albert Bandura was developed within the framework of social cognitive theory (Perepjolkina et al., 2015). According to the theory of self-efficacy by A. Bandura, a person’s self-efficacy is mainly formed by four different factors: mastery experiences, vicarious experiences, verbal persuasion, and the perception and interpretation of physiological and affective states (Bandura, 1977). A factor contributing to the development of an athlete’s self-efficacy is mastery experiences or past personal achievements, in which a person has performed a specific task. After a person has completed this task, the person gains confidence in his/her abilities and a belief that he/she will be able to complete similar tasks in the future (García & Zubiaur, 2019). Analysis of vicarious experiences allows a person to see or imagine how other people with similar abilities succeed (Rowland et al., 2019). Verbal persuasion involves instructions given by an influential person that help the athlete to perform an action effectively (Rubio et al., 2018). The perception and interpretation of physiological and affective states reflects the emotional state of an athlete. Positive emotions and a good mood contribute to the sense of self-efficacy, thus helping the athlete to overcome failures and look for solutions to problems, and vice versa; if an athlete is depressed and overworked, it can interfere with the focus on goal achievement, promote anxiety and cause a loss of energy (Byl & Naydenova, 2017). In modern sports science, the concept of self-efficacy is one of the most widely studied concepts (Rubio et al., 2018; Byl & Naydenova, 2017). This can be explained by the development of sports in general, where the result in high-level competitions can be decided by hundredths of seconds. Basketball is a technical and dynamic sport that requires players to quickly assess the situation and make a correct decision under pressure, so it is necessary to pay attention to the aspect of psychological preparation in the process of player preparation. In basketball competitions of various levels, it is observed that players often make mistakes due to psychological reasons. Pre-competition anxiety, fear of making mistakes, difficulty concentrating in the most responsible moments of the game and the inability to overcome failure are just some of the aspects that significantly affect player performance. In general, coaches are aware that the psychological preparation of players is a very important aspect to achieve a good result, but in practice very little is done to improve this aspect. In recent decades, sports psychology has accumulated not only a wide theoretical and scientific database, but also a rapidly developing research-based approach to practical work (Vazne et al., 2022). More and more sports coaches around the world are recognizing that athletes can learn and develop the necessary psychological skills to succeed in sports. The goal of psychological skills training is to help athletes to cope with the challenges of the training and competition process. Among such challenges are, for example, remaining calm in high-stress situations and in decisive moments of competition, overcoming the fear of reinjury during the rehabilitation process, or improving the quality of training by consciously performing the necessary tasks until they can be efficiently performed instinctively. Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is one of the most researched and effective forms of therapy today. When adapting CBT to a sports context, it can be considered a cognitivebehavioural training (Gustafsson & Lundqvist, 2016), during which athletes correct their behavioural patterns, thus improving their sports performance and well-being. As one of the tools of CBT, mindfulness practice is an effective tool in reducing athletes’ anxiety (Mumford, 2015), promoting self-control (Gould & Maynard, 2009), during the rehabilitation process (Wood et al., 2016), as well as in promoting athletic performance (De Petrillo et al., 2009). Based on the above, the topic of the Doctoral Thesis was set: “Improvement of Mental Toughness and General Self-Efficacy of Basketball Players for Increase Performance”. .

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