The coming year 2016 is rich in sports events: the Olympics, the European Football Championship… Why sport is an unnatural activity for a person, how psychologists prepare athletes for serious competitions, why doping is psychologically unprofitable, and what are the features of modern diagnostics of athletes, the department science Gazeta.Ru told a sports psychologist, head of the Laboratory of Physical Culture and…
Why sport is an unnatural activity for a person
From left: Anton Shipulin (Russia), Dmitry Malyshko (Russia), Alexei Volkov (Russia), Evgeny Ustyugov (Russia), winners of the gold medals in the men's biathlon relay at the XXII Olympic Winter Games in Sochi, during the medal ceremony
Ilya Pitalev/RIA Novosti
– Recently, a doping scandal broke out with Russian athletes. How can this affect the psychological state of athletes?
– It is unlikely that an athlete, even if he takes doping, will talk about it to a psychologist … Pharmacological support in sports is legitimate, since athletes live in an unusual, unnatural regime for a person. I would say that
sport is evolutionarily unnatural, because we are “programmed” by nature to find a conditional “game”, eat and lie down in order to save energy, not to waste it.
Enormous training efforts and the corresponding physiological changes in the athlete's body require compensation. Certain pharmacological preparations, nutritional supplements, vitamins are used to speed up recovery and maintain athletic longevity. It is bad if such substances are harmful to health or classified as doping. Doping-related bans just appeared in order to preserve the health of the athlete, so that victory was not achieved at any cost. At the same time, for a highly qualified athlete, taking any prohibited drug means being under the sword of Damocles all the time. At any time, he can be checked, canceled, or disqualified. To constantly live with this risk is a psychologically very unfavorable state.
— How does a sports psychologist help athletes recover from defeats?
– It is important to understand the general situation: firstly, not every team (even the national team) has a sports psychologist, often the coach plays this role, which does not remove psychological problems. Secondly, it happens that psychologists who are trying to realize themselves in sports do not have the appropriate training, which also ends badly.
There is a dangerous trend in national and club teams when, after an unsuccessful match or tournament, out of respect for the athletes, out of good intentions, the coach suggests forgetting the loss and starting preparation from scratch.However, it is more important to endure the lesson and, based on the experience of defeating, to adjust the training process, as well as a technical and tactical plan of struggle at the next tournament. If this work is not carried out, psychological “suggestions of optimism” may not work.
The decline in the results in the team (as well as a steady rise) is a logical process, having causes, background, dynamics.
But the “crisis” can be called after a series of defeats or a critical volume of injuries the distrust of the team to the coaching staff. It, this distrust, begins to be noticeable by the middle of the season. It is important to “monitor” the state of the team, discuss the causes of each injury, each unsuccessful performance and make “methodological” decisions. Thus, stress and mutual distrust in the sports team are removed.
– What other cases associated with the athlete of difficult situations were in your practice?
-I have 15 years of experience in the status of a sports psychologist, so I can cite many cases. Now it is worth dwelling at
SPECIAL Player Syndrome in club teams. It is important that the reserve player does not feel like a second -rate player.
During the match, he practically does not play, but stands at the site, at the field, entirely plunging into the game … A visionary coach such players should be used as experts who, after the game, can share their observations with him. In general, “spare” are, in fact, the “strategic reserve of the main command”. But how rarely such a logic is present in team life!
Or here is an example: we begin to work with an athlete in a situation of an obvious decline in his effectiveness. The reason for this is not necessarily – in the features of the psyche or incorrect behavioral reactions to what is happening. A possible reason is in weak technical and tactical training, mutually high expectations of a coach and athlete. Yes, you can work with the pre -trial state of the athlete, but if the coach, releasing him on the field, ring, carpet, does not supply his pupil with the “plan” of the struggle, this leads to the tactical helplessness of the athlete, which is clarified during our consultations. Such situations are characteristic mainly for children and youth. But there are interesting cases in the national teams. So, for example, by surrendering in 2014 his powers of the President of the Russian Biathlon Union, Mikhail Prokhorov said that
On the eve of the Olympics in Sochi, psychologists tested the team team, and it turned out that many simply do not understand why they perform this or that volume of loads.
But in fact, if there is no such understanding, it means that these executed volumes “do not work”, and confidence in their own abilities will also not be high …
– There are cases when young athletes “shoot”, and then disappear. How is psychologists explain this?
– There can be many reasons, starting from “star disease” and excessive youthful arrogance, which sooner or later fail, and ending with a weakening of efforts in the training process or emotional burnout. On the one hand, you also need to rest from success. On the other hand, on the contrary. After a successful performance, new landmarks are placed, load planning is modified, a new training program is being developed. And the young athlete, by the way, can also change life priorities, motivation to decline. You need to understand each individual case.
– How do they prepare athletes of national teams for serious competitions? How do they help them cope with stress? Are there any psychological techniques?
– We do not have psychologists in all teams who work fully and systematically. For example, football in terms of psychological support is generally a closed area. Starting from the Olympic Games in Vancouver (since 2010), the powers to ensure national teams psychologists and the organization of their work were transferred to the Federal Medical and Biological Agency. The corresponding department has been created in their department, which must provide this work. Periodically at conferences, we meet with the leaders of this department, but
From their reports it becomes clear that so far only psychophysiological testing of individual commands is carried out.
In my opinion, it is time to finally organize a full-fledged system of psychological and pedagogical support for national teams. It should be complex, relatively universal (modular), algorithmized (flexible) and accessible for control. Methods and techniques for relieving excessive stress, increasing concentration, mobilization, and so on, of course, exist. Fortunately, in our enlightened century, anyone can find this information on the Internet and special literature. This psychological strengthening is often limited. But in a complex, almost “space” system of sports training, such a fragment is clearly not enough.
– How are the training programs for serious competitions?
– Competitions are a check of the level of preparedness achieved in training, and after such a check, further training work is adjusted. You need to go to the competition not as an exam with an unpredictable ending, but as a holiday – Feast of my readiness. But often the athlete thinks either to how it would be good to win, or how not to lose. Both approaches are fraught with defeat, since sports success depends not only on the athlete himself, but also on rivals, teammates, refereeing, weather, and technical equipment. Think about the final result is not constructive! The athlete’s task at the competition is to fulfill a pre-prepared plan, special technical and tactical tasks, to implement in difficult conditions what was developed in the previous training cycle. We often say:
knowing the purpose of your path, look not at the horizon, but at your feet! It is very useful to translate competitive responsibility into a certain courage like “Now I have a great opportunity to test myself and learn something new!”.
We develop a psychological program for preparing for competitions individually for each athlete. And it includes 5-10 points. But one of the tasks of this stage is to formulate and learn to “turn on” the state that is necessary for maximum competitive efficiency. For example, I ask the athlete in advance to pick up 10 words that describe his optimum combat state. Then the list is reduced to five, then to three words. We select simple physical actions for these definitions: if it turns out that it is especially important to be concentrated, then this state can, for example, be “turned on” due to frowned eyebrows. Need angry? We agree that the “switch” will be a slow clenching of fists. But it’s not enough to decide, training is needed. As a result, the athlete goes to the start and already knows exactly what he should be and how he can achieve or restore the state he needs.
– In your laboratory, the personality of athletes is being diagnosed. Tell us, for which sports what personal qualities are considered significant?
– A difficult question. There was a period in the work of sports psychologists when they were looking for the so-called model characteristics of an ideal athlete. For example, the average performance of a national team could be considered a model. Why not a model? Moreover, this concerned not only psychological qualities, but also indicators of physical fitness. It was believed that in the nearest reserve (in youth sports) it is these qualities that need to be developed. For team sports, the mobility of nervous processes is important, the ability to quickly rebuild in difficult situations. For cyclic sports (for example, long-distance running, cross-country skiing), an athlete with a balanced nervous system, reasonable, calm, able to collect himself, concentrate, withstand stress, not noticing anything around, would be more suitable. A player who “does not notice anything around” will not be able to read the game, correctly assess the situation, and interact with partners and rivals.
But this logic is only partly correct. I like the approach that uses the uniqueness of each. In individual work with an athlete, we primarily rely on those strong qualities that he already has, and we recommend using specially selected methods of psychological attitude and condition correction.
We consider everything else as a “psychological resource” and try to develop it. Of course, there are qualities that all athletes should have, regardless of whether he is a chess player or a football player.This is purposefulness, will, “competition”, the ability to quickly recover from defeat, draw the right conclusions and work hard.
— What scientific journals, conferences are in demand in sports psychology? What is the place of Russian specialists in the world?
— In our country, we have peer-reviewed journals Sports Psychologist, Bulletin of Sports Science, Sports Medicine: Science and Practice, Extreme Human Activity, and others that publish materials on sports psychology. Abroad – International Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Sport Administration and Supervision, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. From conferences – annually on the basis of RGUFKSiT Rudik Readings are held, in St. Petersburg – Ananyevsky Readings, where the section of sports psychology is successfully working. The issues of psychological preparation of athletes are considered at almost every scientific and practical conference organized by the Ministry of Sports of Russia.
But I'm afraid that the popularity of our specialists in the world is not very high now.
I will name three problems. First, staff training. At Moscow State University and RSUPC, where sports psychologists are trained, of course, they provide certain basic knowledge. And sports science and practice are now more interested in technologies, systems, a full-fledged complex of scientific and methodological support. Secondly, knowledge of the English language. Not many sports psychologists of the older generation are fluent in it. And it turns out that young professionals who know the language lack consistency in training, and the older generation lacks ease of communication with foreign colleagues or teams. Third and most importantly, we still have very meager funding in the field of sports psychology, as in science in general. Most specialists can even travel to Russian conferences at their own expense. An official publication in a peer-reviewed Russian journal costs between six and eight thousand rubles, while the head of a department at the Federal Research Center receives about 14 thousand rubles. per month including all surcharges. Yes, it is possible and necessary to look for sponsors, grant support, but it is becoming more and more difficult to talk about the global “sound”. Nevertheless, the work is going on, there are technologies, and results, and hope.