Oral Presentation

Paper ID : 1640-12THCONG

¹Zahra زهرا Ranjbar ; ²abdollah ghasemi; ³Mahsa Mateen nia

¹Physical Education and Sport Sciences, Motor Development - Motor Behavior, Tehran University of Science and Research

²Assistant Professor, Department of Physical Education and Sport Science, Science Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran

³MSc in Motor Behavior, Department of Physical Education and Sport Science, Science Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran

Mental toughness is one of the most important elements of psychological skills that can play an important role in the athlete's victory in sports competitions. Increasing desire to win in different sports competitions, leads to scrutiny in mental toughness. Mental skills training role in achieving victory has also been proved, although studies which evaluate the effect of psychological training on mental toughness are sparse and limited. Therefore, this study examined the effect of psychological training on mental toughness of women volleyball players in the top levels of motor proficiency. Participants were 45 female volleyball players (M age = 23.04 years, S= 3.63) at 3 levels (club, university and national) whom were randomly divided into three experimental groups. The consent form was completed by participants before performing the study and they were familiar with the process and completed the mental toughness questionnaire before and after eight weeks of training mental skills. Teaching skills training for the experimental group was conducted by an expert trainer in one session so that 24 sessions were provided for each of the mental skills exercises conducted by the researcher-supervised athletes. After 8 weeks of the experimental design, all participants in the three experimental groups completed the questionnaire again. Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) analyses was used for statistical analysis of this study, and the results showed that the effect of mental skills training on mental toughness subscales was not significant. According to previous research, participants’ high levels of motor proficiency and, maybe more suitability of psychological skills training for beginners can be reasons of these results. According to these results, future research could focus on different levels of functions and ages.

Psychological training skills; mental toughness; Motor proficiency; MTQ48; Women volleyball players

Sport psychology