PhD V.M. Kormyshev¹
Dr.Sc.Phys.Math., Professor  I.N. Sachkov¹
PhD E.G. Shurmanov^1
1Ural Federal University named after First President of Russia B.N. Yeltsin, Yekaterinburg

Keywords: sport career, synergetics, crises, motives of activity, life cycle.

ABSTRACT

One of the causes of sports career crises is a self-organizing restructuring of the activity motives. The most important motives that control career development are passionate, pragmatic, creative and health motives. A synergetic occurs in moments of crisis. It is a sharp and unpredictable change in the ratio of motives. As a result, there are bifurcations of the activity nature.

The main purpose of the current work is to connect two actual problems of modern sport – features of a highly qualified athlete career development and usage of methodology of synergetics for the analysis of the social phenomena in sport. The works of recent years take attention to a number of problems caused by the need of prediction and managing sport career. [1-3]. A number of synergetic approaches to the analysis of sports processes is proposed [4-5].

The problem of sports career crises was formulated in the works carried out at the Lesgaft National State University of Physical Education. The results were summarized in N. B. Stanbulova’s works, in particular in the PhD thesis, defended in 1999 [6,7]. It was noted that a sports career is a multi-year process with a number of stages separated by crises.

For the description of sports career N. B. Stanbulova used analogy with the concept of human life, developed by L. S. Vygotsky and E. Erikson, [8]. They showed that the human way of life is a special structure changing in time, which is characterized by the presence of crises. In moments of crisis, there are "inexplicable", sudden actions of people.

Using the analogy between age and sports crises, N. B. Stanbulova offered the following scheme of crises-transitions for highly qualified athlete career development.

1) A crisis of the beginning of sports specialization.

2) The transition to in-depth training in chosen sport.

3) The crisis of transition from mass sports to high-performance sports.

4) The сrisis of transition from youth sports to adult sports.

5) The сrisis of transition from amateur high-performance sports to professional sports.

 6) The crisis of transition from the culmination to the finish of sports career.

7) The crisis of completion and transition to another career.

The concept of sports career crises is systematized in Fig.1.

It shows changes of the sports’ level achievements in chosen sport with age in conventional units. The fractures on the curve indicate that at certain points in time the rate of skill growth slows down, and then either acceleration or degradation can occur (dashed line). The arrows indicate the moments of the crises of sports career. The presented scheme is illustrative. The form of dependence and visibility of crises may vary depending on the individual athlete. In our opinions, the reason for the "non-universality" is due to the action of synergetic mechanisms.

Figure 1. The scheme of the sports’ career crises.  The dashed line represents the bifurcation of the processes of degradation; the numbers are the numbers of crises

Figure 2. Changes in structures of the sportsman activity motives; the numbers are the numbers of crises, in accordance with the classification of N. B. Stambulova

Synergistic processes are characterized by the presence of the combination due to three characteristics. 1) The emergence of self-organizing structures. 2) Sharp, catastrophic nature of the changing processes of the object properties and its structure. 3) Essential unpredictability of occurrence and change of structures (see [9] for more details).

This article presents a mechanism that can cause the discussed crisis processes of an athlete's career which consists of synergetic, self-organizing, sharp and unpredictable changes in the set of activity motives. Let us explain what is meant.

It is known that sports career motives are being changed in the course of sports activity, [10]. The motive can be explained as the urge to a certain activity, to satisfy the need in a certain way. The concept of motivational activity is currently discussed in a number of works related to the implementation of pedagogical processes. The authors analyzed the dynamics of motives variety for studying at the University: professional, social, communicative and pragmatic. The article [11] presents a theoretical review of approaches, classifications and studies of motivation of educational and professional activity. It is shown that the set of motives forms a peculiar structure, the study of which is devoted to a number of works of recent years [12-13].

It is advisable to extend the concept of the motives structure to sports processes and highlight the following motives of the athlete: the pleasure of sports (creative motive), the desire to improve health, the desire for self-assertion (passionarity) and pragmatic motive (well-being), [14].

Figure 2 shows the scheme of athlete’s motives at various stages of his/her career, discussed in the works of N. B. Stanbulova. We will show that the crises of sports career are accompanied by synergetic changes in the structure of motives.

At the initial stage of sports before the crisis "1" (figure 1) the structure of motives is characterized by a histogram shown in a figure 2. The height of the columns determines the "specific weight" in arbitrary units of this motive with respect to the other, [14]

During the discussed period of a career, sports activities can take place either in the school section, or in any sports club. Physical training is a kind of a game. The duration and frequency of training are limited by pragmatic desire, "so that the sport does not disrupt the study." The motive to "improve health" can be dictated by parents. The motive of "being the first" is not yet realized.

The first crisis in "the beginning of sports specialization" is realized through the transition to training in a sports club. The solution arises from the desire to establish themselves in the eyes of their peers. The structure of motives changes (Fig.2). The motive of self-affirmation grows, it is a desire to be "not worse than others and to be the first". It develops a "sports rage" quality. At this stage of the career, the motive of health is also preserved, since sports have already given clear evidence of their usefulness. At the same time, the motive of pleasure from physical culture has to be sacrificed.

This stage of sports career means moving to much more intense trainings, which are accompanied by physical suffering, rough, emotional work, obeying the rules of preparation for competition, need to endure the abuse of the coach, responsibility for the results achieved during the performance. Sports cannot yet replace the need for successful schooling, that is, the pragmatic motive remains important.

The crisis "3" means the decision to sacrifice the pragmatic aspirations of successful learning and make the main goal of improving sports skills. This is possible, in particular, due to the transition into a specialized sports school. The corresponding histogram in Fig.2 shows the change in the structure of the motives.

Figure 3. The scheme of bifurcations’ formation in the phase "3" of the athlete’s career;

Solid lines in Fig.3 means the trajectory of growth of sports achievements associated with the transition to a specialized sports school. The dashed line means the stabilization of the nature of sports activities, the intention «to let things go». Dotted line corresponds the bifurcation to the abandonment of active sports activities and further degradation of sports achievements. At the same time, the arrow "3U" marks the moment of bifurcation to the growth of the passionary motive. Arrow "3D" marks the degradation caused by the growth of pragmatic motive "to put sports oversahadow", in particular, with the need to prepare for admission to University.

It should be noted that the implementation of transitions and the time of their occurrence are carried out spontaneously, under the influence of a number of external and internal factors. In particular, the transition of "3U" is initiated by the abrupt growth of passionarity, the cause of which can be a variety of external factors: personal success in competitions, broadcast sports, books about great athletes, family traditions, etc.

The motive of passionarity can be opposed by a pragmatic motive associated with the fact that sport distracts from learning, hinders a business career, unsuccessful starts, conflict with the coach, a negative attitude of the family, fans, etc. The fall of the creativity motive means disappointment in sports activities, its tedium and difficulty.

It should be noted that the motives transformation discussed above satisfy the signs of energy transformations: there are spontaneous changes in the structures of activity motives, transformations are sharp and probabilistic. They do not know nor the time of formation of the crisis, nor the exact structure of the motives, neither the fact of the transition.

It is possible to show further that the process of sports career is connected with the most important power mechanisms: nonlinearity of person mentality, multicomponent of the athlete’s and environmental system, existence in this system of a number of feedbacks.

In addition, the change of motives occurs due to the three major synergetic mechanisms:

1) the excess of the driving force of its critical value,

 2) the nonlinearity (ambiguity) of human behavior,

3) the presence of the complex system "athlete – coach – society – family".

A more detailed discussion of the mechanisms features in social facilities was presented earlier [9,15] and is beyond the scope of this report.

A similar discussion can be made for transitions "4-7". 

We can briefly note that "4" corresponds the transition to adulthood and the decision to "do everything for success in sports." The motive of self-assertion becomes dominant. Bifurcation, on the other hand, means a change of activities, either due to the need to "earn for living" or for "health care".

The transformation of the "5" transition to professional sports is due to the opportunity to realize the pragmatic motive of high earnings.  The bifurcation may be related with failure in performing or injuries.

The crisis of "6" career culmination means that the athlete thought for necessity of live somehow «after the sport". Health care is the most significant motive in most cases. It is emerging a new form of a pragmatic motive related to the need for family life.

Crisis "7" of career ending inevitably arises without bifurcations and makes to restrict the sport of amateur activities.

In conclusion, we would like to note that the athlete's career management can be achieved through the three mentioned mechanisms of synergetic processes. In particular, an abrupt achievement of success is possible under a number of conditions. If the sum of training efforts exceeds the critical value of "growth" and does not exceed the critical value of "break"; if the trust in the coach does not disappear suddenly; if the external support created by society and family is high enough; if there is a necessary psychological work. The study of synergetic features of sports phenomena is at the initial stage of development. However, a number of recent sporting events, particularly in Russian figure skating, football and biathlon, can be interpreted as synergetic transformations. It is planned to continue work in this direction.

References

1. Brazevich S.S., Brazevich D.S., Safronova Zh.S. Social risk management in re-socializing period upon retirement from professional sports. Teoriya i praktika fiz. kultury. 2018. No. 6. pp. 92-94.
2. Vishnevskiy V.A. Systemic synergic approach to design individual progress trajectories in adaptive taekwondo. Teoriya i praktika fiz. kultury, 2018, no. 5, pp. 88-91.
3. Danilenko T.A. Socio-pedagogical conditions for adaptation of elite retired athletes to civil society conditions. Teoriya i praktika fiz. kultury. 2010. No. 1. pp. 26-28.
4.  Ilyin E.P. Sports Psychology. St. Petersburg: Piter publ., 2012. 352 p.
5. Ilyin E.P. Motivation and motives. St. Petersburg, 2002. 512 p.
6. Karlova E.N. Types of motivation of cadets and their relationship with various indicators of attitude to military profession. Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniya. 2018. No. 7. pp. 96-105.
7. Markov D.O. Socio-psychological aspects of motivation for educational and professional activities at different stages and levels of education. Psikhologicheskaya nauka i obrazovanie. 2016. v. 8. No. 4. pp. 50–61 doi: 10.17759/psyedu.201 6080406.
8. Polozov A.A., Shurmanov E.G., Kolesnikova K. et al. Age peaks in sports referee and coach career. Teoriya i praktika fiz. kultury. 2016. No.1. pp. 80-83.
9. Sachkov I.N., Kormyshev V.M., Naboychenko E.S. Key effects of synergetics in nature, society and sport. Yekaterinburg, Fort-Dialog publ., 2017. 175 p.
10. Simonov S.N., Chastikhin A.A., Gulin A.V., Apokin V.V. Synergetic modelling of sensitive periods in development of pupils' motor abilities. Teoriya i praktika fiz. kultury. 2016. No. 1. pp. 83-86.
11. Stambulova N.B. Sports career crises. Teoriya i praktika fiz. kultury. 1997. No. 10. pp. 21-24.
12. Stambulova N.B. Sports career psychology. Study guide. St. Petersburg: Tsentr karery publ., 1999. pp. 65-69.
13. Tikhomirova T.S., Kochetkov N.V. Motivation for learning and personal reflection: features and interconnection among university students. Psikhologicheskaya nauka i obrazovanie. 2017. v. 22. No. 3. pp. 53-62. doi: 10 .7759/pse .017220306
14. Shapovalenko I.V. Developmental Psychology. Moscow: Gardariki publ., 2005. 349 p.
15. Sachkov I.N., Ford V., Turygina V.F., Dolganov A.N. The Features of the Presentation of the Topic "Synergetics of the Economics" For Students of Information Technologies. 17th IFAC Workshop on Control Application of Optimisation (CAO 2018), Yekaterinburg, October 15-19, 2018. doi: 10.1016/j.ifacol.2018.11.365.