R.A. Zarembo-Ratsevich¹
PhD, Associate Professor N.S. Shumova^1
1The Russian University of Sport «GTSOLIFK», Moscow

Keywords: psychological reliability, aesthetic gymnastics, psychological training.

Introduction. In artistic gymnastics, figure skating, and similar disciplines, the subjectivity of judges' scores, associated with the impossibility of fully operationalizing aesthetic-technical criteria, can cause emotional stress in athletes. This stress is higher the less confident the athlete is in the correctness of their assessment of their chances of success, and the higher the significance of that success for them.

The problem becomes more acute with the collective nature of activity, the irreversibility of an error given the high significance of the result for each team member.

To increase psychological reliability, an athlete must be able to prevent the development of stress, adequately assess their capabilities, set appropriate goals, promote group cohesion, create conditions for mutual support and coordinated solving of competitive tasks. This will allow them to realize their achieved level of preparedness in competitions and achieve a high result. The relevance is determined by the gap between the need to develop and apply methods for forming psychological reliability and the lack of tested technologies that correspond to the specifics of the sport.

Objective of the study. To evaluate the effectiveness of the author's methodology for increasing the psychological reliability of gymnasts' performance.

Methodology and organization of the study. A formative experiment was conducted with the participation of two groups: a control group (CG, n=7) and an experimental group (EG, n=7). All subjects were Masters of Sports, aged 19–29 years, with sports experience of 13–23 years. For 11 weeks, a methodology for increasing the psychological reliability of athletes' performance, consisting of three blocks (personal characteristics, functional state, and cognitive processes of athletes), was integrated into the training process of the EG. The effectiveness of the developed methodology was assessed based on data on the psychological reliability of competitive activity and its components, obtained twice (before and after the experiment) using a set of psychodiagnostic techniques.

Results of the study and discussion. A comparative analysis of the data obtained before and after the formative experiment revealed statistically significant positive changes in the EG, while the attention profile indicators deteriorated in the CG. The integral indicator of psychological reliability in the EG increased from 33.6 to 34.71 points; the differences are significant (t(6)=2.98, p=0.024), while in the CG there was a tendency towards its decrease (from 33.2 to 32.79); however, these changes did not reach the level of statistical significance (t(6)=0.14, p=0.890). The most pronounced dynamics were recorded in attention indicators: in the EG, the proportion of athletes with an "effective" type of attention increased from 57% (4 out of 7) to 71% (5 out of 7), and the number of highest scores on the Bourdon cancellation test increased from one to three.

Conclusions. The developed methodology for increasing the psychological reliability of athletes' performance has proven its effectiveness in aesthetic gymnastics. Some of the basic cognitive characteristics – concentration and stability of attention – proved to be the most sensitive to the formative intervention. The use of the methodology in the training process makes it possible to optimize psychological preparation at the stage of sports mastery improvement.

Literature

1. Shumova N.S., Baykovskiy Yu.V. Komponenty psikhicheskoy deyatelnosti sportsmenov i ikh rol v obespechenii nadezhnosti deystviy v ekstremalnykh usloviyakh [Components of athletes' mental activity and their role in ensuring the reliability of actions in extreme conditions]. Ulyanovsk: IP Kenshenskaya Viktoria Valeryevna (Zebra Publishing House), 2018. 99 p.