Dr.Sc.Psych., Professor B.P. Yakovlev¹
Ph.D., Professor V.I. Voronova²
Associate professor, Ph.D. J.A. Emshanova²
Postgraduate N.R. Usaeva¹
Associate professor, Ph.D. O.V. Bulgakova^1
1Surgut State University KhMAR-Yugra, Surgut
²National University of Physical Education and Sport of Ukraine, Kiev

Keywords: voluntary self-regulation, individual style of self-regulation, athlete, pre-season and regular season

Introduction

For the last few years the sports psychology science has been on the rise in quite a few of its specific applications and priority areas and has addressed many specific objectives in sports, but it should be noted that it still faces the serious problem in studies of the individual self-regulation processes that may be categorized by the sport disciplines, specific conditions of the sport activity, pre-season training conditions, athlete’s qualification and his/her fitness levels.

Since the study objective for the science is the athlete considered both as a subject and object of sports activity (A.T. Puni, 1969) and a decision-making entity, i.e. the only individual that makes decisions, sets objectives for his/her own implementation efforts and implements his/her own action plans using every available and acceptable method and tool (mostly selected on his/her own), this is exactly the case and meaning of the voluntary self-regulation process.

We understand voluntary self-regulation as a system-and-subjective process of conscious human activity geared to regulate and control different deliberate actions of various types and forms to attain the desired specific objectives and general targets [6]. The problem of individual psychical regulation is now ranked among the most serious and fundamental problems of both general psychology and its different applied segments. Sports psychology addresses this problem seeking to acquire some specific understanding of and give reasonable explanations for the general regularities in how the human being constructs and implements his/her voluntary activities; and to study the individual and typical specifics of the self-regulation process styles to be in position to effectively solve a wide variety of practical tasks in one or another specific situation of the athlete’s pre-season training.

Knowing the modern level of development of sport games, there is every reason to state that the success in the complex and diverse competitive conditions now depends on the athlete’s ability to control his/her actions and behavior in the stressing environment of modern competitions, rather than on his/her general physical and functional readiness for the event. It has been proved by many sport researchers that the psychic manifestations that athletes face during competitions cause a variety of multidirectional (and not necessarily positive) impacts on the efficiency of their game actions. Therefore, it is quite an obvious fact today that a skilled tennis player must have an excellent ability to effectively control his/her own emotional condition during the matches as it is one of the major prerequisites for success [1, 2, 4].

It should be noted, however, that the attention given in sport science to the problem of individual self-regulation style development to facilitate success in the competitions – still leaves much to be desired.

The self-regulation style patterns are apparently manifested in how the athlete normally plans and programs his/her own way to attain the predetermined objectives prudently taking into account important external and internal conditions and impacts and how he/she assesses the achieved results and adjusts the individual actions to attain the subjectively acceptable accomplishments in the process; and how well these self-regulation processes are individually developed and realized [3].

The individual style of the human activity self-regulation is described using a variety of specific details of the subjective style. Sport science considers these style details as the regulatory process specifics typical for an individual athlete viewed as an activity subject and intended to address the major components of the self-regulation system in its integrity, including his/her individual responses to the involuntary emotional processes and situations [2, 3, 5].

Summarizing the above, we would emphasize that the athlete’s emotional process self-regulation style is currently one of the least studied aspects of the psychological preparation of tennis players to competitions. Therefore, target efforts to develop and implement efficient and concrete individual self-regulation styles to control emotional processes of tennis players will give the means to seriously improve the athlete’s individual mental stability in regular seasons and notably upgrade the content of the present psychological preparation methods.

The purpose of the study was to find and discuss the specific features of the individual style-driven voluntary self-regulation process in the pre-season and regular season periods.

Structure of the study

36 highly skilled tennis players were subjects of the study.

Results and discussion. Our study of the available data arrays for the pre-season and regular season periods gives good grounds to believe that the style-driven self-regulation factors indicative of the individual style of the tennis players’ self-regulation process – when the intrinsic correlations are taken into account – show different interrelation patterns depending on specific test period. As seen in Tables 1 and 2 hereunder, the degree of correlation of the style-driven self-regulation factors is notably higher for the data arrays that apply to the regular season period.

Table 1. Correlation matrix showing interrelations of style-driven self-regulation factors in pre-season period

Note: Here and in Table 2 hereunder the asterisks mean the following: ** – the correlation factor is statistically valid when р ≤ 0,01; and * – the same for p ≤ 0,05

Based on our study of the data sets for the pre-season, we have found that the general level of the style-driven self-regulation of a tennis player is dependent on the four style-driven self-regulation factors out of six (significance level р≤0.01), namely: planning factor (r = 0.62; p ≤ 0.01); modeling factor (r = 0.57; p ≤ 0.01); programming factor (r = 0.72; p ≤ 0.01); and flexibility factor (r = 0.67; p≤0.01) (Table 1).

Our analysis of the data sets for the regular season show that the general level of the style-driven self-regulation of a tennis player is dependent on a larger number of expressed self-regulation factors (five out of six), namely: planning factor (r = 0.63; p ≤ 0.01); modeling factor (r = 0.68; p ≤ 0.01); programming factor(r = 0.57; p ≤ 0.01); result assessment factor (r = 0.47; p ≤ 0.01); and flexibility factor (r = 0.67; p ≤ 0.01) (with the independence factor being the only exclusion) (Table 2).

It was further found by the study that the planning factor is related to the result assessment rate (r = 0.32; p ≤ 0.05); the modeling factor correlates with the programming factor (r = 0.66; p ≤ 0.01), the flexibility factor (r = 0.37; p ≤ 0.01) and the independence factor (in contrast to the pre-season period, the relation in this case is inverse: r = -0.32; p ≤ 0.05); and the programming factor was also found to directly correlate with the result assessment factor ( r = 0.33; p ≤ 0.05) and the flexibility factor (r = 0.37; p ≤ 0.01) and inversely correlate with the independence factor (r = -0.33; p ≤ 0.05). The result assessment factor was found to correlate with the flexibility factor (r = 0.38; p ≤ 0.01).

Therefore, we see enough reasons to conclude that in the regular season period the correlations of the style-driven self-regulation factors show the following changes when compared with the same for the pre-season period:

• The number of factors that determine the general level of self-regulation and the number of correlations between the individual factors are higher;

• The independence factor changes its influence on the other style-driven self-regulation factors as the direct correlation typical for the pre-season period changes to the inverse correlation in the regular season period.

Table 2: Correlation matrix showing interrelations of style-driven self-regulation factors in regular season period

In other words, the athlete having low internality (subjective control) rate tends to delegate his/her relatively poor independence in the self-regulation process (i.e. his/her individual responsibility) to the other influential individual in the surrounding (coach, manager etc.); and this is apparently done to ease the burden of emotional tension; and for this reason we fix the rise of such style-driven self-regulation factors as the modelling and programming factors (Table 2). Therefore, considering the regular season period on the whole, it should be noted that the low independence of the athlete may be compensated by the above way of emotional tension relief when the athlete virtually refuses to take full personal responsibility for the result of the subject activity.

Moreover, it should be mentioned that in the regular season period when the valid rules require from the tennis player to act on his own and nobody of the coaches or team is allowed to support him/her in whatever form, the low independence of the individual style-driven self-regulation may be the key factor that explains the unpredictable emotional reactions, processes and situations of the player and, as a result, it effectively hampers his ability to fully benefit from his/her own potential by mobilizing available functional resources.

Conclusions

1. The analysis of the objective study data indicative of the style-driven self-regulation process gives good grounds to conclude that a system-and-subjective approach may provide the best tool to address the issue. This means that the self-regulation process is to be implemented through an interaction of a few functional components that may be in their turn determined by a set of intrinsic specific factors; and these factors show certain close correlations in the voluntary self-regulation process geared to attain the objectives accepted by the subject athlete.

2. Actions to increase the independence (subjectivity) rate of the individual style-driven self-regulation process shall be considered a promising method to improve the psychological preparation of a tennis player for sports events.

3. The changes in the regular (extreme) season period experienced by the player tend to establish more close interrelations of the individual style-driven self-regulation factors, and this gives us grounds to state that this process reflects the formation of the more personal, active and more integral system of style-driven self-regulation by the tennis players.

References

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Corresponding author: apokin_vv@mail.ru