Dr.Sc.Psych., Professor B.P. Yakovlev¹
Dr.Hab, Professor G.D. Babushkin²
Ph.D., Associate Professor E.G. Babushkin^3
1Surgut State University Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Region Yugra, Surgut
²Siberian State University of Physical Culture and Sport, Omsk
³Omsk State Institute of Service, Omsk

Keywords: psychological support, training, athletes, competition, results.

Introduction. The effectiveness of competitive activity was the subject for a series of studies [3, 8, 11 et al.], which revealed the impact of any given factor studied by the authors. When athletes are highly-skilled and have the same physical and technical fitness levels, it is the psychological factors that play a decisive role in the display of maximal results.

Athletes' responsibility for their performance and their desire to improve sports achievements lead to emotional shifts that define the nature of their pre-start state [4, 11, 12 et al.], thus affecting their activity. In this view, personal factor can be of crucial importance. However, its role is often underestimated in coaching due to various reasons.

The psychological aspects of pre-season training of athletes are often beyond the scope of coaches' attention. This is, apparently, due to the fact that coaches think that simple training of athletes for sports activities will do for this stage. However, this problem arises when the athletes are implementing their fitness in complex competitive conditions, which athletes seldom cope with [1-3, 7, 11 et al.]. Extreme nature of competitive activity, motivation of athletes to achieve high results during competitions, subjective feelings caused by the upcoming performances - all these and more impose mental load on athletes, which they can hardly cope with [8, 11]. Psychological support in pre-season training is meant for athletes to cope with its negative impact [1, 2, 4, 5, 12 et al.], which eventually should enable athletes to implement their fitness and perform successfully in competitions. However, this task is not always fulfilled (50% of the cases).

In order to substantiate the essence of psychological support of long-term training of athletes, the principle of anticipatory goal setting was taken as the fundamental one, which had been excluded from the essence of the psychological support of long-term training of athletes proposed by G.B. Gorskaya [5] and in the programs for SCYSSOR.

The purpose of the study was to analyze the effectiveness of competitive activity of highly skilled athletes and substantiate the essence of the psychological support of pre-season training.

Materials and methods. At the first stage, we studied the effectiveness of competitive activity of highly skilled athletes: athletes specializing in pistol shooting - 16 people - MSIC, MS and CMS; sprint swimmers - 14 people (MS and CMS); speed skaters - 29 people (MSIC and MS) - participants of the 2014 Olympic Games in Sochi and 2014 Universiade in Kolomna. The workers of the Sports Psychology Laboratory: K.V. Dikikh, R.E. Rybin, E.A. Skoruk were those who gathered the material.

Results and discussion. Only 20 (70%) out of 29 speed skaters participating in the competitions achieved the planned results. Out of 14 sprint swimmers taking part in various competitions in 56 countries (Championship of the Siberian Federal District, Russian Cup, Russian Championship, International Vladimir Sal'nikov Cup Swimming Tournament), only 40% of athletes improved their target results. We believe that this is due to the gaps in the mental conditioning of the athletes. In order to test this hypothesis, we studied the psychological factors that reflect the psychological readiness of athletes. Thus, we determined that shooters, swimmers and speed skaters had an average positive pre-season mental activity, which ranged between 46-53 points at maximum 60 points. There are certain shortcomings in the structure of pre-season mental activity of swimmers: difficulty concentrating: swimmers do not always manage to cope with their state; negative thoughts; uncertainty; lack of interest in specialized literature. The swimmers were observed to have poor skills of psychoregulation and interference immunity. This explains why swimmers are not able to concentrate on the upcoming activities: before competitions athletes stick to negative thoughts and cannot always cope with their state. The assessment of athletes' neuro-psychic state in terms of deviation from the autogenic norm, carried out the week before the competition, revealed its average level. The conducted testing and analysis of the swimmers' performance in the competition testify to the influence of underdeveloped psychological readiness of athletes on the effectiveness of their competitive activity.

The second phase of the experiment involved the formulation of the content of psychological support of pre-season training of athletes and testing of its effectiveness. Psychological support included the following directions of work: 1) diagnostics and correction of psychological preparedness of athletes for the competition; 2) correction of orientation of training load based on the diagnostics of athlete's state; 3) formation of positive mental activity was carried out using the method of "formation of thinking" [3]. The athletes were offered a complex of positive statements they were supposed to instill in their free time. The content of these statements corresponds to the essence of successful competitive activity; 4) improvement of the mental self-regulation skill using the auto-training by A.V. Alekseev; 5) actualization of athletes' resources according to the methodology of G.D. Gorbunov [4]. The methodology is based on the ideas of altered states of consciousness by Milton Erickson. Pre-season attitudes were instilled into the athletes' heads when they were in a dormant state to optimize their pre-start state and help them successfully perform in the competition. According to our study, this direction is stipulated by the fact that not all swimmers reach the submaximal power when covering a 100 m distance, and remain in the high-power zone; 6) meditation with the use of the "thoughtform training", involving purification of athlete's mind from strange, negative, interfering with productive activity thoughts, and formation of the winner psychology. The meditation training is based on the recommendations of A.A. Ivanov [6]. The testing conducted upon completion of the 3-week training sessions revealed that the formed qualities had improved significantly.

The effectiveness of psychological support of pre-season training was tested on the team of highly skilled sprint swimmers, members of the Omsk national team. Pre-season mental conditioning of sprint swimmers was conducted as part of the 3-week pre-season mesocycle when training for the 2014 Championships of the Siberian Federal District (SFD) and the 2014 Russian Championship. The analysis of swimmers' performance in the SFD Championship revealed the following. In 4 days, the swimmers competed 32 times. In 25 cases they exceeded the target results, being their personal record in most cases, which amounted to 80%.

During the Russian Championships the swimmers (6 people) participated in 24 starts. In 70% of the cases, they improved their target results and mentioned positive growth dynamics in the self-regulation ability, they felt more confident before the start. Athletes, who had exceeded the planned results, mentioned that this was due to the mental conditioning sessions, that they felt the benefits of mental conditioning and found it useful and timely, positively affecting their pre-start state, which promoted personal records.

Training of swimmers for the SFD Championship (February, 2015) did not imply psychological support of pre-season training of athletes. As seen from analysis of the swimmers' performance in the competition, most of them (78%) failed to achieve the target results due to: 1) lack of pre-season mental conditioning of swimmers; 2) swimmers' performing "under load" - there were no recovery microcycles during their pre-season training. It was absent as the SFO Championship was an intermediate competition before the upcoming Championship of Russia (April, 2015), which athletes trained for.

Conclusion. The effectiveness of competitive activity of highly skilled athletes is largely stipulated by the content of the phase of pre-season training stage, which should be largely focused on psychological support of athletes' training, organized based on the importance of the factors that make up psychological readiness. The purpose of psychological support of the competitive training of highly skilled athletes was to create psychological preconditions for the implementation by athletes of their readiness and showing personal records. However, not all athletes, involved in the experiment, had their results improved, which suggests difficulties in the formation of significant psychological qualities of adult highly skilled athletes, which had been neglected at previous sports phases.

The methods stipulated in the paper can be used in the work with athletes specializing in other sports.

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Corresponding author: apokin_vv@mail.ru