Psychological Tension and Psychological Skills: A Study on Elite Combat Athletes

Abstract

The aim of this study is to examine the effect of psychological tension on psychological skills of combat athletes. Within the scope of the study, 212 combat athletes who have been competing at the elite level in Muaythai and Kickboxing branches in the last five years in Turkey and actively continuing their sports life were selected by simple random sampling method and included in the study. In the collection of the data, the personal information form created by the researchers and the psychological stress and athlete psychological skills scales in the literature were used. Pearson correlation test was applied to determine the relationship between the participants' scores obtained from psychological tension and psychological skill scales, and simple regression analysis was performed to evaluate the effect of psychological tension on psychological skills. As a result of the study, it was determined that the psychological tension levels of the participants were high, whereas their psychological skill levels were above average. In addition, it was found that there was a low level negative relationship between psychological tension and skill levels and psychological tension predicted psychological skills. This situation can be interpreted as the high-tension nature of combat sports suppresses the psychological skills of athletes and makes it difficult to use these skills at an optimal level. Combat athletes face high levels of stress and pressure during training and competition, which may negatively affect their psychological skills over time. However, the high capacity of combat athletes to adapt to challenging conditions may relatively limit this effect. This result suggests that stress management and de-escalation techniques should be included in the training process in order to maintain and improve the psychological skills of combat athletes in the long term.