OPERATIONAL EVALUATION OF ATHLETE’S MENTAL CONDITION

Abstract

Modern sport is characterized by the importance of accounting for all its main components, which include athlete’s mental conditioning. However, prompt assessment of the sportsman’s mental condition lacks necessary tools and methods, which makes it difficult for a coach to effectively manage the process of athletic instruction. According to psychologists, an informative way to determine the human mental condition is its assessment by eye movements. The purpose of our study was to identify a possibility of using the parameters of eye micromotion (using a relative index – coefficient of variation of eye micromotion) and determining its variation ranges to assess the athlete’s mental condition. Riflemen were involved as test subjects (n=36). Required indicators were recorded using a special photoelectron device and the corresponding method of its application. The relative index used – coefficient of variation (Cvm) of eye micromotion was used for the quantitative evaluation of recorded parameters. Analysis and generalization of results, discrimination test and correlation analysis were also used. The results of the study have showed that the values of the coefficient of variation of athletes’ eye micromotion are related to their qualification. Conditions of the contest most affected the athletes of lower qualification. This was indicated by the differences in Cvm between low (category III) and high-qualification athletes (master of sports) in special (0.21) and training conditions (0.21) and even more noticeable differences in this coefficient for the control (0.42) and competitive (0.50) shooting. The graph shows changes in this coefficient and visual discrimination performance of the test subjects during the contest day and during a competitive shooting exercise, which made it possible to interpret Cvm as an operational indicator for assessing the mental condition, and discrimination ability as one of the indicators of the athlete’s mental condition.