Young athletes’ perceptions of a psychological preparation intervention
Keywords:
Sport psychology, Performance profiling, Goals, Evaluation, Intervention, Psychological preparationAbstract
This article reports a study concerning a psychological preparation intervention in sport environment. The method implemented included performance profiling and goal setting. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the intervention from the young athletes’ point of view. The research task was to analyze how the athletes perceived the intervention, its benefits and weaknesses. The questionnaire data were obtained alongside the intervention case study among 61 young athletes from a sport academy in northern Finland. Their answers were analyzed with the qualitative content analysis. For some of the athletes, the intervention worked as planned increasing their self-knowledge, motivation, concentration, and personal training, while others did not perceive the intervention very meaningful of beneficial. Based on the young athletes’ experiences, suggestions for future psychological preparation interventions are presented.
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