EFFECTS OF SELF-TALK STRATEGY IN MENTAL TRAINING OF ATHLETES

Abstract

Before major sporting events  athletes are usually very tense, which has a negative effect on their success, and even though they  are " well prepared " they do  not achieve the desired results in sports. It often happens that talented athletes do not succeed in their  sports career despite the good conditions of work, talent, hard work and professional work of their coaches.   Conversation with oneself (self -talk) is defined differently by different researchers, and therefore there is no single unified definition that would be  available to us. It is defined as something '' that people say to themselves out loud, or it can be defined as a small voice in their own heads ''   Research on this topic shows that successful athletes use more often positive self -talk in comparison to the less successful athletes. Based on previous research, it can be concluded that self -talk is usually treated as an integral part of a comprehensive mental training , i.e. . that in practice it was very often used in combination with other psychological strategies (e.g., imagery, relaxation , goal setting). In contrast, today we have a large number of empirical studies  which have provided evidence on the effectiveness of  the independent self -talk technique  in various sports disciplines. Thus, there is a decent number of studies that confirm the positive effects of self - talk, and relate to improving  athletic performance,  improvement of  self-confidence, as well as reducing anxiety in different kinds of sports, including tennis, football, golf, swimming, basketball, ice hockey and athletics.