The Intervention Of Changing Orientation And Accepting Orientation:Improve Athletic Performance Under Stress

How to improve the performance under pressure is one of the important problems that athletes and psychologists need to solve.At present,there are two methods commonly used to help athletes cope with pressure and give their best performance.The first is Psychological Skill Training and the second is Mindfulness Training.Psychological skill training is a control-based psychological behavior intervention method that emphasizes the optimal psychological state achieved by regulating(changing,eliminating or controlling)internal experience(Zhang,Bu,& Si,2012).Mindfulness training,on the other hand,emphasizes awareness,being present,not judging,accepting,and pointing to tasks.The effect of two kinds of psychological training,still need more research to examine.To sum up,this study adopts a preliminary experiment and two formal experiments to explore the influence of traditional psychological skill training and mindfulness training on athletes’ performance under high pressure.The pre-study was designed to explore the effects of setting up high-pressure scenarios based on virtual reality technology.Fourteen college athletes were selected and designed in a single factor group.The independent variables in the group were pressure scenarios(high pressure scenario/low pressure scenario),and the dependent variables were heart rate,heart rate variability index and MRF-3 scale.The results showed that the high pressure scenario successfully induced the participants’ state anxiety(heart rate variability and MRF-3 scores were higher in the high pressure scenario than in the low pressure scenario).Experiment 1 aims to explore the influence of psychological skill training and mindfulness training on athletic performance of college athletes under high pressure.120 college athletes were selected and a 3×3 hybrid design was adopted,in which the independent variable between the groups was the psychological training mode(psychological skills training /mindfulness training /no training).The independent variable within the group is time(pre-test/post-test/tracking test).The dependent variables were virtual reality shooting task performance/state anxiety score/challenge-to-threat state assessment/mindfulness five-factor score/physiological indicators.The results show that both the psychological skill training and mindfulness training can improve the performance of college athletes under high pressure,and the effect of mindfulness training is better.After the withdrawal of psychological training,the continuity of psychological skill training is better than that of mindfulness training.Experiment 2 aims to explore the influence of traditional psychological skill training and mindfulness training on athletic performance of high-level athletes under high pressure.Twelve athletes were randomly divided into two groups to receive training in traditional mental skills and mindfulness.ABA design was used to examine the changes of mindfulness level,state anxiety level,challenge-threat state and athletic performance of 12 athletes before and after the intervention.The results showed that during the intervention phase,the performance of athletes trained in psychological skills fluctuated above the baseline level,while the performance of athletes trained in mindfulness increased gradually.The continuity of psychological skill training is better than mindfulness training.In conclusion,both psychological skill training and mindfulness training can improve athletes’ performance under pressure and produce positive psychological benefits.The advantage of mindfulness training is that it adds up.The advantage of psychological skill training is that it is more time-efficient and the benefit after withdrawal of intervention lasts longer.This discovery provides a method and approach for training athletes to cope with stress.