Mental Skills Training Program Implementation and Its Impact on Performance Enhancement among Long Distance Runners in Ethiop ia f
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Date
2010-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to assess the Mental Skills Training Program
imple m e ntation and It s Impact on Performance Enhancement among long
dis tance runne rs of Ethiopia.
The me thodology e mployed was descriptive s tudy m e thod. 1 00 athletes w e re
selected from 10 firs t division long distance athletics sport clubs. And the
athletes from each club were selected by simple random method of sampling. A
Questionnaire with a to tal of 25 ques tions was distributed to the s ample d
athletes and was returned after p roperl y filled . Focus group discussion
in te rviews also conducte d with 30 athletes who were purposefully selected from
5 clubs of the 10 athletics clubs of research sample. 10 co a ch es of s e lected clubs
and five le cture rs of s port science from AAU & KCTE w e re als o participating in
the intervie w. The results of the questi o nnaire w e re analyzed u s ing d escriptive
statistics; frequency counts, pe rcentage, mean, and grand mean and s imple
narratives were used as data a nalysis techniques.
The results of the study indicates, the re is a proble m relate d to mental s kills
training program in giving emph asis to it parallel w ith the physical aspect of
sport training by coaches. And the coaches are not aware a b out MST. Mor eover
there is no efficient u se of MS T by the a thletes due to less support from their
coaches. This is firstly due to lack of awareness and attitude of the coa ches and
secondly the s port administrators' low attitude and le ss emphasis to the MST
program.
Based on these findings , the possibl e s olutions are the lack of awareness and
a tt itudes about MST by co aches and s port adminis trators should b e c hange d
through cons istent seminars and awareness creating trainings . The re searche r
concludes that the re is lade of aware n ess and attitude about the MST program
implementation and it s ,:mpn cl in pelform an ce improve m e nt. Due to the failure of
understanding how to impl eme nt MST prog ra m , the athle tes fail to solve different
psychological injurie s and pro blems which happen during/ after training or
competition.
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