Impact of Psychological Skills Training on Performance of Indian Gymnasts

Psychological skills account for significant amounts of athletic performance. Studies reveal that the good performers are good in psychological skills as compared to poor performers. So in the light of this, present study assessed level of psychological skills of the Indian gymnast's using Psychological Skills assessment scale, developed by the research scholar which measured the skills such as Imagery, Goal-setting, Selfconfidence, Attention, Motivation, Psychic energy management and Self awareness. And Psychological Skills Training (PST) Program was developed and tested on the performance of the Artistic Gymnast's and their psychological skills. For the purpose a total number of 60 gymnasts were randomly divided into experimental and controlled group (30 gymnasts in each group) Subjects voluntarily agreed to participate in a training program, at the end of the training program only 52 subjects completed the entire training schedule. The study was carried out at Bhoir's Gymkhana, Dombivali, Mumbai from 16th August, 2012 to 30th September, 2012. The data was collected and statistically analyzed by employing the analysis of covariance, One way ANCOVA, Pearson product-moment correlation, two way ANOVA, repeated measure ANOVA and Content analysis. The level of significance was set at 0.05. Findings revealed that there was a significant improvement in the performance of the gymnasts, along with this an improvement was also observed in the psychological skills of the Gymnasts of those who underwent the PST program as compared to the gymnasts in controlled group