Recently, the skill to play games has led to the professionalization of the activity in the form of “eSports” (electronic sports). Despite the popularity of eSports, little is known about its professional players from a psychological perspective. Given the importance of the coach-created environment in the athletes’ motivational processes, this study aimed to investigate the key psychological dimensions of the coach-created climate in 75 Brazilian professional players of League of Legends (LoL) considering the Self-Determination Theory (SDT) and Achievement Goal Theory (AGT). Fourteen hypotheses were tested, of which seven were confirmed. The empowering climate was a predictor of basic psychological-needs satisfaction and indirectly influenced autonomous motivation. The need satisfaction had a significant impact on both autonomous motivation and on lack of motivation, which, in turn, explained 56% of the variance in well-being and the intention to keep playing eSports. The disempowering climate was a predictor of psychological-needs thwarting but had no significant impact on autonomous motivation or lack of motivation. The results obtained support SDT and AGT in the context of eSports and were similar to those conducted with athletes from traditional sports, indicating that the empowering-and-disempowering-coaching-climates conceptualization applies not only to traditional sports athletes but also to professional eSports players.

Soccer players inescapably live under stress during the sportive career, and many real-life aspects of soccer situations operate in the ongoing performance. This study’s main objective was to elaborate the List of Stressors in Professional Indoor and Field Soccer, a self-report instrument designed to measure the impact of 77 soccer situations upon the sport performance. Participants were 138 indoor and field soccer players from the Brazilian Premier League. Each situation was evaluated on a 7-point scale, ranging from the most negative (−3) to the most positive (+3). Data were analyzed according to the players’ perception of the items: distress or eustress and its intensity, and after that, situations perceived as plus −1 and +1 were compared by time in which they were experienced and distributed among five categories established by the literature: Expectations about the Performance, Personal Factors, Competition Aspects, Training Demands, and Relationship with Significant People. Narratives of athletes’ experiences were also used to discuss the results. An Exploratory Structural Equation Modeling using Bi-factorial (BI-ESEM) was employed to assess the factor structure. For the total participants, 49 situations were perceived as distress and 28 as eustress. Using the criteria established a priori, the distribution was among the five categories in the remaining 32 situations. Differences in perception between less and more experienced players were found in 11 situations. The results revealed that Brazilian professional soccer players experience various stressful situations. These events are important representations of environmental demands and could predict the performance as they are perceived as eustress or distress. Some of these stressful situations are inherent in sport and others adjacent to the sports system or environment. Coach pressure to win and conflicts with teammates are examples of stressors in-sport, family problems and disputes with press or fans are examples of stressors external to the team, also called peripheral opponents, and showed the relative social influence of significant others in soccer performance. We can conclude that the knowledge of the direction of a given stress situation has important practical implications in preparing athletes and helping them face the performance stressors that are part of soccer daily life.

IntroductionIntervention programs in sports psychology aid to modify the thoughts and behaviors of athletes in order to improve their performance in sports settings. For high-performance athletes, these interventions are very relevant, given that they constantly face pressure towards obtaining sporting achievements.MethodsThis systematic review aims to analyze the scientific articles between 2010 and 2020 that evaluated the effect of psychological interventions on high-performance athletes. In the search procedure, nine studies were selected, the most studied variables were psychological skills, psychological flexibility, and stress.ResultsThe 44% of the interventions were designed by the research authors themselves, while the remaining 56% were replicated programs, which already had scientific evidence.DiscussionPsychological interventions have a positive impact on sports performance. This review allows sports institutions and professionals to have more knowledge and resources at their disposal to implement these types of programs in their sports planning.

Comportamentos antissociais tornaram-se recorrentes no ambiente escolar e se manifestado por meio de agressões físicas, verbais e simbólicas. O objetivo deste estudo foi verificar o efeito de uma intervenção, fundamentada no atendimento das necessidades psicológicas básicas (NPB), nos comportamentos pró e antissociais em aulas de Educação Física escolar. Participaram deste estudo 45 alunos e 2 professores de educação Física (PEF) divididos em Grupo Controle (GC) e Grupo Intervenção (GI). Os alunos responderam o Questionário de Atitudes no Esporte (QAE-23) e uma entrevista semiestruturada nos momentos pré e pós intervenção. A intervenção consistiu em uma orientação semanal com o PEF do GI durante 10 semanas, com objetivo de realizar adaptações na aula a fim de levar ao cumprimento das NPB. Para verificar diferença entre os grupos, em relação às respostas do QAE-23, nos momentos pré e pós, foi utilizado o teste T de Student e adotado nível de significância 5%. Na análise qualitativa, as entrevistas foram gravadas, transcritas e, posteriormente, categorizadas e analisadas. Mediante análise dos relatos obtidos pela entrevista foi possível observar percepção do atendimento das NPB e redução de comportamentos antissociais. Contudo, não foi observada diferença estatisticamente significativa entre os grupos para as respostas do QAE-2. Conclui-se, por meio dos relatos obtidos na entrevista, que a intervenção pautada no cumprimento das NPB possibilitou um efeito positivo em relação à redução dos comportamentos antissociais, porém, os dados quantitativos sugerem que a duração do estudo pode ter sido um fator limitante de maior efeito em relação à ausência internalização dos comportamentos.

The rating of perceived exertion (RPE) can be used to monitor the exercise intensity during laboratory and specific tests, training sessions, and to estimate the internal training load of the athletes. The aim of the present study was to develop and validate a specific pictorial perceived exertion scale for soccer players (indoor, field, and beach soccer) called GOAL Scale. The pictorial GOAL Scale (six drawings; 1 “low exertion” to 6 “exhaustion”) was validated for twenty under-17 soccer players (16.4 ± 0.68 years; 175.4 ± 9 cm; 66.4 ± 7.7 kg; % fat mass 12.4 ± 3.3). In the validation phase, the athletes were evaluated in a progressive protocol involving stimuluses of 3 min with 1 min for the rest into the stages until the voluntary exhaustion in Maximal Cardiopulmonary Effort Test (MCET), and in the Yo Yo Intermittent Recovery Test – Level 1 (Yo-Yo). The RPE identified by the GOL Scale, by the Borg Scale 6 – 20 and by the Cavasini Scale, as well as the heart rate (HR), perceptual of the heart rate (%HRmax) and the blood lactate concentration ([La]) were immediately evaluated after each stage of both tests. Spearman’s correlation coefficient (p < 0.05) was used. Construct scale validity was examined by regressing GOAL Scale against Borg Scale 6 – 20 and Cavasini Scale and concurrent scale validity was investigated by regressing GOAL Scale against HR, beats/min and blood lactate concentration (mmol/L) during two progressive tests. There was a significant correlation values of the GOAL Scale with Borg Scale (r = 0.93; r = 0.88), Cavasini Scale (r = 0.91; r = 0.90), %HRmax (r = 0.91; r = 0,86), HR (r = 0.87; r = 0.83) and lactate (r = 0.68; r = 0.83) during tests (Maximal Incremental Cardiopulmonary Test and Yo-Yo test, respectively). The results evidenced concurrent and construct validity of the GOAL Scale across a wide range of exercise intensity. The absence of verbal anchors makes the use of this instrument to soccer, futsal and beach soccer athletes of different languages and different literacy levels possible.