The Effects of Mental Imagery and Cardiac Coherence on Mental Skills of Tunisian Karate Players at School Age

Abstract

The aim of our research consisted in checking the influence of the mental coaching using the mental imagery and relaxation based on cardiac coherence, on the improvement of the cognitive, emotional and behavioural reactions of the Tunisian karate Elite at school age. Our study was about to check if the Tunisian karate Elite at school age who had undergone a mental coaching has a better mental profile than their counterparts of other sporting disciplines and karate players with usual training method. Our sample consisted on an experimental group (N = 24 athletes) and control group (N = 22 athletes), all aged from 16 to 19 years. The experimental group followed for 10 months a psychological and mental coaching. The control group continued to train normally for the same period of time. To assess the mental skills of the participants, we used the OMSAT-3 (Guelmami et al., 2014). Our study showed that a 10 month mental coaching was needed to improve 4 mental skills, i.e. "goal setting" "relaxation", "imagery" and "mental practices". Our findings sustained the importance of a three-dimensional mental coaching in relation to one basic skill (goal setting), a psychosomatic skill (relaxation) and two cognitive skills (imagery and mental practice).

The Effect of Psychological Support and Mental Training on Anxiety Regulation of Injured Tunisian Athletes

“…In this context, mental preparation can be very helpful for injured athletes by acting on mental skills such as focusing, motivation, emotions, anxiety and stress management leading at least to motor performance enhancement. The mental preparation can be defined as a set of techniques that an athlete learns and applies in an autonomic way to develop his psychological profile and optimize his motor performance [8]. The motor imagery is basically used to help athletes increasing and enhancing their mental skills in training and competition [9,10].…”