Introduction: Cremades and Wiggings (2008), reported that coaches can gain benefit out of the knowledge of their athlete`s psychological distinctiveness in competitive conditions. Regarding this expertise coaches can contribute with promoting, supportive techniques in preseason. (Cremades and Wiggings, 2008). The aim of study was to find out what sport psychological qualities can be characterized during competition season in gymnastics in order to enhance their performance. Methods: The Sport Motivation Scale (Pelletier et al., 1995) as well as Task and Ego Orientation in Sport Questionare (Duda, 1989) and in addition the Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2 (Martens et. al., 1990) were filled out by 254 Hungarian gymnasts They completed the questionnaires in spring 2013 in their native language. Results: In the investigation of motivation there were no significant differences between the extrinsic and intrinsic motivation factors. By analyzing the goal orientation, it was found that the task orientation factor have significantly higher value than ego orientation factor. The analysis of CSAI-2 highlights the facts that there were no significant differences between the 3 factors (somatic anxiety, cognitive anxiety, selfconfidence) but the somatic anxiety factor have significantly higher value than cognitive anxiety factor, and the self-confidence factor shows significantly higher value than the two anxiety factors. Discussion According to Markland, athletes who have intrinsic motivation enjoy doing sport more and irrespectively of performance they more likely willing to do it in the long term (Markland, 1999). In our examination there were no significant differences between the motivational factors. According to Goudas (1998), athletes are motivated more in a task-oriented environment; they can achieve goals better, as well as they have lower anxiety level (Goudas, 1998). In the case of our examination, the task-orientation factor was the most emphatic. In conclusion, in our sample, the somatic anxiety factor was significantly higher than the cognitive one, which should be taken into consideration by coaches in order to achieve performance enhancement in their athletes.
© Copyright 2014 19th Annual Congress of the European College of Sport Science (ECSS), Amsterdam, 2. - 5. July 2014. Veröffentlicht von VU University Amsterdam. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.