The Effects of Mental Control Training on State Anxiety and Shooting Competence in Athletes

Abstract

The purposes of the research were to 1) examine state anxiety levels during the period of 7 days and 1 day before the competition; 2) compare state anxiety levels between the control and experimental groups; and 3) compare the shooting scores after 8 weeks of training. The samples were constructed using a simple random sampling method that involved drawing lots from a group of 20 male shooting athletes aged between 18 and 22 who competed in the Suphanburi Shooting Championship in 2020. The instruments used in the study were the mental control training program with an IOC of 1.0, the Revised Competitive Sport Anxiety Inventory–2R (CSAI–2R) with a reliability of .93, and the shooting test on a 10-meter range with an IOC of 1.0 and a reliability of .89. The mean, standard deviation, t-test, one-way repeated measures ANOVA, and multiple comparisons testing using the LSD were the statistics used in data analysis.

The findings revealed that 1) the anxiety test during the period of 7 days and 1 day before the competition in the control and experimental groups were significantly different at the level of .05; 2) the anxiety score of the experimental group was lower than the control group and was significantly different; and 3) there was no statistically significant difference in shooting scores after 8 weeks of training, with a tendency for the experimental group's shooting test scores to be higher than average.