The Effect of Mental Toughness Training upon Mental Toughness Level and Sport Success towards Muaythai Competition

Abstract

The purposes of this research were 1) to study mental toughness level of Muaythai boxers, 2) to study sport success towards Muaythai competition, and 3) to study the relationship between mental toughness level and sport success towards Muaythai competition. The sample groups were 15 Muaythai boxers of Thailand National Sports University, Suphanburi Campus, selected from simple random sampling, and adapted from Cohen table with power of test at .80 and effect size at 0.6. The instrument in this research was the mental toughness test for professional Muaythai boxers with reliability of .91, and the empirical sport success towards Muaythai competition were win, draw, and loss. The statistics used for data analysis were mean, standard deviation, frequency, percentage, T-test, and correlation coefficient with Independent–Sample Kruskal-Wallis Test. Research finding indicated that 1) Level of mental toughness after week 8 training was higher than before training with the statistical significance at .05 level. 2) The competition results of Muaythai boxers found that 10 won and 5 lost. 3) The relationship between mental toughness level and sport success towards Muaythai competition was not related with the statistical significance at .05 level. It found that factors affected sport success toward Muaythai competition were 3.1) physical performance, 3.2) mental performance, 3.3) proficiency in using Muaythai skills, 3.4) Muaythai techniques, 3.5) IQ, 3.6) preparation before the competition, 3.7) experiences, 3.8) weight, 3.9) age, 3.10) award, and 3.11) cheering team.