MENTAL TOUGHNESS OF LATVIAN TAEKWONDO ATHLETES

Introduction: The field of sport has the potential to be a very stressful environment in which to operate and the pursuit and attainment of success or excellence in the face of competition, does not come without its pressures, challenges, and adversities. most coaches and sports psychologists; beliefs mental toughness is the most important psychological factor affecting the success of athletes. Gucciardi, et al (2014) defined mental toughness as “a personal capacity to achieve consistently high levels of subjective (e.g., personal goals or strivings) or objective (e.g., sales, race time, GPA) performance despite everyday challenges and stressors as well as significant adversities.” Taekwondo has evolved in scientific and technological aspects since its inclusion as an Olympic discipline, forcing countries to seek information from the different variables involved in the sport process to achieve international best results. reports have shown that mental toughness can affect Influence the results of athletes. Kuan, G., & Roy, J. (2007). PROBLEMS: only 5-10% of athletes their training time is spent developing essential psychological skills such as mental toughness, Truelove AA(2014), In the Latvian sports environment, it is often observed that in the case of unsuccessful performance, athletes and their coaches plan to adjust their physical or technical fitness routine, perceiving the psychological aspect as less important (Astaficevs, A .2020). The purpose of this study is to find out the mental toughness of Latvian Taekwondo athletes. Method: Subjects are Latvian youth Taekwondo athletes that at least for 2 years have participated in national or international competitions. The Latvian version of sports mental toughness questionnaire (SMTQ) (Sheard et al., 2009) has validated by Astafičevs, A. Fernate, A. Vazne,Ž. 2020 will be given to the Athletes. Processing and analysis of results will be made by MS. Excel. The software function Descriptive statistics will be used for normal data distribution. Descriptive statistical methods will be used to describe the values and representativeness of the problem to be investigated. Conclusion: The current study is the first in the Latvian Taekwondo athletes. It is therefore important that coaches and sports scientists collect information about their athletes.