In the article “Experience and mastery of sports” we will analyze the components of the concept of sportsmanship and consider in detail how this affects the final result.
The excitement and fearlessness of youth sometimes takes over when everything seemed to be predetermined and the winner was known before the fight began. This is still an exception to the general rule, as professionalism and class win overall.
Experienced and professional athletes control themselves perfectly in any situation, both under the roar of the stands and under the gaze of the opponent. How do they do it? As sports psychologists point out, the will to win directly determines the outcome of any competition.
The roar of the stands, the aggression of the opponent, the burden of responsibility, and your own internal adrenaline – all this prevents the athlete from overcoming his emotions and showing at the start the result that he easily demonstrates in training.
Experiments show that experienced athletes find it easier to maintain a stable emotional state than younger athletes. Younger athletes go into a trance more easily, but they are more easily thrown out of their emotional equilibrium.
The optimal “fighting” state of an experienced athlete is more stable, and therefore the results will be knowingly higher. Psychological stability is the first component of sports experience. It is the basis of such age-specific disciplines as high-altitude mountaineering, equestrian sport, bobsleigh, road cycling.
But there are sports that are specifically made for young people. BMX only entered the Olympic program in 2008, but this branch of cycling has a young face for another reason. High speeds, bends and jumps, hard landings on the ground – all this requires the cyclist to have impeccable command of his body.
You can’t cheat physiology, you get experience, but you lose coordination. A 20-year-old BMX rider is considered a veteran. For comparison, the road to high-altitude mountaineering is open only after the age of 35.
Experts note that a young athlete can demonstrate a better result in the beginning of the fight, because he started the game on heat, on emotion. Later the player has problems because he lacks the arsenal of all kinds of techniques for successful play.
For example, if a player scores a goal at the beginning of a match, an experienced opposing goalkeeper later adjusts to the young attacker’s play and waits for him in the same spot. The young athlete needs to change his tactics, his shot, somehow try to trick the goalkeeper, and he continues to act in the same way.
It becomes apparent that while a beginner has a few tricks in his arsenal, a professional has dozens of them, and their choice is brought to automaticity. The arsenal of solutions is another inherent property of skill and experience in the sport.
Very often the result in a particular sport is influenced by the weather. The humidity in the air, the strength of the wind, the texture of the ice or snow. In order to perform at their best, athletes have to adjust to changing conditions.
An example of this would be a sport such as target shooting. An experienced shooter keeps a close eye on cloud cover and wind strength. Athletes note that if it rained the day before the competition, the wind will be denser in the morning due to evaporation from the ground. With the same wind strength in dry and wet weather, the result of the shot will be different.
Athletes do not have special equipment and they are guided only by flags. They have to make a small overhang when aiming, or correct with micro movements of the hands in the billet. Thus, in addition to psychological stability and an extensive arsenal of possible solutions, mastery is also the baggage of necessary knowledge.
But is that enough? In road races, athletes pedal for hours, with their brains intensely solving tactical problems: “How to outrun the opponent?”, “How to accelerate?”, “How to calculate effort?”. It would seem that the only thing a cyclist does not think about is fixing time, because modern technology does it for him.
Such a perception is wrong. International athletes intuitively feel the pace, rhythm, speed and timing of a race. It’s a special feeling that develops with years of hard training and competition, this “sense of sport“. In every discipline it is different. In swimming – the feeling of water, in jumping – the feeling of the bar, in boxing – the feeling of distance.
Hardened in major battles, the ability to lead in a difficult moment – all this is inherent only to great masters. However, there are situations when opponents are not afraid of experienced players, but of newcomers, because they are too unpredictable.
3-time Olympic handball champion Andrei Lavrov:
“We started to play, the game didn’t go. The coach needs to change something. The opposing team prepared for the game and studied the first numbers of the team, and the second numbers are a closed book for them. The moment the coach puts young players out, he can change the game in a positive way, because young people play on emotion, on courage, act out of the box”
What other quality can be distinguished in the concept of “experience and mastery of sports”? We have already noted that psychological resilience affects performance. But in what way? The fact is that experienced athletes are less distracted by mistakes during the course and more focused on building tactics in the race.
Young athletes, on the other hand, are mostly concerned about the mistakes they’ve just made. Their emotional state becomes unstable and, as a result, they make more mistakes. The ability to focus on what is happening here and now, as a rule, is typical only for professionals with a long sports experience, which means that the quality of “situation prediction” distinguishes an experienced fighter.
The ability to concentrate is very important in sports, especially in a sport like fencing. If you hesitate for a moment, you will get a jab from your opponent 
The ability to concentrate is a very energy-consuming quality for an athlete’s body, which means that it can be trained. Sports psychologists say that the so-called “sixth sense” is nothing more than the attention and reaction developed during years of training.
As a result, we can state that a balanced decision in a difficult minute, sportsmanship, cold-blooded analysis of the situation, the ability to focus win much more often than the youthful pressure and lack of authority.
We bring to your attention the video, which will demonstrate for 1 minute what is experience and mastery of sports.
