Jones Martin I, Parker John K
Sport and Health Science, College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter, Exeter, Devon EX1 2LU, UK.
School of Sport and Exercise Science, University of Gloucestershire, Gloucestershire, GL2 9HW, UK.
J Sport Health Sci. 2019 Jan;8(1):71-76. doi: 10.1016/j.jshs.2017.05.005. Epub 2017 May 12.
Athletes, coaches, sport psychology practitioners, and researchers suggest that mental toughness represents an important construct that is associated with athletic performance. Unfortunately, the absence of real-world performance as a dependent variable has limited our ability to substantiate this claim. The concern of a lack of ecologically valid measures of sports performance might be addressed by examining the relationship between mental toughness and sports performance using a standardized measure of personal best (PB) triathlon time and a validated unidimensional measure of mental toughness.
Three hundred and sixteen triathletes completed the 8-item mental toughness index (MTI), reported their age, and provided a PB Olympic distance triathlon time and the total number of triathlons they had completed to date. Given that males are typically quicker than females, a standardized time was calculated by dividing the PB by the current Olympic record for gender; we also hypothesized that more experienced triathletes would report quicker PB times because of greater frequency and duration of training. Once we had controlled for gender and experience, we predicted that mental toughness would be negatively associated with triathlon time and the size of the relationship would be of a moderate magnitude.
Results revealed small- to moderate-sized negative relationships between both completed number of triathlons and mental toughness with standardized PB time.
The hierarchical regression analysis showed that mental toughness provided a unique contribution to the variability in standardized Olympic triathlon PB after controlling for the total number of triathlons completed.
运动员、教练、运动心理学从业者和研究人员认为，心理韧性是与运动表现相关的一个重要概念。不幸的是，缺乏将实际表现作为因变量限制了我们证实这一说法的能力。通过使用个人最佳（PB）铁人三项时间的标准化测量方法和经过验证的心理韧性单维测量方法来研究心理韧性与运动表现之间的关系，可能解决对缺乏生态效度的运动表现测量方法的担忧。
316名铁人三项运动员完成了8项心理韧性指数（MTI），报告了他们的年龄，并提供了PB奥运距离铁人三项时间以及他们迄今为止完成的铁人三项总数。鉴于男性通常比女性速度快，通过将PB除以当前性别的奥运记录来计算标准化时间；我们还假设，由于训练频率和时长更高，经验更丰富的铁人三项运动员的PB时间会更快。在我们控制了性别和经验之后，我们预测心理韧性将与铁人三项时间呈负相关，且这种关系的大小将处于中等程度。
结果显示，完成的铁人三项数量和心理韧性与标准化PB时间之间存在小到中等程度的负相关关系。
分层回归分析表明，在控制了完成的铁人三项总数之后，心理韧性对标准化奥运铁人三项PB的变异性有独特贡献。
