Enhancing Cadets’ Psycho-Emotional Resilience Through Sports Games Activities

The issue of enhancing the psycho-emotional resilience of cadets is among the most pressing today, as in the context of war, every military servicemember, including those in training, is exposed to elevated levels of stress. The authors interpret cadets’ psycho-emotional resilience as an integrative personality trait, the level of which is characterized by personal adaptive potential manifested in effective activity, consistency, and purposefulness of behavior under emotionally intense conditions. The aim of the study is to theoretically substantiate the feasibility and experimentally confirm the effectiveness of the authors’ program for enhancing cadets’ psycho-emotional resilience through sports games activities. The foundation of the program is based on the World Health Organization’s definition of health as a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being; H. Selye’s concept of stress and adaptation; R. Lazarus’s theory on the interconnection between physical and psychological stress; and the conclusions of M. Mantzios and K. Giannou, who emphasized the importance of motivation, preferences, and readiness for action in the development of psycho-emotional resilience and self-regulation mechanisms. The program also incorporates the expertise and experience of its developers, along with the findings obtained during the initial (ascertaining) phase of the experiment. The authors’ program for improving cadets’ psycho-emotional resilience through sports games activities includes the most effective self-regulation methods: physical exercises (including sports games, yoga, tai chi, and qigong); self-massage; acupressure and kinesiology techniques; breathing exercises; relaxation and concentration exercises; meditation; and expressive therapy, particularly dance movement therapy. The effectiveness of the proposed program was confirmed experimentally: the results demonstrated a positive dynamic in the level of cadets’ psycho-emotional resilience, which supports the feasibility of using self-regulation methods specifically within the context of sports games as part of physical training.