A Comparative Study of Sports Mental Toughness between Beginners and Experienced Male Taekwondo Players from Goa

Sports psychology focuses on the mental and emotional aspects of athletic performance, helping Taekwondo players enhance their performance by improving their focus and concentration, enhancing confidence, and managing stress and anxiety. The purpose of the study was, to compare the mental toughness of beginners & experienced taekwondo player from the state of Goa. For which 80 beginners & 80 experienced Taekwondo players were selected using purposive sampling technique. Descriptive comparative method was used to find out the difference between beginners & experienced Taekwondo players. Sports Mental Toughness Questionnaire (SMTQ) developed by (Michael Sheard, Jim Golby, and Anna van Wersh) were used to measure mental toughness. The collected data was statistically analyzed, and the calculated mean and standard deviation of mental toughness male beginners & experienced Taekwondo players were 40.54 (±2.81) and 40.73 (±3.89) respectively. In order to study the difference between beginners & experienced Taekwondo players, independent sample t- test was calculated. The calculated t-valve for total mental toughness was (-.34). For degree of freedom158, which shows that there is no significant difference at 0.05 level of significance (p=0.72)