Self-talk content and performance indicators for young tennis players in competitions

Background and Study Aim. Tennis players have many opportunities to experience and demonstrate self-talk in between points in competition. Uncontrolled negative self-talk can impact attention and accuracy, leading to a tendency for negative self-talk to dominate and increase anxiety levels. Perhaps, with the help of self-talk, it is possible to regulate the emotional state in order to improve results in competitions. In this paper, we studied the influence of self-talk on the results of competition (win or lose) based on a young female tennis player with unstable performance in competitions. Material and Methods. We used the Mann – Whitney test to verify the hypothesis that self-talk of a tennis player influences whether she is winning or losing a match. The initial statistics are the results of a survey of an athlete on the number and content of self-talk before and during the match. We studied automatic self-talk and strategic self-talk. Automatic self-talk can have both positive and negative emotional content. Strategic self-talk consists of motivational and cognitive thoughts. Results.T he number of strategic motivational self-talk and automatic positive self-talk was greater in winning matches than in losing matches at p = 0.02. At the same time, there was no statistically significant relationship between match outcome and the amount of strategic cognitive self-talk or automatic negative self-talk. The results of the analysis show that wins occurred when the mean of motivational self-talk was 23 and the mean of positive self-talk was 16, and losses occurred when these values were 15 and 11, respectively. Conclusions. The results of our study show a statistically significant relationship between the content of strategic motivational self-talk and positive self-talk and the outcome of the competition. It should be noted that the small sample size and our doubts about the homogeneity of the competitors and conditions for the matches make our conclusion only an estimate. Also, we cannot accurately answer the question of how many strategic motivational self-talk and positive self-talk instances are needed to defeat an opponent.