Author R.M. Zagainov, see →
Observation of the behavior of a champion athlete in combat (competitive) conditions, in particular, in such crisis situations as pre-start, or in difficult competition conditions (judgment, hostility of spectators) suggests (it is unlikely that this will ever be established by scientific research), that the will in the life of representatives of this category of humanity plays a leading (guiding to success) role.
It seems that the will is connected (has «communication channels») with all the psychological systems of the personality involved in the activity:
- with the inner world, where the process of spiritual filling (feeding) of the personality is carried out;
- with thinking, when the will «leads» thinking, «forcing» it to take the most necessary (for example: «die or win») in the interests of the activity decision;
- with motivation, when the will «leads» the search for motivation or a means of optimizing it;
- with a psycho-physiological state, when only the will allows you to overcome over-fatigue, find seemingly missing reserves, etc.
“If I lack something on the day of the match, most often freshness, then I provide it with my will,” the captain of the USSR national team and Dynamo Tbilisi, Honored Master of Sports Alexander Chivadze (1984) answered in a special questionnaire.
In yet another aspect, the athlete-champion is fundamentally different from the bulk of athletes, including highly qualified ones. He always (being sick, injured, in conditions of lack of psychological support, etc.) successfully overcomes such a crisis situation as a pre-launch one, and goes to the start in an optimal combat state. We have repeatedly witnessed the true heroism of champion athletes in conditions of super-significant starts, when they subordinated all their moral strength to the well-known “law of will”: the harder the better!
We deliberately repeat: this is a fundamental difference that allows us to define this category of athletes as unique, who have learned a certain secret of self-knowledge, self-organization, self-government, everything that makes up the concept of self-realization (E.I. Stepanova, p. 276).
This conclusion is confirmed by his well-known statement by virtually invincible, four-time Olympic champion Evgeny Grishin: “Each champion has his own secret, which helps him call on the whole world for help on the day he breaks the world record” (1969, p. 283).
The possession of this secret, this secret (a secret for others) distinguishes the category of individuals, this is a minority from the majority. Many years of joint work with representatives of this category of athletes, continuous observation of their behavior and activities suggest that the essence of this “secret” is the presence of a special channel of communication between the volitional sphere and the inner world of a person, that is, with the spiritual content (baggage) of the individual, with the ability to turn on (this is the function of the will!) all the available (accumulated and educated!) spiritual forces in the required situation, super-effort, without which victory is most often impossible today and which provides a decisive advantage for one athlete over another.