The Effects of Mental Imagery and Cardiac Coherence on Mental Skills of Tunisian Karate Players at School Age

Sabeur Hamrouni¹, Jaouad Alem², Sylvain Baert³, Ines Bouguerra⁴

¹High Institute of Sport and Physical Education of Tunis, University of Manouba, Manouba, Tunisia.
²Physical Education School, Laurentian University, Greater Sudbury, Canada.
³University of Health and Law, Lille, France.
⁴High Institute of Sport and Physical Education of Sfax, University of Sfax, Sfax, Tunisia.

DOI: 10.4236/ape.2015.52014                

Abstract

The aim of our research consisted in checking the influence of the mental coaching using the mental imagery and relaxation based on cardiac coherence, on the improvement of the cognitive, emotional and behavioural reactions of the Tunisian karate Elite at school age. Our study was about to check if the Tunisian karate Elite at school age who had undergone a mental coaching has a better mental profile than their counterparts of other sporting disciplines and karate players with usual training method. Our sample consisted on an experimental group (N = 24 athletes) and control group (N = 22 athletes), all aged from 16 to 19 years. The experimental group followed for 10 months a psychological and mental coaching. The control group continued to train normally for the same period of time. To assess the mental skills of the participants, we used the OMSAT-3 (Guelmami et al., 2014). Our study showed that a 10 month mental coaching was needed to improve 4 mental skills, i.e. “goal setting” “relaxation”, “imagery” and “mental practices”. Our findings sustained the importance of a three-dimensional mental coaching in relation to one basic skill (goal setting), a psychosomatic skill (relaxation) and two cognitive skills (imagery and mental practice).

Keywords

Mental Skills, Mental Coaching, Karate, School Age, OMSAT-3

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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