© The Authors, published by EDP Sciences, 2020

1 Introduction

The achievement of high sports results in modern hockey is determined by a high level of hockey players’ integral readiness. It provides for an organic unity and an optimal ratio of physical, technical, tactical, psychological and theoretical readiness. This ensures a high level of sportsmanship and successful performance in international ice hockey competitions.

A lot of things in the training of hockey players depend on their mental state, on their psychological mood to win. Responsible and highly motivated activity is always concerned about these athletes. The excitement degree for success determines the mental state of an athlete before going to the start. Even world-class athletes can not relieve excessive nervous tension on the start.

2 Materials and Methods

Objective: to analyze the theoretical training level and mental conditioning of goalkeepers in CHL hockey teams.

Object of research: theoretical training and mental conditioning in hockey.

Subject of research: theoretical training and mental conditioning of goalkeepers in hockey teams of the WHL and CHL.

Research tasks:

1. Study special educational and scientific literature.

2. Determine the main directions of hockey goalkeepers mental conditioning and theoretical training.

3. Analyze the effectiveness of the goalkeeper’s playing activity in the WHL and CHL teams. Methods of research:

   1. Review of special educational and scientific literature.

   2. Sociological survey (conversation).

   3. Comparative analysis of goalkeepers training and competitive activities in the WHL and CHL teams.

   4. Mathematical processing of research data.

Theoretical training equips the coach and athlete with the necessary knowledge and has a deep educational impact. All aspects of an athlete’s training (theoretical, physical, technical, tactical, and psychological) are interrelated, affect each other and cannot exist in isolation. [2]

The mental conditioning in the development of physical qualities of WHL and CHL teams’ hockey players is very important. The mentally conditioned, purposeful, acting without tension hockey player plays well and creates the right psychological mood for the whole team.

The most important condition of skill is the athlete’s character. An irritable person who can neither calm himself nor encourage others will always be an alarmist in the team. He is capable to let the team down at any time. Discipline, self-control ability should be in the blood of an athlete. You must refrain from criticizing your teammates during the game. If the team atmosphere is more friendly, the game is more consistent.

3 Results and Discussion

Diagnostics and regulation of mental states is the most promising direction in sports psychology. It allows to state unfavorable moments in the mental conditioning of hockey players, successfully eliminate them, compensate for individual shortcomings, increase the mental readiness of each player and team for a separate training session or match, and for the season as a whole.

During the game, hockey players perform numerous jerks, accelerations, stops, brakes, throws, lead power martial arts, etc. Only those hockey players who have well-developed muscle strength can perform these actions effectively. In order to develop strength, it is necessary to achieve significant muscle tension. This can be achieved as a result of strong-willed efforts.

Special physical training provides both a comprehensive and selective impact on the special physical qualities and abilities of hockey players.

Both parts of physical training are interrelated and complement each other in the training process. Physical training is closely related to mental conditioning. The exercises aimed at developing various types of endurance, educate the moral and strong-willed qualities of hockey players: the ability to perform work in conditions of increasing exhaustion.

A hockey player must do everything quickly: start and run on skates, slow down and maneuver, take the opponent away, lead, pass and receive, throw the puck into the goal, stop the opponent with power techniques, or evade power combat. He must react quickly to the actions of opponents and partners, quickly assess the game situation, instantly make a tactical decision and immediately implement it.

Thus, the effectiveness of training and competitive activities in modern hockey is largely determined by the level of athletes’ endurance development.

A hockey player’s endurance is the ability to effectively perform playing and training activities without fatigue and to resist it when it may occur. Endurance is a physical quality. Its level of development depends on the functional capabilities of many organs and systems in hockey player’s body. The main ones are: The central nervous system, cardiovascular, respiratory, endocrine, thermoregulatory and neuromuscular systems.

The manifestation of endurance depends on the level of other motor qualities, technical and tactical skills, strongwilled abilities of the athlete, his psychological stability and the stability of his body to adverse conditions of the internal environment. Endurance is specific and in each specific type of muscle work depends on a certain group of factors, primarily simulating performance. That’s why there are different types of endurance: general, special, speed, speed-power and others.

Domestic specialists in sports psychology include the following techniques in the complex methodology on athletes’ mental conditioning: conversations with players; inspired rest; auto-training; self-suggestion, self-persuasion.

Psychological and pedagogical effects of an educational nature may include the following components:

• optimization of the sports motivation forming process,

• formation of the athlete’s confidence in their abilities.

If you have achieved a good result and managed to get a really ideal player-master, you need to create a “trigger” for entering this state. To do this, at the peak of the experience caused by the flight of imagination, it is necessary to make a gesture (for example, slightly squeeze the fingers of the right hand with the thumb or index finger of the left hand). In the future, it will be enough to perform this gesture to trigger the desired state. For professional hockey players, this gesture is often associated with “signature moves”. To get a stable result from psychological training, you need constant, systematic training.

The described method is based on the use of ideomotor training. Scientific research has proved that the ideomotor method can significantly increase “muscle endurance”, athletic performance and help maintain the technique of complex exercises after a break in training. The methods of special psychological training are highly relevant for hockey.

Starting to learn a new element of the technique, you need to imagine its performance in slow motion. This will allow you to represent all the subtleties of the studied movement and filter out possible errors in time.

Risk factors that can lead to annoying breakdowns and failures in major competitions, for which intense and generally rational training was conducted, can be reduced to two groups. The first category includes mistakes and irrational decisions related to the final part of the training process (the last 2-3 weeks) of direct training for the main competitions, the narrowing phase in other words [3].

This group of factors includes:

• insufficient or excessive amount of training work;

• irrational load dynamics;

• irrational orientation of the training process;

• the inclusion of formal, selective or monitoring competition;

• neglect or poor planning of recovery facilities;

• diets that are disconnected from the specifics of the sport, the tasks and features of the training process, and the individual capabilities of the athlete;

• insufficient or ineffective psychological and technical tactical training in relation to specific competitions;

• irrational pre-start training (ineffective warm-up, behavior between starts, etc.). [14]

The second group of risk factors is mainly associated with external influences that can negatively affect sports performance. Their study, for example, by Norwegian specialists, developed recommendations for the Norwegian national team training for the Olympic games and the winter Olympic games 2006-2018. It allowed to identify many risk factors, which were reduced to five groups:

• climatic, geographical and weather conditions, problems associated with moving, living conditions, places of competition, etc.;

• health conditions, diseases, injuries, poor nutrition, accident;

• psychological factors associated with setting overly ambitious goals;

• the relationship in the team;

• relations with the media. [8]

4 Conclusions

The analysis of the literature confirmed the following thesis of sports training. The achievement of high sports results in modern hockey is determined by a high level of hockey players’ integral readiness. It provides an organic unity and an optimal ratio of physical, technical, tactical, psychological and theoretical readiness. Besides, it ensures a high level of sportsmanship and successful performance in international ice hockey competitions.

Introspection of goalkeepers ’ playing activity over 4 years of the NHL, WHL and CHL shows that the psychological stability of a hockey goalie depends on his playing practice, the growth of his sports skill.

References