Investigation of athletes motivational self-talk and mental toughness level

The purpose of this study was to investigate athletes and their motivational self-talk and mental toughness levels.208 females and 145 males, totally 353 athletes who continued their sport life, voluntarily participated in this study. Athletes, perform in individual sports on different branches (rhytmic gymnastic, artistic gymnastic, aerobik gymnastic, trampolin gymnastic, archery, swiming, wrestle, cycle) who participated in this study and their sport expriencesare (Mage.=5,39 + 3,54) years. To achieve the purpose of the study, self talk questionnaire was developed by Zervas, Stravrou and Psychountaki (2007) to reveal individual differences in terms of self talk's motivational and cognitive processes and it was adoped to Turkey by Engür (2011). Sport Mental Toughness Questionnaire-SMTQ-14was developed by Sherard, Golby ve and Wersch (2009) and adopted to Turkey by Altıntaş (2015).For solution and interpretation of the datas, descriptive statistical methods; for independent samples T-test, One Way Anova test were used. Analysis performed by using SPSS and research significance was acapted as P<0,05. As a result of this study, a statistically significant difference was found self talk and mental toughness levels in terms of gender, who particiaded in this study.In terms of their sport expriences and national team athletes variables were determined self talk levels not differ.At the same time,it was observed that while mental toughness levels not differ in terms of athletes sport expriences variables, mental toughness levels differ in terms of national team athlete variables. Keywords: Self-Talk, Mental Toughness, Sport, Athlete.