Investigation of the relationship between mindfulness and mental training skills and technical levels of athletes

The aim of this research is to examine the relationship between the mindfulness levels of athletes and their mental training skills and technical levels. A total of 548 students, 299 men and 249 women, studying at the Sports Sciences Faculties of universities in the Southeastern Anatolia region, participated voluntarily in the research. The research was designed in a relational screening model. Personal Information Form, Mental Training Inventory in Sports and Athlete Mindfulness Scale which is created by the researchers, were used as data collection tools within the scope of the research. In the analysis of the data, firstly, the skewness and kurtosis values were checked for the normality assumptions and it was determined that the distribution was normal. In this direction, t-test was used to compare two independent groups, One Way Anova test to compare more than two independent groups, Pearson correlation analysis to determine the relationships between variables, and multiple linear regression analysis to determine the power of independent variables in predicting the dependent variable. When the findings obtained within the scope of the research were examined, it was seen that mental training skills and technical components significantly predicted the level of mindfulness. In this context, it was concluded that as the level of mental training skills and techniques increases, the level of mindfulness will also increase. However, when the analyzes for demographic variables are examined within the scope of the research; It was determined that the variables of gender, sports branch, level of sportsmanship, year of doing sports and type of high school graduated were significantly different within the groups. As a result; In order to achieve the optimal range of sportive performance, it is recommended to include programs on mindfulness, mental training skills and techniques in the training of athletes.