Estados de ánimo pre y post competitivos en atletas chilenos universitarios de alto rendimiento

Abstract

The present study describes the behavior of mood states in high performance athletes belonging to a University team in the national championship. For this purpose, twenty-five athletes were surveyed using the “Profile of Mood States” (POMS) instrument, in their adapted version, before (pretest) and immediately after (post-test) competing in the national final of the University Sports Leagues of Chile. The test consisted of 51 adjectives, grouped into five big factors: tension, depression, anger, vigor and fatigue. In the pretest, the factors that presented a higher score on the scale of 0-4 were: vigor (2.59), tension (1.57), followed by fatigue (.99), anger (.43) and depression (.34). In the posttest: vigor (1.66) and fatigue (1.39), followed by anger (.66), tension (.64) and depression (.33). Significant differences were found (on the basis of the value p≤.05) in the pretest vs. post-test for tension and vigor, with higher values in both cases than in the pretest. In conclusion, the tension and vigor factors are higher before to the competition, decreasing after the competition. These results could help coaches and professionals in the athletes’ preparation for important competitions.