Influence of mental energy on volleyball competition performance: a field test

Shiow-Fang Shieh; Frank J H Lu; Diane L Gill; Chih-Hsuan Yu; Shu-Ping Tseng; Meisam Savardelavar

doi:10.7717/peerj.15109

Influence of mental energy on volleyball competition performance: a field test

PeerJ. 2023 Mar 24:11:e15109. doi: 10.7717/peerj.15109. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Shiow-Fang Shieh¹, Frank J H Lu², Diane L Gill³, Chih-Hsuan Yu², Shu-Ping Tseng⁴, Meisam Savardelavar⁵

Affiliations

¹ Graduate School of Leisure and Exercise, National Yunlin University of Science and Technology, Yunlin, Taiwan.
² Graduate Institute of Sport Coaching Science, Chinese Culture University, Taipei, Taiwan.
³ Kinesiology, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, NC, United States of America.
⁴ Tainan University of Technology, Tainan University of Technology, Tainan, Taiwan.
⁵ Department of Sport Sciences, Zand Institute of Higher Education, Shiraz, Iran.

Abstract

Athletic mental energy is a newly emerging research topic in sport science. However, whether it can predict objective performance in competition remains unexplored. Thus, the purpose of this study was to examine the predictability of mental energy on volleyball competition performance. We recruited 81 male volleyball players (Mage = 21.11 years ± SD = 1.81) who participated in the last 16 remaining teams in a college volleyball tournament. We assessed participants' mental energy the night before the competition and collected their competition performance over the next 3 days. We used six indices of the Volleyball Information System (VIS) developed by the International Volleyball Federation (FIVB) to examine its associations with mental energy. All six factors of mental energy -motivation, tirelessness, calm, vigor, confidence, and concentration correlated with volleyball competition performance. Further, a hierarchical regression found mental energy predicted volleyball receivers' performance (R² = .23). The findings advance our knowledge of mental energy and objective performance in competition. We suggest that future studies may examine the effects of mental energy on different sports with different performance indices.

Keywords: Peak performance; Concentration; Emotional state; Optimal state of mind; Psychology of sport excellence.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Humans
Male
Universities
Volleyball*

Grants and funding

This project is funded by the Ministry of Science and Technology, MOST, Taiwan (MOST 108-2410-H-034-042). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.