How does an athlete relax properly before an important performance? The psychotechnical game "The magic wand"

Psychotechnical games and exercises.

Play, as part of a child's healthy development, helps them loosen up and gradually deal with difficulties that seem insurmountable to them at the time (playing at competing, for example). Using psychotechnical games and exercises appropriate to the athletes' age satisfies their need to play and, at the same time, serves to activate and develop the relevant mental functions, to adjust their psychological state, and to build and maintain relationships within the group — while also being a means of pursuing a dual career.

"Psychotechnical games" sounds like "games not to be taken seriously", and points to a limited application — "in sport"; while "self-regulation" suggests the familiar, permitted forms — a kind of psychotherapy with a muzzle on.)

In fact these exercises were devised, tested, applied and described in a variety of settings: in psychotherapy with neurotic patients, in work with elite athletes, in personal growth groups — everywhere a good psychologist's foot could tread, and everywhere it was then thought it could not.

The book "PSYCHOTRAINING: GAMES AND EXERCISES" (by Nikolai Tszen and Yuri Pakhomov), on which this article is based, is full of episodes of practice, of the joy and discovery of meeting what is human in yourself, of a growing interest in our capacity simply to be — alone with ourselves and together with others.

Why play psychotechnical games with athletes?

Every coach feels the need to lift a young athlete after a poor performance, or to help them handle the nerves before a start, or to say something bracingly sharp that lets the athlete pull themselves together. Over long months and years of intensive work together, a coach inevitably finds an approach to each athlete. Day after day, working against the resistance of the "human material", the coach becomes more perceptive and wiser. He comes to know his students' minds and characters in fine detail. He knows who to say what to, and when. To get inside each of their inner lives he acquires a whole set of psychological keys and lockpicks.

In most cases the coach solves all the practical questions usually assigned to psychology perfectly well himself. He solves them better than a psychologist with a diploma would. But a coach's intuition and experience are not all-powerful. And not every coach can boast of them. So alongside a masterly command of practical psychology, coaching also shows us the exact opposite.

Psychotechnical games and exercises are a universal psychological tool for a coach working with athletes of primary school, adolescent and youth age, because:

1. Applied systematically, they can develop the core cognitive processes, the ability to self-regulate unhelpful mental states, and the building, maintenance and repair of relationships within a team or training group.
2. They can reduce the subjective sense of fatigue and build and sustain athletes' motivation.

The game "The magic wand", for relaxing before a competition:

How it works:

1. The group splits into pairs.
2. One of them sits in a position comfortable for relaxing, leaving their eyes slightly open.
3. The other takes the "magic wand" (a pen, a pencil or similar) and brings its tip to the fingers of the seated partner's hand. Note also the relaxation of the facial muscles.
4. The facilitator explains that as the magic wand approaches, the participant should feel the stream of relaxation it radiates. This illusion usually arises quite easily.
5. Then the holder of the magic wand begins moving it slowly along their partner's arm. The person being relaxed should follow closely how the softening wave passes along behind the miraculous object. If the pace set by the wand's holder runs ahead of the sensations, the person being relaxed asks their partner to slow down or pause.
6. Having produced clear sensations in the arms, the "magician" moves the relaxation along the partner's torso, and then down to the legs

Strange as it seems, the wand really does turn out to be a miraculous instrument of relaxation. With it, almost every member of the group relaxes faster and more deeply.

Many of them say that working with a partner makes the advancing front of relaxation more clearly defined and lets it reach areas previously beyond them; some even feel as though the point of relaxation appears near the remarkable object and travels along with it of its own accord, without any inner effort on their part*

In the discussion it sometimes emerges that some of the "magicians" tried to help their partner internally during the exercise — picturing them relaxing, moving their own relaxation into the wand by an effort of will and so on. The success of the person relaxing, however, depends very little on whether their partner was empathising or simply moving the wand mechanically.

• In discussing "The magic wand" it matters that the facilitator brings the participants to a clear understanding that the jump in the depth and speed of relaxation was created not by their partner and not by the magic wand but by themselves.

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