THE PSYCHOLOGICAL PREPARATION OF A HIGH PERFORMANCE CHESSMAN (I). Mr Nicola Nigro
On the psychological preparation or training of chess athletes very little has been researched, discussed and methodologically designed. Rather, research on this complex and controversial topic is a challenge today for didactics and training professionals. Some so many prefer to ignore this item of methodological technical assembly and preferably concentrate on practical-theoretical issues.
However, Chess has been pointed out by specialists as a 90% psychological activity, which creates a paradox or contradiction within its natural and evolutionary essence. Therefore, it is a task of great importance for those who are trained in the arts of pedagogical and didactic teaching or high performance training (without detriment to its initiatory bases) to discuss in depth the issues of psychology applied to the technical training of the chess player.
In the ordering or periodization of the preparation loads of the athletes of any sport discipline, the methodical line of content is necessary, which will be disseminated in the training plans in a coherent way with basic sessions that can be increased according to the magnitude of the competition, lots of tests (preparatory and fundamental). Chess does not escape this and as a sport it needs these stages or periods finely delineated by specialists in the field, to provide the individual and the pedagogical environment as the best way to get away from improvisation and end that bad image of chess as a simple game table.
The preparation of a general chess training plan often deviates from the traditional, although it has basic and fundamental requirements in comparison with the technical methodological work plans of other sports disciplines, and the values of an intellectual, mental and spiritual nature are treated with great awareness of the demands it deserves. In the same way, in the field of biomechanics of the chess player, the contents that work on their neurophysiological conformation are of absolute observance.
A sports chess coach who does not know about the functioning of the brain and its actions linked to hormonal physiology, as well as the functioning of temperament and the formation of human character for individual and social situations, will not be able to diagram and perhaps demonstrate methodological strategies suitable for training or preparing chess athletes for live competition.
And because? Well, because a chess player is something more than a simple biomechanical machine supported by practical and theoretical studies. Beyond the mistaken vision of chess where little is accepted that an athlete can forge himself through a preparation cycle and within macrocyclic, mesocyclic and microcyclic periodization tables, his psychological reach will determine in a large percentage his achievements and competitive successes.
In the next installment I will comment on how to develop the basic structure of a training microcycle for a chess athlete
