Descriptive Study toward Psychological Factors Affecting

Post-severely Injuried Athletes to Regain Peak Performance

Prima Aulia, Free Dirga Dwatra and Nur Hazizah

Department of Psychology, Faculty of Education, Universitas Negeri Padang, Indonesia

Keywords: Psychological Factors, Peak Performance.

Abstract: This research aims to find out the psychological factors that affect the athletes to regain their peak

performance after severe injuries. This research’s result could become one of references in severe injury

athlete’s treatment to repossess their peak performance. This study is expected could became the first research

that led to further research connecting psychological factors with other variables and for further period it is

expected that this study could be continued with advanced research by adding psychological intervention

based on prior finding. The determined subject's criteria in this study are athletes who are encountering or

have encountered severe injury since severe injury requires more than a month for recovery. Data collection's

method that is been utilized is open questionnaire regarding the theme. Data analysis in this research is factor

analysis. The factor analysis is utilized to reveal psychological factors emerging in its impact toward the post-

severely injured athletes to regain peak performance. After conducting factor analysis, it found that

psychological factors affecting the athletes returning to their peak performance after encountering severe

injury are self-confident factors, training seriousness factor, following the trainer's advice factor, place/time

disoriented factor, and focus factor.

1 INTRODUCTION

Injury is one of many things that is frightened by

athletes, in sport the athletes are demanded to reach

achievement whether it is in region, national, or even

international level competitions, so injury is barely

unavoidable things. Garrison (2001) there are two

main predictors causing injury which are: (a) Internal

factors is covering the tissue infirmity, flexibility,

weight excessiveness, biomechanical error, lack of

adjustment, body size, performance capability, and

playing styles, (b) External factors is involving to:

inaccurate gear, other athletes, field surfaces,

weather.

Wibowo (1995) divided sport injuries as follows:

Light injury or level I, it is signed by a tear that only

can be seen beneath the microscope, with minimum

plaint and cannot barely interfere sportsman’s

performance such as, scuffed, bruise, light sprain.

Moderate injury or level II, it is signed by noticeable

tissue damage, painful, swollen, red-shaded and

heated, with real function disorder and could affect

athlete’s performance, for examples: muscle

widening and ligament tear. Severe injury or level III,

in this case, the muscle is completely teared, ligament

and fracture on the bones, which requires total rest,

intensive treatment, or even surgery. Those things

were also being strengthened by sport injury bulletin

report (2010) regarding injury classification in USA

that accounted 60,15% light injury that led to athlete’s

absence throughout a week, 26,17% for moderate

injury that caused to athlete’s absence throughout a

month, and 13,67% severe injury that obliged the

athlete to rest throughout more than a month. Those

numbers might be elevating increasingly due to

unregistered injured athletes, in the fact that there are

many injured athlete who are not being monitored.

All this time, injury treatment is only being more

focused to physical treatment whether through

physiotherapist or expert doctor, yet psychological

aspects are often being forgotten, and it affect to the

increasing amount of athletes who is not be able to

regain their peak performance after the injury. This

issue is similar to Ricardo Kaka's case where he was

the best football player in the world in 2007, after

experienced injury he was never be able to return to

his peak performance anymore, and in fact that he is

been knock out of his club (Gonsaka, 2007). The

same case was also experienced by Eduardo da Silva,

when he still played for Arsenal. Eduardo was

Aulia, P., Dwatra, F. and Hazizah, N.

Descriptive Study toward Psychological Factors Affecting Post-severely Injuried Athletes to Regain Peak Performance.

DOI: 10.5220/0011095000003368

In Proceedings of the International Conference of Mental Health (Icometh 2021), pages 50-53

ISBN: 978-989-758-586-9

encountered fibula fractures that caused to his

absence for recovery rest for a year. After recovered

from the injury, Eduardo’s performance was never be

as same as he played in his top performance (Pradana,

2018).

There are many athletes who cannot return to their

peak performance, however there are still some of

them who are still be able to regain their peak

performances after encountering severe injury. As

experienced by Boaz Solossa although he

encountered injury twice which were in 2004 and

2007, Boaz could still rose up and still became an ace

for Persipura and national team of Indonesia (Adnan,

2014). As same as, it is experienced by Sony Dwi

Kuncoro a Badminton’s athlete who possessed

bronze medal in Olympic 2004 and third player best

world ranking, who experienced setback of

achievement after encountered severe injury, and

even he was being taken out form 100 world best

ranking when he made his comeback after injury

recovery. Sony’s accomplishment only start to

improve when he was being trained and managed by

his wife. According to his wife there is no particular

formula for Sony’s improvement, it is just make him

enjoyed the game and training (Fajriningtyas, 2016).

2 THEORETICAL REVIEW

Based on those issues, researcher want to conduct

research with title “Descriptive Study toward

Psychological Factors Affecting Post-Severely

Injured Athletes to Regain Peak Performance”.

Before explaining the psychological factors, the

definition of psychological is originated from the

word of psychology which means behavior and

mental process, where behavior is anentity that able

to be observed and mental process encompasses

cognition, affection, and motivation (King, 2011).

Based on that definition, it can be concluded that

psychological factor is a factor that originate from

individual either it is observable which is behavior or

mental process such as cognition, affection, and

motivation.

The definition of sport’s injuries are all form of

injuries that occur either during the match or training

(National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal

and Skin Diseases, 2014). Semi- different definition

was explained by Congeni (2004, et.al Sukarmin &

Sumaryabti 2017) that sports injury is an injury that

occur at the time when somebody is committing an

activity such as fitness, training or sport’s

competition.

Wibowo (1995) classified sport’s injuries as

follows: Light injury or level I, it is signed by a tear

which only can be seen beneath the microscope, with

minimum plaint and cannot barely interfere

sportsman’s performance, for instance scuffed,

bruise, light sprain. Moderate injury or level II, it is

signed by noticeable tissue damage, painful, swollen,

red-shaded and heated, with real function disorder

and could affect to athlete’s performances, for

examples: muscle widening and ligament tear. Severe

injury or level III, in this case, the muscle is

completely teared, ligament and fracture on the

bones, which requires total rest, intensive treatment,

or even surgery.

Maslow (1968) introduced the peak

performance’s concept to illustrate when an

individual experienced a truly total feeling, core

strength, and as a whole has reached the highest stage

in the hierarchy of needs. Williams (1998) clarified

that peak performance is an exceptional drive when

an athlete be able to perform his skills maximally

either it is physical or mental. Then, Privette (1981, at

Cowen, Nesti, & Cheetham, 2015) defined peak

performance as a behavior that exceed what can be

done in normal situation.

Based on several expert’s explanation above, it

can be deduced that peak performance is an ambiance

of individual who feel the highest feeling, and he or

she is able to express his or her abilities maximally

either it is physic or mental.

3 METHODS

Research design that utilize in this research is

Descriptive research design. Azwar (2003) explained

that “descriptive research is a research purposing to

describe systematically and accurately the facts and

characteristic regarding population or a certain field.”

Population in this research are all athletes in West

Sumatera who establish in West Sumatera’s PPLP

which account 137 athletes. Purposive sampling

technique is the sampling method in this study, which

is drawing sample based on specific criteria that has

been arranged by researcher (Sugiyono, 2013). The

appointed criteria in this research are an experienced

severe injured athletes and he or she was able to

regain his or her peak performance. Based on

purposive sampling technique, it was gathered 78

samples successfully.

In this study, the utilized data collection’s

technique is psychology scale consisting

psychological factors that affect the athletes to return

to peak performance after severe injury. The

Descriptive Study toward Psychological Factors Affecting Post-severely Injuried Athletes to Regain Peak Performance

psychology scale is a list of questions that reveal

psychological attributes using behavior’s indicators

to trigger projective response and it is a projection of

individual’s personalities (Azwar, 2005).

The method that is used for data’s analyzing in

this research is descriptive statistical method.

Collected data are added or grouped according to

the form of utilized instrument (Arikunto, 2002). The

classification of data regarding psychological factors

in its influences toward athlete in order to return to

their peak performance is using factor analysis.

4 RESULT AND DISCUSSION

4.1 Result

This study aims to investigate what psychological

factors are affecting an athlete who could repossess

his or her peak performance. In order to find those

factors, it is been done factor analysis method. In term

of conducting factor analysis the phases that require

to be carried out include:

KMO’s test and Bartlett’s Test of Sphericity.

KMO and Bartlett's Test

Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of

Sampling Adequacy. .649

Bartlett's

Test of Sphericity Approx. Chi-

Square 588.

815

Df 276

Sig. .000

In KMO’s Tes table, it can be seen that KMO’s

score is 0,649 > 0,5 and the significance of Bartlett’s

Test of Sphericity has shown 0,00 standard, so it can

be continued to implement factor analysis.

Measure of Sampling Adequacy (MSA)’s Test

The MSA test purpose to find out which variables

are processable further way or being eliminated.

Based on the first MSA test, it was obtained 5 items

that possessed score< 0.5 so those 5 items had to

eliminate. After that, MSA test was conducted again

so it was found 1 another item that possessed <0,5

score, so that items had to excluded. After excluding

those 6 items, the MSA test was performed again and

it comes to result that all of the items had >0,5 scores,

so it was eligible to continue to the next analysis.

When all the variables had exceeding 0.5 score then

the next analysis is PCA test.

The outcome of the PCA test is shown by Eigen

score. The Eigen score exhibit the amount of variation

that relate to a certain factor. The factor that has Eigen

score equal or more than 1 will be held and the factor

that has Eigen score less than 1 will be not be included

in the model due to variable whose score is less than

1 is not better than the original variable (Supranto

2004).

Post conducting the PCA test, the variable in this

study was formed into 5 factors. In the Scree Plot

graphic, it is noticeable that the Eigen score was being

arranged through horizontal way. The amount of

factors in this criteria was determined based on the

reduction of the plot of Eigen scores. When the Scree

begins to level off or evenly distribute, and Eigen

scores is shown as above 1, this is where there is a

point of the termination of factor’s number extraction.

4.2 Discussion

Post-performed all of the phases from every factor

analysis, the following phase is naming the variables

that have been grouped. The naming process is

depend on the variables who formed it so this naming

process was done subjectively and there are no certain

regulations toward the process.

At the first place, this research had 24 variables

then it was formed into 12 which include into the 5

factors. The 5 factors include:

Factor 1

This factor consists of NF 1 variable, which is “I

relax when I entered the field”, PD 1 variable is “I am

confident with my skill”, FR 1 is “I think the pre-

game pressure is usual thing”, SI 1 is “I would rather

think about winning the match than becoming

champion”, TK 1 is “Host Supporter’s intimidation

will not be able to affect me”, PD 2 is “I believe I can

beat my opponent”, ET 2 is “I did what my coach told

me to”. Form the seven variables that was formed, the

factor 1 is named as self-confident factor.

Factor 2

Factor 2 consists of FK 1 variable which is “I meet

all the schedules that have been regulated by coach”,

KE is “I have always rehears the technique that I am

poorly mastered”. Based on both variables that

formed, factor 2 is named as training seriousness

factor.

Factor 3

Factor 3 consists of FK 2 variables which is “I join

the championship because of coach’s advice”. Based

on this FK 2 variable, the factor 3 is named as the

factor of following the trainer's advice.

Icometh 2021 - International Conference of Mental Health

Factor 4

Factor 4 consists of DW 1 variable which is “I felt

time is so fast when I am trained”. Based on this DW

1 variable, factor 4 is named as the Flow factor.

Factor 5

Factor 5 consists of DW 4 variable which is

“spectator yelling is not been heard anymore when I

start competing”. Based on this DW 4 variable, factor

5 is named as the focus factor.

5 CONCLUSIONS

Based on data analysis that have been done about

factor analysis in psychological factors identification

who affect the athletes to regain peak performance

post severe injury, it earned result that influencing

psychological factors is consisted of self-confident

factor, factor of training seriousness, factor of

following trainer’s advice, time/place disoriented

factor, and focus factor.

Suggestion

Based on the result of analysis and the discussion,

this study discuss and conduct factor analysis by

using principal component method, which means that

there are other methods which are may applicable to

conduct analysis factors, so that it could become other

references in term of performing factor analysis with

same variables.

The studied variable is the factor that affect the

athletes to regain their peak performance post severe

injury, it is mean that this study discuss about sports

generally. In the future, this study could be more

focus toward one particular type of sport in term of

conducting research regarding peak performance, or

conducting correlational research about peak

performance, so that peak performance can be

discussed and investigate in more detail.

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Descriptive Study toward Psychological Factors Affecting Post-severely Injuried Athletes to Regain Peak Performance