Psychological and Physiological Fatigue and Coping Ways of the Swimming Athletes During Intensive Training

Introduction

The problems we meet during the intensive training are:

1. what index can be used to measure the psychological and physiological fatigue of the swimming athletes;
   
2. what coping ways the swimming athletes adapt when fatigue occurs;
3. is there any difference between coping ways of the male and female athletes. This paper aims to deal with above problems.

Methods         

The participants are 33 swimming athletes. The tools used are POMS and ten-item statement, basic  and the highest pulse rate, hemoglobin, urea nitrogen and serokinase and weekly assignment. A certain professional person performed tests with specific devices and agents. All data were processed with SPSS 10.0 and statistical methods were variance and paired-comparison test.

Results

The results of the six-week assignment and the POMS show feelings of nervousness, anger, fatigue and depression change with rise and fall of the weekly assignment. The results are 55.37±3.28/min for the average basic pulse rate ,178.67±10.18/min for the average highest pulse rate, 13.55±1.11g/l for the average hemogoblin, 18.80±5.44mg/dl for average urea  nitrogen and166.20±67.95 U/L for average serokinase.The results for the ten-item statement are as follows: 10.83 % (male for "M" later) and 13.11% (female) for physical fatigue of the feelings (F=2.27 P =0.16); 9.72 % (M for male) and 14.11%(F) for mental fatigue (F= 7.05 P= 0.02*); 1.57%(M) and 3.33%(F) for self-reproach of coping (F=5.26P=0.04); 8.61%(M) and 4.33%(F) for venting  (F=13.50 P=0.00*); 24.26%(M) and 24.67%((F) for avoidance (F=0.03 P=0.86); 22.13%(M) and 10.67%(F) for self-encouragement (F=57.40 P=0.00*); 3.89%(M) and 5.00%(F) for seeking support (F=1.19 P=0.30); 12.50%(M) and 10.00%(F) for distraction (F=3.43 P=0.09); 1.94% (male) and 3.33%(female) for illusion (F=1.74 P=0.21) and 6.67% (M) and 2.33%(F) for seeking solution (F=29.59 P=0.00*).

Discussion/ Conclusions

Six-week intensive training has great effect on moods of the athletes and intrigues great changes in the heart and lung, muscular and metabolic systems. Facing psychological and physiological fatigue, the male athletes tend to adapt the coping ways of self-encouragement, attention distracting and finding solutions while female ones tend to adapt self-reproach, venting. seeking support and illusion.