Abstract

Self-regulation of performance related state in practices and competitions is one of the most important psychological skills enhancing consistent excellency in competitive sports. This skill is based on an athlete's awareness of own subjective experiences, for instance, individually optimal and dysfunctional patterns of emotional and motivational states prior to, during, and post-performance. In order to enhance such self-awareness a reliable and valid assessment and monitoring of task-relevant and individual-relevant subjective experiences are instrumental. However, standardised self-report measures, developed outside sports setting to assess discrete emotions (such as anxiety, anger, or joy) and global affect (pleasant-unpleasant emotions), are only partially useful in sport. First, they are not focused on performance enhancement and therefore do not tap functionally relevant emotion and motivation content. Second, they are rather problem-oriented than emphasise individual strengths and growth. Third, standardised measures imply that what is assessed has the same meaning for all participants. Finally, it is well known that effectiveness of almost all interventions and self-regulation procedures in education, psychotherapy, and sport depend on their individual focus and context specificity. Recently, to address this concern, an individualised approach based on theory-driven and person-oriented assessments was proposed for assessment of idiosyncratic subjective experiences related to successful and poor performances. Individualised profiling was used in different sports (including skiing) and now it is extended to emotion-motivational states. The purpose of this paper is to review conceptual, methodological, and applied issues in sport-specific individualised profiling of situational emotions and motivations with elite skiers. Additionally, practical implications of the proposed individualised assessment program for enhancing performance, learning (correcting) technique, and recovery in skiing will be suggested. Einleitung