ABSTRACT
In a high level table tennis competition, many factors could influence the player’s performance these factors may be technical, tactical, physical or psychological. The player must control these factors according to the different and specific situations that he/she will face when competing. Critical situations are those which may lead to an increase in psychic stress; at these moments, the player must be able to regulate his/her own behaviour, aiming at mantaining a good level of performance. In the process of self-regulation, the athlete tries to influence his/her own psychic state according to his/her specific performance needs (Samulski, 1992). Nitsch and Hackfort (1979) described “naive” techniques of psychicregulation as those developed and applied by the athletes through self-experience. The naive techniques could be environmentally and personally oriented; those techniques when personally oriented are divided into two different categoriesmotor techniques (psychic modification through motor behaviour) and cognitive techniques (psychic modification through a new evaluation of the condition of the problem). These critical situations in table tennis were investigated by Krohne and Hindel (1992), Straub and Hindel (1993) and Hindel (1989) who have identified the techniques that players used to overcome the psychic stress of such situations. The ratio of success in technique in overcoming each critical situation was analysed from the result of the immediate point after each critical situation. It was further used to verify the efficacy of the coping techniques used by the athletes. The present study aimed to investigate the most important critical situations in high level table tennis competitions. It also intended to analyse the self-regulation techniques applied by the athletes, and identify which techniques were more effective in these situations through the result of the immediate two points after each situation. We consider that the performance of the athlete at these points was influenced by the self-regulation techniques applied after the critical situations in a similar way to Hindel (1989) cited above.
