A Psychophysiological Assessment of Elite Wrestlers

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Abstract
The purpose of the present study was to replicate the use of a psychophysiological model in the assessment of variables that influence elite wrestling success. The subjects were 15 males participating in the 1979 United States Junior World Wrestling Camp. Athletic performance in the camp determined whether a wrestler qualified or did not qualify for the touring United States team. Several psychological tests were administered to subjects over a three-day interval. Subjects were also evaluated on anthropometric and physiological variables. Descriptive data analysis indicated that physiologically the average qualifier was: marginally lower in grip strength, lower in relative dynamic anaerobic muscular endurance, more aerobically fit, and slightly higher in percentage of body fat as compared to the average nonqualifier. Psychologically, the average qualifier was higher in state anxiety and tension but less depressed, angry, vigorous, fatigued, and confused than the nonqualifiers. Multivariate analysis of variance indicated that the group centroids differed significantly on the selected psychophysiological variables considered in this study. Discriminant function analyses of the data supported the psychophysiological model as the most accurate in predicting group membership. The variables anger, tension, total grip strength, dynamic muscular endurance, relative muscular endurance, and VE BTPS were found to be the factors that most accurately discriminated qualifiers from nonqualifiers. These variables had a canonical correlation of .89 and using these six variables it was possible to classify the wrestlers to their appropriate groups with 93.3% accuracy. A revised model including factors such as psychomotor skill, memory, balance, and additional psychophysiological measures is suggested.