Psicología en deporte universitario: estudio de carga mental y habilidades psicológicas en deporte de alto rendimiento

The present investigation has the purpose to expose the levels of mental load andof different psychological abilities related to the athletic performance in athletes of highperformance of the Icesi University of Santiago de Cali (Colombia). A non-experimentalcross-sectional investigation was carried out in which the NASA-TLX and CPRDquestionnaires were applied to 39 athletes (24 men and 15 women), between the ages of 18and 24 years old. The results of the NASA-TLX gave evidence of a high level of mentalload in the subjects, which suggests that the academic as well as the sporting demand of theuniversity is taking the university athletes to dangerous levels of mental effort. On the otherhand, the scores obtained after the application of CPRD show that there is evidence ofsignificant differences in motivation between individual and joint sports, which may havecause in the ways in which athletes relate to each other. These results suggest the relevanceof the participation of psychology in the sports environment to achieve an integral training,in which those differences are considered and thus build an optimal environment for goodpersonal, emotional and, clearly, sports development.