SPORT PSYCHOLOGY AND BRAZILIAN JIU JITSU: ANALYSIS OF THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CONTEXT IN ITALY AND WORK PROSPECTS WITH ATHLETES

The research aims to understand the motivational levers that drive an athlete to pursue a very demanding sport like Brazilian Jiu Jitsu for many years and what keeps alive the desire and determination in athletes practicing a combat sport which, before becoming truly effective in fighting, require a great sacrifice, not only physical but also emotional. It is often underestimated, in fact, that, in Brazilian jiu jitsu, the emotional impact can be significant, and it is fundamental to learn how to manage not only the frustration over a poorly executed technique but also the pain and the effort of resisting, minute after minute, the physical attacks of the opponent. Those elements are even more interesting and relevant if we consider that, during training sessions, athletes train indiscriminately with people with different weights, different sexes, and different abilities. Besides the concept of motivation, two other mental skills are investigated within the research: emotional intelligence and resilience, which are fundamental in sports practice and particularly in combat sports. This research uses questionnaires already validated on the Italian population: the Sport Motivation Scale-28 (Pelletier et al., 1995), the Resilience Scale-10 (Wagnild & Young, 1993), and the Brief Emotional Intelligence Scale-10 (Davies et al., 2010).