Features of psychological protection of students of IHE who are engaged in swimming

The purpose of psychological protection is to maintain the integrity of the "self-concept" of the individual by protecting his consciousness from negative traumatic experiences, fear of failure, anxiety or uncertainty in their actions. The authors who studied this phenomenon in sports note that the psychological protection of the athlete - is a system of mechanisms and methods of mental self-regulation of consciousness and behavior of the individual in extreme mental conditions. Psychological defense mechanisms are manifested in students as a regulatory system that is activated in a situation of internal or external conflict. Based on it, students often show such a defense mechanism as substitution, regression, and compensation. Considering the manifestation of protective mechanisms in boys and girls, we obtained the following indicators: reactive formations (73% in girls and 51% in boys) and projection (73% in girls and 54% in boys) (p <0.05); in boys prevails: suppression (65% in boys and 45% in girls) and intellectualization (69% in boys and 56.1% in girls) (p <0.05). We found differences in the choice of the dominant mechanism of psychological protection by swimming students. The leading mechanism in the studied contingent is substitution, and the least preferred is suppression. The study identified the manifestation of the main mechanisms of psychological protection in students who swim and analyzed certain types of protection with a description of the specific features of the system of protective mechanisms and the level of their impact depending on gender differences.