[Purpose] The purpose of this study was to investigate the process of Jang Changsun’s winning gold medal in the 1966 Toledo World Amateur Wrestling Championship and its meaning. [Methods] Jang Changsun and Katsumura Yasuo who had competed with Jang Changsun for the gold medal were selected as participants, a player and an executive who had participated in the Championship were selected as informants. Data had been collected by in-depth interview were analyzed firstly by using the Patton(1991)’s data analysis method, and the following conclusions were obtained by comparing with preceding studies, press releases, reports etc. [Results] Jang Changsun won a gold medal through the three stages of desperate struggles. The first struggle was to loose weight. Jang Changsun lost three times more weight than other players through fasting treatment, intensive training and dehydration in order to secure an advantageous position in the competition. His second struggle was the sparring itself. He made his mind to win gold medal 2 years before the Championship and started to strengthen his physical fitness and polish up his techniques to fight with strong players from powerful nation of wrestling. He finished the sparring by winning 4 games and tieing 2 games resulting in the same deduction points with Katsumura. It was inevitable for him to fight desperately to lose weight again to get gold medal. He eventually won the gold medal by losing his weight until he fainted because of injuries and serious dehydration. [Conclusion] The first gold medalist Jang Changsun contributed a lot to development of Korean sports by offering chance to consider significance of improving elite player’s exercising environment, scientific coaching, gaining self-confidence to win medal, and realizing the importance of sports informations.
Values, such as development and social responsibilities, are added on victory-oriented Korean sport. Those change of values are along with discussions regarding improvement of players’ training environment, however, discussions on improvement of players’ training environment so far rather focused on ideological concepts, such as players’ holistic human development and human rights, therefore, there was a lack of discussion on practical training methods or teaching methods. This study focused on mental coaching as a specific method for improvement of players’ training environment. Mental coaching provides players with performance enhancement, personal growth, and self-actualization utilizing mental training, consulting, and mentoring in their training processes. This study examined a possibility of introduction of mental coaching as a training camp method for players by creating a training camp reflected on mental coaching perspectives and verifying the program effects of application. First of all, a mental coaching training camp was created through consultations with mental coaches, supervisors, and coaches. Goals of the mental coaching training camp were development of competition-routines, establishment of competition-circumstance coping strategies, comprehension of elite-players’ psychological resources, goal-setting, and motivation and the program consist of badminton competitions, mental education, a special lecture by an Olympic gold medalist, tracking, and sharing. The mental coaching training camp proceeded with middle and highschool badminton players and 31 coaches during three-days and four-nights. As results, the training camp was effective for players’ performance enhancement, personal growth, and self-actualization and team coaches realized a necessity of improvement in terms of their training and teaching behaviors. In other words, mental coaching training camp played a role as a source of long-term change as well as short-term results, thus, this study verified that the mental coaching can be introduced as a training camp method. It is anticipated that this study can provide sport fields and academic sport areas with an opportunity to consider both training contents and methods when it comes to discussion players’ training environment development.
