Motives for sports in connection with the locus of control of athletes in team and individual sports

The paper deals with the specifics of motivation and personal characteristics of adolescent and youth athletes in individual and team. The study engaged 80 students of "Ulyanovsk school (technical school) of the Olympic reserve" aged 16 to 20 years. The authors carried out a comparative analysis of the motives for going in for sports and the characteristics of internality in the field of achievements and failures, interpersonal, industrial and family relations, as well as attitude to their health among athletes in team and individual sports. The most striking differences were obtained in the group of social motives — social self-assertion, social-emotional and socio-moral motives. Particular attention is paid to the relationship between the types of motives and the characteristics of internality, which have shown their specificity in athletes of individual and team sports. Based on the study of the theoretical aspects of the motives for going in for sports and the locus of control, as well as the conducted empirical research, recommendations were formulated that allow you working more effectively with individual athletes and find common goals that contribute to team building, for productive training activities and the development of sports achievements.