I. YAKOVLEV CHUVASH STATE PEDAGOGICAL UNIVERSITY BULLETIN

will power, courage, teenagers, sambo, doing no sports, scale of assessment.

This article discusses the current approaches to understanding will, discusses the psychological characteristics of sports activities, external distractions and psychological difficulties. Overcoming obstacles and difficulties in sports is seen as a psychological tool for the development of a strong-willed personality. The paper provides the results of the pilot study of development will power by doing sports. The study involved two groups of adolescents aged 13–14 years: 15 participants who had been systematically doing sambo for at least two years, and 17 participants who did not do any sports. The comparative analysis of the development of will power was conducted on the basis of the authors’ scale of assessment. The authors found out that the teenagers doing sambo have a higher level of self-esteem, will power, and courage. It is shown that the development of motivation and manifestation of will power cannot be provided by the traditional approaches to psychological training of teenagers when doing sambo. This task involves the development of innovative means and methods of general psychological training.