Social and psychological conditions of pain in martial arts

Beneficial influence of physical activity on our body is undeniable, but it should be remembered that physical activity is accompanied by the feeling of pain. No matter which sport we analyse, most sportsmen have felt pain (either short-term or long-term one). Sport is beneficial for the efficiency of the body, improves fitness and is a kind of healthy prevention method, but it can also cause the loss of health, disability and may cause feeling pain. Martial arts are often perceived as especially violent activities. Statistics show that due to physical workload such sports are preferred mostly by the young, strong men and the risk to have a face injury causes that they are more rarely chosen by women. Risk of injury, traumatism, need of physical endurance and strength as well as bravery are features which are often pointed out in description of martial arts sportsmen. Connections of martial arts with psychology and sociology are inevitable in research perspective. The notion connected with empirical tests and the methodology-interpretation level allowed for connection of psychology and sociology. Martial arts (martial sports) "require effort (...) result in big power of active creativity in action" [Cynarski 2009: 117], require physical and psychological strength. Practicing martial arts allows for symmetrical development "both in physical and in psychological sense (high moral level)" [Cynarski 2009: 118]. Many authors, as well as experts in medicine of martial arts, underline that practicing such sports "lets us harmoniously function psychologically, physically, within social, moral and spiritual values. Viewing this in such a way martial arts have significant advantage as they are the locators of harmonybuilding state in the body so they are improvement of health, also psychological one" [Cynarski 2009: 118]. Sporting incidents accompanied by the feeling of pain are placed in the structure of general and specific needs. Among them we find: the need to compete, need to win, need of high selfesteem, the need to feel important and many other. An important aspect here is the area of perceiving the ideal needs which in comparison with real needs are the reason why the dissonance of needs appears. Locating the pain experience in rich structure of needs of a sportsman shows some interesting mechanisms of mutual influence of pain on the needs and of the needs on pain. Pain as an experience of big discomfort and a very unpleasant one is connected with fear mechanism which can reach different level of intensity from slight fear to being very scared. Research on algological aspects in sports is aimed at emphasizing the process of perception, acquiring and dealing with difficult aspect of physical activity which is pain. Such notion was described with the use of tools constructed and applied in topic range of health psychology (MPQ-SF Short-Form McGill Pain Questionnaire by Ronald Melzack, PCS - The Pain Catastrophizing Scale, M. Sullivan, CSQ Coping Strategies Questionnaire, A. C. Rosenstieland F. J. Keefe, BPCQ Body Parts Concerns Questionnaire, S. Skevington, ACL Adjective Check List, Harrison G. Gough, A. B. Heilbrun).