Abstract
Self-talk, which has attracted more attention lately, is an effective psychological instrument used alongside physical training in sports. Hence, the purpose of this study was to explore the relationships between motivation and performance, focusing primarily on the mediating role of self-talk. In this study, which included 325 athletes from Boxing, Muay Thai, Kickboxing, Wushu, and Taekwondo branches, three scales were used to collect data. To measure self-talk, The Self-Talk Questionnaire (S-TQ) developed by Zervas, Stavrou, and Psychountaki (2007), to measure motivation, The Sports Motivation Scale-II (SMS-II) developed by Pelletier et al. (2013) were used. The performance scale for athletes was specifically developed in this study and labeled as Athlete Performance Scale for Combat Sports (APS-CS) (see Appendix). The results of the study indicated statistically significant relationships among motivation, self-talk, and performance. More specifically, motivation was found to have a significant positive relationship with self-talk and performance. Self-talk, on the other hand, had a significant positive relationship with performance and partially mediated the relationship between motivation and performance.