Abstract

In team sports, athletes' psychological resilience can influence teammates through a "psychological contagion" mechanism, which has significant effects on enhancing cooperation between athletes and improving overall team performance. The traditional training method is primarily used to enhance the psychological resilience of team sports athletes, which neglects the individual needs of athletes in favour of the team's collaborative capabilities. This has resulted in some team athletes failing to improve their psychological resilience effectively, and may even have counterproductive effects on certain athletes. Therefore, exploring training methods that can effectively enhance the psychological resilience of team sports athletes is a critical research gap. This study employed a cluster randomised controlled trial (CRCT) design to investigate the effects of virtual reality training (VRT) on psychological resilience among Chinese professional basketball players. Participants from the Shandong Basketball Management Centre were recruited and randomly assigned to either the experimental group (VRTG) or the control group (CTG, traditional training), with an additional two weeks of intervention. The psychological resilience level was evaluated before and after the intervention. The results indicated that two weeks of virtual reality training can significantly improve the psychological resilience of professional basketball players. The findings of this study provide support for the notion that virtual reality training can substantially enhance psychological resilience among professional basketball players.