Background. The popularity of using virtual reality in various areas of life is growing steadily every year. The use of virtual reality in sports, including sports of the highest achievements, has both advantages and disadvantages that will be considered in this paper.

The Objective is to study main aspects of using virtual reality in sports, including the historical aspect of the method, the main current areas of using the method, the existing advantages and limitations of the method for using in sports practice, including sports of the highest achievements.

Results and conclusions of the study. It is shown using virtual reality technologies in sports has a whole range of advantages, including removing restrictions imposed by real sports: preventing sport injury; creating environmental conditions (weather, humidity, rivalry, etc.), lack of dependence on sport equipment, weather or location, and the ability to engage in hard-to-reach and expensive sports accordingly. However, there are a number of problems that make it difficult to use virtual reality in sports, in particular, using sport equipment and assessing skill transfer.

Psychological foundation is determined as systematizing factor of scientific support of sport. The functioning of psychic is defined as the main determinant of functional and psychological traumatizing in exercising and competing sport activities. The objectives of psychological support of athletes training are formulated as the individualizing of sport activity management techniques; the psychological surveillance of the resistance to exercise activities and readiness to compete; the rehabilitation of psychological freshness and functional capacity to work; the individual and group counseling; the optimization of interpersonal climate in sport teams.