The paper describes the assimilation problem of the first-year students in the educational disciplines "Artistic Gymnastics" and "Didactics of Gymnastics". 8 reasons are researched that contribute to the level of professional knowledge and skills formation, divided into: positive reasons (the level of teaching of educational disciplines; interest in the chosen profession; active participation in the instructive-educational process) and negative reasons (lack of individual work in the study of the subject; overloaded curriculum; insufficient knowledge and skills of high school gymnastics; low frequency of lessons; lack of interest in the future specialty). The reasons and causes of the students' skills were analyzed based on a study of the opinions of the first -year students, focused on studying the motivation process described in the literature.