Chapter 22: Burnout and Overtraining Flashcards
What is the significance of burnout and overtraining?
As the pressure to win increases, athletes and coaches spend more time training and feel more stress, which sometimes leads to overtraining and burnout.
Burnout involves stress and motivation.
Burnout has a continuous effect - if it happens once it can happen again.
Three categories of burnout include physical, psychological, and behavioural.
Periodized Training
The deliberate strategy of exposing athletes to high-volume and high-intensity training loads that are followed by a lower training load (a rest or taper).
Overtraining
A short cycle of training during which athletes expose themselves to excessive training loads that are near maximum capacity.
Can lead to decrease in performance due to fatigue, injury, etc.
Things that were easy now become hard/difficult.
Staleness
Physiological state of overtraining, which manifests as deteriorated athletic readiness.
Different from being in a slump.
Inability to be ready to compete/perform due to change in motivation, etc.
A stale athlete has difficulty maintaining standard training regimens and can no longer achieve previous performance results.
Burnout
Physical, emotional, and social withdrawal from a formerly enjoyable sport activity characterized by emotional and physical exhaustion, reduced sense of accomplishments, and sport devaluation.
Occurs as result of chronic stress, and motivational orientations and changes in the athlete.
Chronic Stress
A perceived or actual imbalance between what is expected of an athlete physically, psychologically, and socially and her response capabilities.
What are the characteristics of burnout?
Exhaustion - both physical and emotional, in the form of lost concern, energy, interest, and trust.
Depersonalization and devaluation - acting impersonal and unfeeling, in large part due to mental and physical exhaustion; the individual stops caring about the sport.
Feeling of low personal accomplishments - low self-esteem, failure, and depression; often visible in low job productivity or a decreased performance level.
Smith’s Cognitive-Affective Burnout Model
Model of burnout.
A process that involves physiological, psychological, and behavioural components.
People differ in how they respond to prolonged stress in sport and exercise settings - individualized personality and motivation impact their response.
Figure 22.2
Unidimensional Identity Development and External Control Model
For Coakley (1992) stress is involved in burnout, but it is only a symptom.
The real causes of burnout deal with faulty identity development and external control of young athletes (begin playing one sport at young age and develop athletic identity only around that one sport).
What are the causes involved in unidimensional model of burnout?
The structure of sport prevents young athletes from spending enough time with peers outside of sport.
This causes a sole focus on identifying with athletic success, which can be unhealthy, especially when failure or injury occurs.
The social worlds of young athletes are organized in such a way that their control and decision making are inhibited.
This can affect their coping skills in the long run.
Commitment and Entrapment Theory
Burnout is explained with the context of sport commitment.
Three categories of sport commitment include they want to do the sport, they have to do the sport, and a combination of both.
Burnout occurs when athletes become entrapped in sport and feel they must play even though they lose motivation for participation.
Self-Determination Theory
People have three basic psychological needs: autonomy, competence, and relatedness.
Those who do not have these basic needs met will be more prone to burnout.
What are factors leading to burnout?
Athletes are starting to train at younger ages
Training in many sports is virtually year-round
Overuse and fatigue
Overtraining
Recurrent injuries
Over-specialization
Changing interests
Conflict of values
Poorly trained coaches
Demand for improved performance
Overemphasis on winning
Loss of intrinsic motivation
What has research found on burnout?
Significant relationships exist between burnout, the amount of stress athletes feel, and their social support and coping.
Other factors related to burnout include a lack of free time, parental pressure, lack of autonomy, social support and money hassles, early sport success, a lack of recovery, passion levels, perfectionism, and peer-related motivational climate.
What did research discover on the causes of burnout in junior tennis players?
Physical concerns - erratic play, injury, feeling tired
Logistical concerns - travel, time demands
Social or interpersonal concerns - negative parental influence, negative team atmosphere
Psychological concerns - inappropriate expectations, feeling a lack of improvement, coach and parental pressure
