Intensive sport participation and athlete burnout

Citation

Eklund R (2006) Intensive sport participation and athlete burnout. Research Yearbook, 12 (1), pp. 11-16. http://1221.indexcopernicus.com/abstracted.php?level=5&ICID=458846

Abstract
The notion of athlete burnout has been increasingly employed, both colloquially and in scientific discourse, to a wide variety of negative consequences associated with intensive sport participation. Elevated concern about this negative experiential state has caused a variety of major sporting organizations around the world to implement and support programs of research into this enduring negative experiential state. Despite these widespread concerns and the variety of important efforts to understand issues surrounding athlete burnout, the construct, and its causes and consequences continue to enjoy more notoriety than substantive conceptual clarity and understanding. In this lecture, I seek to bring focus to some important issues in the area. I discuss issues relating to construct conceptualization and contrast various extant conceptualizations to illustrate the fundamental importance of clarity in this area. The question of the extent of the burnout problem among athletes intensively involved in sport is worthy of contemplation. The causes of this negative experiential state are presently not fully understood but there is consensus on the role of psychosocial stress in the progression into burnout. Recent programs of research have indicated that factors such as frustration of psychological needs such as the need for autonomy, competence, and relatedness associated with extensive training and intensive competition, as well as entrapped sport commitment, can be implicated in the emergence of this enduring aversive state. Understanding of causal processes is fundamental to successful intervention to manage the emergence of this problematic state among athletes.

Journal
Research Yearbook: Volume 12, Issue 1