Resilience, stressors and protective factors in sports performance

Abstract

Our study focuses on a meta-analysis related to the concept of resilience and its role in the practice of sports in extreme conditions. We try to understand resilience as a dynamic concept, as well as the related elements such as protective factors, stressors, especially the impact of injury on sports activities. For our research, it is important to have a better understanding of these concepts and their role in sports performance. These features are studied in both athletes and general cohorts. We also aim to better understand the resilience scales and their specificity. At the same time, we try to emphasise the implications of resilience for endurance athletes. In extreme conditions, athletes attract attention, and their performance becomes well known. We look into such experiences and extend our research to stressors and their relationship to injury. Apart from their unique way of expressing themselves, athletes engaged in extreme sports (and their performance) involve important stressors and protective factors. The latter allow athletes to balance their functions and bounce back from aversive events. So, sports in extreme conditions enjoy media coverage and great popularity, but the harsh environment where competitions take place brings challenges and unexpected outcomes. From this point of view, we reflected on the stressors and protective factors, and the lack of statistics and studies on such athletes who often face fatalities.

The role of psychological resilience and aggression in injury prevention among martial arts athletes

“…According to the sporting resilience meta-model ( Gupta and McCarthy, 2022 ), the biopsychosocial protective filter makes its mark on adversity, determining a lower or a higher disruption in athletes. More resilient athletes will return faster to their sports performance (after a disruption), while less resilient athletes (having fewer biopsychosocial resources to bounce back after failure) are likely to experience negative sports results followed by further negative performances in competitions ( Bejan-Mureșan and Cinpeanu, 2019 ). Moreover, considering the grounded resilience theory ( Fletcher and Sarkar, 2012 ), protective factors such as perceived social support, confidence, motivation, focus, and positive personality (resources that are influenced by challenge appraisals and metacognitions) contribute to resilience in successful athletes.…”