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In order to achieve exceptional performances, elite athletes often push the boundaries of training and competition. When there is a lasting imbalance between training and recovery, elite athletes become at risk for overtraining and burnout.
For example, athletes often become at risk for overtraining and burnout when they are externally driven by overly eager parents and coaches. Other factors such as being excessively motivated by external reward such as money, medals and fame also contribute to burnout susceptibility.
- When totally dedicated to reaching high levels of performance, it is important that elite athletes stay in touch with what they intrinsically love about their sport and feel that they are freely involved. Developing a well balanced identity with interests and activities beyond sport participation will help them avoid feeling entrapped and keep a healthy perspective about life, says PhD
Nicolas Lemyre at
Department of Coaching and Psychology, Norwegian School of Sport Sciences.
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| Nicolas Lemyre |
Groundbreaking research
By carefully monitoring shifts in motivation and affect in elite athletes, Lemyre has managed to predict underperformance problems related to overtraining and burnout in a much more efficient way than when using other methods such as the monitoring hormonal markers.
However, when combining psychological and physiological markers, results from Lemyre’s PhD showed that it was possible to predict athlete burnout susceptibility in a population of elite swimmers with more than 65% accuracy.
Lemyre was recently awarded the 2006 AAASP Dissertation Award from
Association for the Advancement of Applied Sport Psychology (AAASP) i USA.
Irritable and lethargicExamining the motivation and the hormonal milieu of elite athletes, his research found that a shift in the quality of motivation of an athlete for participating in elite sport is a reliable marker of problems to come.
When an athlete is externally driven by eager parents and coaches, or an exaggerated thirst for money, medals and fame, risks of burning out are increased.
- The athlete will often become irritable and lethargic. If a state of underperformance due to inadequate recovery is long lasting, athletes may start feeling a shift in the quality of their motivation. Typically, the athlete will look for external reasons to keep on training and competing. Sport participation to achieve external for external factors over which they have little control, then these athletes are at risk for overtraining and burnout, Lemyre says.
Common problem
Some of the same personal qualities that have led them to becoming a high level performer often also make them at risk for suffering from overtraining and burnout.
- It is not uncommon for elite athletes, especially young and idealistic competitors, to push too far, overreach and suffer from extreme tiredness on a regular basis and never realize their full potential or achievement capability because of overtraining and insufficient recovery. Unfortunately and tragically, many of these athletes leave the sport disheartened, Lemyre says.