Preventing Burnout In Young Athletes

For many elite team coaches, the greater challenge in developing top young athletes is not improving the ones on your team, but rather finding the talented kids that got away from the sport.  Keeping the next Lionel Messi or Michael Phelps involved and motivated from age 7 to 17 is becoming more difficult.  While over 35 million kids between 4 and 14 play organized sports in the U.S., over 70% will drop out by age 13.  According to new research, that drastically reduced talent pool may be caused by the athlete’s own psychological profile and how a coach manages it.

According to a 2004 study by Michigan State’s Institute for the Study of Youth Sport, here are the top ten reasons why boys and girls quit organized sports:

Boys

1. I was no longer interested.
2. It was no longer fun.
3. The sport took too much time
4. The coach played favourites.
5. The coach was a poor teacher.
6. I was tired of playing.
7. There was too much emphasis on winning.
8. I wanted to participate in other non-sport activity.
9. I needed more time to study.
10. There was too much pressure.

Girls

1. I was no longer interested.
2. It was no longer fun.
3. I needed more time to study.
4. There was too much pressure
5. The coach was a poor teacher.
6. I wanted to participate in other non-sport activities.
7. The sport took too much time.
8. The coach played favourites.
9. I was tired of playing.
10. Games and practices were scheduled when I could not attend.

Comparing the lists, when a young athlete loses interest and does not have fun, (partly because the coach applied too much pressure or they were a poor teacher), it may be due to their internal mindset based on an educational psychology concept known as the Achievement Goal Theory (AGT).

Psychologists Carol Dweck and Thomas Nicholls, while they worked together at the University of Michigan, both studied students who failed to learn and their research resulted in parallel tracks, just with different terminology.  For Dweck, she defined two styles of learning motivation as Mastery and Performance.  Take for example, a young soccer player that spends hours in the backyard learning to juggle a ball.  For a player with a Performance mindset, he is practicing because of a desire to be the best juggler on the team or maybe because he is embarrassed by his lack of skill compared to his teammates.

On the opposite end, a player with a Mastery mindset is motivated to learn simply by the challenge of the skill without any competitive instincts.  Nicholls uses the terms Task to compare with Dweck's Mastery and substitutes Ego instead of Performance.  Both Dweck and Nicholls agree that the player’s perceived ability and competence also affects their motivation to keep trying to learn the new skill.  Here’s a great video overview of the concepts by Professor Jonathan Hilpert of Georgia Southern University.

In fact, in a study this year of 167 junior club soccer players in England, Andrew Hill, sports scientist at the University of Leeds, found that a quarter of the boys experienced symptoms of burnout.

"What we see among the athletes showing symptoms of burnout is emotional and physical exhaustion, a sense that they are not achieving and a sense of devaluation of the sport. Even though they might originally enjoy their sport and be emotionally invested in it, they eventually become disaffected. Participation can be very stressful," Dr. Hill said.

However, the results showed that those players who admitted being more afraid of making mistakes in front of others (a Performance/Ego mindset) were also much more likely to suffer from burnout versus those players that were driven by their own high standards (a Mastery/Task mindset).

"Perfectionism can be a potent energising force but can also carry significant costs for athletes when things don't go well,” Dr. Hill commented. “Perfectionists are stuck in a self-defeating cycle. They are overly dependent on personal accomplishment as a means of establishing a sense of self-esteem but are always dissatisfied with their efforts. Even success can be problematic because they simply become more demanding until they inevitably experience failure.”

His research appears in the Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology.

A coach can have a significant impact on motivating learning by the type of environment they create, one that rewards players for self-improvement alone or one that rewards improvement compared to others.  Last year, French researchers surveyed 309 young, elite handball players about four things, their perception of their coach’s motivational environment, their own perceived competence, their type of learning motivation and any symptoms of burnout.

They concluded that “young talented athletes perceiving an ego-involving climate had a higher risk of experiencing burnout symptoms at the season’s end. In contrast, players perceiving a high task-involving climate had lower burnout scores when the season concluded.”

Once again the coach-athlete relationship becomes critical to development of elite potential and performances.  The more training data that can be captured and analyzed, the better the subtle hints of burnout can be detected.

Follow @metrifit

Team Camaraderie Will Keep You In The Game Longer

It's never fun riding the bench -- but could it also make you less likely to be physically active in the future?  That's one of the questions being explored by Mark Eys, an associate professor of kinesiology and physical education at Wilfrid Laurier University and the Canada Research Chair in Group Dynamics and Physical Activity. Eys is presenting his work as part of this week's Canada Research Chairs conference in Toronto.

Eys, who also teaches out of the university's psychology department, is studying group cohesion -- which, in sporting terms, is essentially that sense of camaraderie that often develops between teammates -- and how it affects the willingness of teenagers to take part in physical activity long-term.  It's an important connection to study, he says, since it's much more common for people to work out in groups than on their own.

"People playing sports, for instance, are usually part of a group. If they're playing golf, they're in a group. They're often going for runs in a group," says Eys. "If we understand how those groups work, and take advantage of those situations, we can facilitate physical activity."

For the past two years, Eys and his team of graduate students have been observing teens aged 13-17 in the Sudbury area, tracking them as they take part in high school sports, rec leagues, and non-structured group activities like running and jogging.

Once a year, says Eys, they fill out questionnaires that measure how they feel about the level of cohesion in their groups. The teens taking part in highly-structured sports, particularly at the high school level, are asked specifically about their teams' focus -- how it strikes a balance between self-improvement and winning.

While they're still analyzing the first two years of data, Eys points out that, so far, they've found "a really strong relationship between that motivational climate and perceptions of cohesion."
That relationship seems to echo the findings of researchers who've posed the same questions to adults, says Eys.

"If you look at the research on adults, the link between group perceptions and cohesion is pretty clear," he says. "If people are in groups that they enjoy, they're more likely to stick to their exercise regimens."

For Eys, his research isn't purely academic -- it's also personal. A decade ago, Eys played basketball at the University of Waterloo, and in his fourth year made it to nationals. While the team didn't win, they managed to strike a near-perfect balance, he says, between competitiveness and camaraderie.

"We still, to this day -- and this is ten years after the fact -- get together as a group. It was obviously a very cohesive bunch. I don't think we were necessarily the most talented group in the league, but some of these group processes can overcome that."

Eys also has two daughters, aged six and four, who are "taking their first steps into organized activities." Researching what it is that makes a good group activity, he says, will translate into an increased likelihood that physically active kids become physically active adults.

The goal of his research is to "have something to be able to take to coaches, to be able to take to organizations" that would outline all those factors that go into a cohesive group environment. Making kids play better, may help them play longer.

Source: Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences

See also: Soccer Goal Celebrations Are Contagious and Athletes In The Zone Feel The Flow

Youth Sports Coaches Should Prioritize Teaching Over Winning

Young athletes' achievement goals can change in a healthy way over the course of a season when their coaches create a mastery motivational climate rather than an ego orientation, University of Washington sport psychologists have found. A mastery climate stresses positive communication between coaches and athletes, teamwork and doing one's best. An ego climate, typified by many professional sports coaches, focuses on winning at all costs and being better than others.

"Much of life is affected by motivation and achievement," said Ronald Smith, a UW psychology professor and lead author of a new study. "Our study looked at children 9 to 13 years of age and there was no difference by age or sex. And it was also significant because it shows the influence of a mastery climate on children's achievement goals in a relatively short time, 12 weeks."

For several decades psychologists have believed that children under the age of 11 or 12 could not distinguish between effort and ability. That still may be true when it comes to academics, but the new research indicates that children as young as 9 can tell the difference between the two while participating in sports.
Frank Smoll, another UW psychology professor and co-author of the paper, said the research shows the importance of youth sport coaches at an earlier age than previously thought.  The study was recently published in the journal Motivation and Emotion.

"A coach can be the first non-parental figure who is a youngster's hero. People who volunteer to coach year after year don't affect just a few kids. They can be influencing thousands at very early ages," he said.

The study involved 243 children -- 145 boys and 98 girls -- playing basketball in two separate Seattle leagues. The athletes ranged in age from 9 to 13 and 80 percent were white. They were given questionnaires to fill out twice, once prior to the beginning of the season and again 12 weeks later when the season was almost over.

A previously published paper by the researchers from the same project showed that young athletes who played for coaches who were taught how to create a mastery climate reported lower levels of sport anxiety compared to youngsters who played for coaches who were not trained. The research also was the first to show that a coaching intervention is as effective with girls as it is with boys.

The new study found that athletes who played for coaches who used a mastery climate showed such things as greater enjoyment of basketball over the course of the season. In addition, levels of ego orientation dropped. The opposite was true for athletes playing for coaches relying on an ego-oriented style of leadership. These finding held for athletes across all ages.

"One consistent finding of our research is that a mastery climate retains more youngsters in sports. It keeps them coming back," said Smith. "Retention is a huge problem in some youth sports programs. An important reason to keep kids involved in sports is that it reduces obesity by helping them be more active."

Source: University of Washington

See also: Teaching Tactics and Techniques In Sports and Sideline Raging Soccer Moms (and Dads!) 

Please click here to take the Sports Are 80 Percent Mental 2-minute survey!

Which Comes First For Athletes - Money Or Motivation?

Whether it's for money, marbles or chalk, the brains of reward-driven people keep their game faces on, helping them win at every step of the way. Surprisingly, they win most often when there is no reward.  That's the finding of neuroscientists at Washington University in St. Louis, who tested 31 randomly selected subjects with word games, some of which had monetary rewards of either 25 or 75 cents per correct answer, others of which had no money attached.

Subjects were given a short list of five words to memorize in a matter of seconds, then a 3.5-second interval or pause, then a few seconds to respond to a solitary word that either had been on the list or had not. Test performance had no consequence in some trials, but in others, a computer graded the responses, providing an opportunity to win either 25 cent or 75 cents for quick and accurate answers. Even during these periods, subjects were sometimes alerted that their performance would not be rewarded on that trial.

Prior to testing, subjects were submitted to a battery of personality tests that rated their degree of competitiveness and their sensitivity to monetary rewards.

Designed to test the hypothesis that excitement in the brains of the most monetary-reward-sensitive subjects would slacken during trials that did not pay, the study is co-authored by Koji Jimura, PhD, a post-doctoral researcher, and Todd Braver, PhD, a professor, both based in psychology in Arts & Sciences. Braver is also a member of the neuroscience program and radiology department in the university's School of Medicine.
But the researchers found a paradoxical result: the performance of the most reward-driven individuals was actually most improved -- relative to the less reward-driven -- in the trials that paid nothing, not the ones in which there was money at stake.

Even more striking was that the brain scans taken using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) showed a change in the pattern of activity during the non-rewarded trials within the lateral prefrontal cortex (PFC), located right behind the outer corner of the eyebrow, an area that is strongly linked to intelligence, goal-driven behavior and cognitive strategies. The change in lateral PFC activity was statistically linked to the extra behavioral benefits observed in the reward-driven individuals.

The researchers suggest that this change in lateral PFC activity patterns represents a flexible shift in response to the motivational importance of the task, translating this into a superior task strategy that the researchers term "proactive cognitive control." In other words, once the rewarding motivational context is established in the brain indicating there is a goal-driven contest at hand, the brain actually rallies its neuronal troops and readies itself for the next trial, whether it's for money or not.

The brain's lateral prefrontal cortex (in yellow) shows heightened and long-lasting activity in people more driven by rewards, even when a reward is not offered. (Credit: Koji Jimura)

"It sounds reasonable now, but when I happened upon this result, I couldn't believe it because we expected the opposite results," says Jimura, first author of the paper. "I had to analyze the data thoroughly to persuade myself. The important finding of our study is that the brains of these reward- sensitive individuals do not respond to the reward information on individual trials. Instead, it shows that they have persistent motivation, even in the absence of a reward. You'd think you'd have to reward them on every trial to do well. But it seems that their brains recognized the rewarding motivational context that carried over across all the trials."

The finding sheds more light on the workings of the lateral PFC and provides potential behavioral clues about personality, motivation, goals and cognitive strategies. The research has important implications for understanding the nature of persistent motivation, how the brain creates such states, and why some people seem to be able to use motivation more effectively than others. By understanding the brain circuitry involved, it might be possible to create motivational situations that are more effective for all individuals, not just the most reward-driven ones, or to develop drug therapies for individuals that suffer from chronic motivational problems.

Their results are published April 26 in the early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Everyone knows of competitive people who have to win, whether in a game of HORSE, golf or the office NCAA basketball tournament pool. The findings might tell researchers something about the competitive drive.

The researchers are interested in the signaling chain that ignites the prefrontal cortex when it acts on reward-driven impulses, and they speculate that the brain chemical dopamine could be involved. That could be a potential direction of future studies. Dopamine neurons, once thought to be involved in a host of pleasurable situations, but now considered more of learning or predictive signal, might respond to cues that let the lateral PFC know that it's in for something good. This signal might help to keep information about the goals, rules or best strategies for the task active in mind to increase the chances of obtaining the desired outcome.

In the context of this study, when a 75-cent reward is available for a trial, the dopamine-releasing neurons could be sending signals to the lateral PFC that "jump start" it to do the right procedures to get a reward.
"It would be like the dopamine neurons recognize a cup of Ben and Jerry's ice cream, and tell the lateral PFC the right action strategy to get the reward -- to grab a spoon and bring the ice cream to your mouth," says Braver. "We think that the dopamine neurons fires to the cue rather than the reward itself, especially after the brain learns the relationship between the two. We'd like to explore that some more."

They also are interested in the "reward carryover state," or the proactive cognitive strategy that keeps the brain excited even in gaps, such as pauses between trials or trials without rewards. They might consider a study in which rewards are far fewer.

"It's possible we'd see more slackers with less rewards," Braver says. "That might have an effect on the reward carryover state. There are a host of interesting further questions that this work brings up which we plan to pursue."


Source: Washington University in St. Louis

See also: The Big Mo' - Momentum In Sports and Tiger's Brain Is Bigger Than Ours

Motivation Is Required For Weight Loss

Energy in, energy out, it's the basic equation to weight loss, or is it? With more than two thirds of Americans classified as overweight or obese, a new study examines how motivation might be a large contributor to sticking with weight loss programs.

Researchers at the University of Kentucky and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill examined two types of motivation, autonomous and controlled, and their relationship to adherence and weight loss in a 16-week Internet weight-loss intervention. To measure the 2 types of motivation, a Treatment Self-Regulation Questionnaire was used to identify those participants motivated by intrinsic and extrinsic controls such as feeling that performance is the best way to help oneself and making changes for personal reasons (autonomous motivation) and those participants motivated by only external controls such as perceived pressure from others and feelings of guilt (controlled motivation).

Motivation for weight loss was measured at baseline and 4, 8, 12, and 16 weeks. In addition, study participants recorded their food intake, exercise, and body weight through an on-line self-monitoring system weekly throughout the study.

Over half of the participants (37 of 66) lost 5% of initial body weight at the 16-week follow-up. To examine the relationship between the 2 different types of motivation and weight loss, the sample was divided into those who had and those who had not lost 5% of initial body weight by 16 weeks (37 and 29 participants, respectively).

The researchers found that the majority of participants had a significant increase in autonomous and controlled motivation between baseline and 4 weeks, though it's not clear what caused the increase in motivation at 4 weeks, the face-to-face session given at the start of the study, early success with weight loss, or something else. Although motivation increased initially for most participants, the group that went on to achieve a 5% weight loss sustained their autonomous motivation between 4 and 16 weeks, while the group that was less successful experienced a significant decrease in autonomous and controlled motivation over time.

The authors also found that autonomous motivation at 4 weeks was a significant predictor of adherence to self-monitoring and weight loss. Furthermore, this increase in self-monitoring appeared to be a way in which autonomous motivation led to better weight loss. The authors found a positive correlation between weight loss at 4 weeks and higher levels of autonomous motivation especially when compared to participants who had higher levels of controlled motivation.

The study appears in the May/June 2010 issue of the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior.
 
Writing in the article, the authors state, "It appears that the time period between 4 and 8 weeks may be an important window for weight control programs to consider using techniques designed to enhance autonomous motivation, including giving more intense support or different types of interventions, such as activities to enhance autonomous motivation or contact from a weight-loss counselor in the form of e-mails, phone calls, or face-to-face meetings."

"It is possible that motivation measured a few weeks after the study has begun more accurately captures motivation than baseline motivation for weight loss since participants have become familiar with the behavior changes that will be necessary for weight loss and can better gauge their motivation for making those changes.  These findings suggest that building motivation may be an effective means of promoting adherence and weight loss."


Source: Elsevier Health Sciences

See also: Exercise Burns Fat During But Not After Your Workout and I Run, Therefore I Drink?

Nobody Wants To Lose To The Underdog

Members of a group or team will work harder when they're competing against a group with lower status than when pitted against a more highly ranked group, according to a new study.

The results run contrary to the common belief that underdogs have more motivation because they have the chance to "knock the higher-status group down a peg," said Robert Lount, co-author of the study and assistant professor of management and human resources at Ohio State University's Fisher College of Business.  "We found over and over again across multiple studies that people worked about 30 percent harder when their group was competing against a lower-status group."

"It seems surprising to many people that the high-status team has more motivation, but it really makes sense," Lount added. "The higher-ranked group has more to lose if they don't compare well against a lower-status group. But if you're the lower-status group and lose to your superior rival, nothing has changed -- it just reaffirms the way things are."

Lount conducted the study with Nathan Pettit of Cornell University. Their results appear in the current issue of the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.

The researchers conducted five studies involving college students. In most of the studies, the students were asked to complete a simple task -- for instance, crossing out all the vowels in a random string of letters. They were told to do as many as they could in a specific period of time.


Participants were told a group of students from another specific college were simultaneously completing the same task. The logo of the participants' school and the competing school appeared on their worksheets, so the fact that this was a competition was clear.

In some cases, the competing school was one that was clearly more highly ranked than the participants' school (based on U.S. News and World Report rankings), while other times it was similarly ranked, or ranked lower.

The tasks were always simple, so that the students' ability wouldn't be tested -- only their motivation to complete as much of the task as possible.  Overall, the students completed about 30 percent more when they were competing against lower-ranked schools than they did when competing against more highly ranked colleges.

"The motivation gains were there when students felt their group's superior status was threatened," he said.

He noted that students didn't perform worse when they were pitted against higher-ranked teams than they did against similarly ranked teams. But it was only when students competed against lower-ranked teams that they actually were motivated to work harder.  One of the studies clearly showed how participants were motivated by the threat of losing to a team they considered inferior.

In this study, before the students completed the task, they were asked to think and write about a core value of themselves or their group.  Some wrote a group affirmation, in which they selected the value that was most important to people at their university -- such as relationships with family or maintaining ethical standards. Others wrote a self-affirmation, in which they listed a core personal value and why it was central to who they were as an individual.

The affirmations are designed to make the participants feel secure in their group identity (the group affirmation) or feel like they are personally moral and competent (self affirmation). A control group did not write an affirmation.

When students competed against a lower-status group, those who completed self or group affirmations finished less of the task than those who did no affirmations.  Writing the affirmations made the students feel like they were good members of their group, or that their group itself was good. Because they no longer felt threatened, they didn't feel they had to work as hard to prove themselves when competing against the lower-ranked team.

"The affirmations act as a buffer against threat," Lount said.

Meanwhile, students in this study who competed against higher-ranked teams showed no difference in how much of the task they completed, regardless of whether they wrote affirmations or not.


The findings may apply in a variety of settings, from workplaces to sports teams.  Bosses and coaches who manage groups competing against lower-status rivals should use that fact to motivate the people at their company or team.

"If you're a coach of a favored team, it would make sense to highlight this favored status to your players," he said. "Coaches should let players know that there's a lot at stake in their game -- they could lose their high status. That should be a big motivating factor for your team."

In any setting, motivation will depend a lot on who people and groups are compared against.

"If groups just focus on ways to gain status, they're missing out on a motivational opportunity," he said. "People are going to work harder to not lose what status they already have than they will to try to become higher status."

See also: How Nerves Affect Soccer Penalty Kicks and The Big Mo' - Momentum In Sports

Source: Ohio State University

Retirement Rebound - The Return of Torres, Favre and Armstrong

Maybe its the fear of turning 40. Maybe its the feeling of unfinished business. Maybe its the fire in the belly that has not quite extinguished. For retired elite athletes, the itch is always there to make a return after experiencing "life after sport". For some, it becomes too strong to ignore. 

This year has seen the return of at least three champions, Dara Torres, Lance Armstrong and Brett Favre. As they explain their individual reasons for coming back, some similarities emerge that have more to do with psychological needs than practical needs. In a recent Miami Herald article, Torres explained her comeback to competitive swimming at age 41, "For me, it's not like I sat around and watched swimming on TV and thought, `Oh, I wish I was still competing'. It was more gradual. But all of a sudden, something goes off inside you and you start seriously thinking about a comeback. You'd think the competitive fire would die down with maturity, but I've actually gotten worse. I wasn't satisfied with silver medals. I hate to lose now more than I did in my 20s. I'm still trying to figure out why.''

Drawing inspiration from Torres, Lance Armstrong has decided to make a comeback at age 37 with a declared goal to win his eighth Tour de France. In a recent Vanity Fair article, he described his rationale, “Look at the Olympics. You have a swimmer like Dara Torres. Even in the 50-meter event [freestyle], the 41-year-old mother proved you can do it. The woman who won the marathon [Constantina Tomescu-Dita, of Romania] was 38. Older athletes are performing very well. Ask serious sports physiologists and they’ll tell you age is a wives’ tale. Athletes at 30, 35 mentally get tired. They’ve done their sport for 20, 25 years and they’re like, I’ve had enough. But there’s no evidence to support that when you’re 38 you’re any slower than when you were 32."

Is it the 40 factor? Brett Favre, who turns 39 in October, made his well-publicized return to the NFL last month wanting to return so badly that he accepted a trade to the New York Jets so that he could play. His public and emotional decision to retire in March, only to begin hinting at a comeback in early summer showed the internal struggle he had with stepping away from sports. 

You could hear the indecision in his retirement press conference, "I've given everything I possibly can give to this organization, to the game of football, and I don't think I've got anything left to give, and that's it.", Favre said. "I know I can play, but I don't think I want to. And that's really what it comes down to. Fishing for different answers and what ifs and will he come back and things like that, what matters is it's been a great career for me, and it's over. As hard as that is for me to say, it's over. There's only one way for me to play the game, and that's 100 percent. Mike and I had that conversation the other night, and I will wonder if I made the wrong decision. I'm sure on Sundays, I will say I could be doing that, I should be doing that. I'm not going to sit here like other players maybe have said in the past that I won't miss it, because I will. But I just don't think I can give anything else, aside from the three hours on Sundays, and in football you can't do that. It's a total commitment, and up to this point I have been totally committed." 

Some observers point to the end of the Packers' 2007-2008 season with a heart-wrenching Favre interception in overtime that sent the Giants to the Super Bowl instead of Green Bay. Being that close to the pinnacle of his sport must have been confidence that his skills had not diminished and once the fatigue of the past season had passed (by about June), that he was not ready to just ride the tractor in Mississippi for the next 40 years.

So, what do the sport psychologists make of these second thoughts? These three athletes are world famous, but what about the hundreds of professional athletes that have had to make the same decision without all of the front page stories and fanfare? Why does Chris Chelios, all-star and future Hall of Famer in the NHL, continue to avoid the retirement decision at age 45? 

Coaches aren't immune either. Bobby Bowden of Florida State and Joe Paterno of Penn State have refused to retire to the point of becoming an awkward story for their schools and fans. ''After all the adulation and excitement wear off and elite athletes come face to face with retirement and a more mundane life, they suffer a sense of loss, almost like a death,'' said sport psychologist John F. Murray. "If you're Lance Armstrong, you realize that what you are is a cyclist, that is your identity, and if you feel you have one or two more titles in you, why let it go? Why not tackle unresolved challenges? Competing at that level provides a high that is hard to match. How can you not be addicted to that?''

Beyond the professional ranks, thousands of college and Olympic athletes are left with the realization that they face similar decisions of when to "give up the dream" and move into the more practical world of finishing their education and finding a job. Their emotional attachment to their sport has developed over years of building an identity linked to their success on the field. 

Despite the statistics showing the "funnel effect" of the diminishing number of athletes getting to the "next level", younger athletes continue to believe they are the ones that will make it to the top. There is also the more emotional issue of unwillingly leaving a sport because of injury or simply not making the team due to diminished skills. Dr. Murray adds, "When your whole life has been geared toward athletic excellence, the prospects of retirement can be dreadful! This is commonplace at collegiate level where 99 per cent of the athletes do not go on to play their sport professionally. Counseling is a way to prepare athletes for the inevitable loss that occurs after the glory is over and only memories remain. As with any loss, people need effective ways to cope. Going at it all on your own might work for some, but I’ll submit that the vast majority of athletes benefit from early discussion and planning for retirement. There is definitely life after sport."

Some colleges and universities, as well as some professional teams, have started to offer formal "retirement planning" for athletes as their formal sport careers wind down. Life After Sports, a counseling firm started by Adrian McBride, a former college and NFL player, provides services to retiring college athletes to help them emotionally and practically adjust to a post-sports life. The University of North Carolina has set-up the Center for the Study of Retired Athletes to offer a home for academic research into these issues.

Additional academic research is also coming out on athlete retirement including two articles this year (see citations below) from the Journal of Applied Sport Psychology. First, Katie Warriner and David Lavallee of the University of Wales interviewed former elite gymnasts regarding their retirement at a relatively young age from competitive sport. They found the loss of identity to be the biggest adjustment. Second, Patricia Lally and Gretchen Kerr looked at how parents cope with their children's "retirement" from sport, as they also go through withdrawl symptoms when the "end of the dream" finally comes and the lifelong ambition for their child's athletic success is over.

Who's next up for a retirement rebound? Just as Lance got inspiration from Torres and maybe Favre, the trend may continue. The Bulls could use Jordan or Pippen and Roger Clemens is never far away from a phone. Stay tuned!





Katie Warriner, David Lavallee (2008). The Retirement Experiences of Elite Female Gymnasts: Self Identity and the Physical Self Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, 20 (3), 301-317 DOI: 10.1080/10413200801998564

Patricia Lally, Gretchen Kerr (2008). The Effects of Athlete Retirement on Parents Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, 20 (1), 42-56 DOI: 10.1080/10413200701788172

Imagine Winning Gold In Beijing

Imagine winning a gold medal at the Beijing Olympics.  No really, go ahead, close your eyes and visualize it.  What did you see?  Were you standing on the medal platform looking out at the crowd, waving and taking in the scene through your own eyes, or were you a spectator in the crowd watching yourself getting the medal put around your neck?  This choice between "first-person" or "third-person" visualization actually makes a difference on our motivation to achieve a future goal.


Noelia A. Vasquez, at York University and Roger Buehler, at Wilfrid Laurier University wanted to see if there was a link between our visualization perspective and our motivation level to achieve the imagined goal.  They asked 47 university students to imagine the successful completion of a performance task that was in their near future, whether it be a speech in a class or an upcoming athletic competition.  They were also asked to assume that the task went extremely well.  One group of students were asked to imagine this scene "through their own eyes" seeing the environment as they would actually experience it.  The second group was told to use the third-person perspective, pretending they were "in the crowd" watching themselves as others would see them achieving this goal.  Next, they were given a survey that asked each group how motivated they were to now go make this successful scene a reality. 


As hypothesized, the group that saw the scene through their audience's eyes (third-person) ranked their motivation to now succeed significantly higher than those that imagined it through their own eye (first-person).  The authors' explanation for this is the perceived additional importance attached to the task when we consider other peoples' opinion of us and our natural desire to increase our status in our peer group.  Seeing this newly elevated social acceptance and approval of ourselves from the eyes of our peers motivates us even more to reach for our goals.


The road to achievements like an Olympic gold medal is a long one with many steps along the way.  Over the years, as athletes maintain their training regimen, they can keep imagining the future goal, but they may need to also look back and recognize the improvements they have made over time.  This "progress to date" assessment will also provide motivation to keep going once they realize the hard work is actually having the desired effect and moving them along the desired path.  So, as they review their past to present progress, does the first or third person perspective make a difference there as well?



Researchers from Cornell, Yale and Ohio State, led by Thomas Gilovich, professor of psychology at Cornell, designed an experiment to find out.  They recruited a group of university students who had described their high-school years as "socially awkward" to now recall those years and compare them with their social skill in college.  The first group was asked to recall the past from a first-person perspective, just as their memories would provide them.  The second group was asked to remember themselves through the perspective of their classmates (third-person).  Next, each group was asked to assess the personal change they had accomplished since then.


As predicted, the group that had recalled their former selves in the third person reported greater progress and change towards a more social and accepted person in college than the group that remembered in the first-person.  "We have found that perspective can influence your interpretation of past events. In a situation in which change is likely, we find that observing yourself as a third person -- looking at yourself from an outside observer's perspective -- can help accentuate the changes you've made more than using a first-person perspective," says Gilovich.  "When participants recalled past awkwardness from a third-person perspective, they felt they had changed and were now more socially skilled," said Lisa K. Libby, an assistant professor of psychology at Ohio State University. "That led them to behave more sociably and appear more socially skilled to the research assistant."


So, whether looking forward or backward, seeing yourself through other's eyes seems to provide more motivation to not only continue the road to success, but to appreciate the progress you have made. 


Then the actual day of competition arrives.  It is one hour before you take your position on the starting blocks at the "Bird's Nest" stadium in Beijing or on the mat at the National Indoor Stadium for the gymnastics final.  Should you be imagining the medal ceremony and listening to your country's national anthem at that point?  In a recent Denver Post article, Peter Haberl, senior sports psychologist for the U.S. Olympic Committee says, "It takes a great deal of ability and skill to stay focused on the task at hand."  

He distinguishes between an "outcome" goal, (receiving the medal) and "performance" (improving scores/times) and "process" (improving technique) goals.  "The difference is that these types of goals are much more under the control of the athlete," explains Haberl. "The process goal, in particular, directs attention to the here and now, which allows the athlete to totally focus on the doing of the activity; this is key to performing well.  This sounds simple but it really is quite difficult because the mind takes you to the past and the future all the time, particularly in the Olympic environment with its plethora of distractions and enticing rewards." 


Mental imagery is a well-known tool for every athlete to make distant and difficult goals seem attainable.  By seeing your future accomplishments through the eyes of others, you can attach more importance and reward to achieving them.  Just imagine yourself in London in 2012!



Vasquez, N.A. (2007). Seeing Future Success: Does Imagery Perspective Influence Achievement Motivation?. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 33(10), 1392-1405.


Libby, L.K., Eibach, R.P., Gilovich, T. (2005). Here's Looking at Me: The Effect of Memory Perspective on Assessments of Personal Change.. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 88(1), 50-62. DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.88.1.50