Concerns about Competitive Sport and Mental Toughness

In this tip I will raise some concerns about competitive sport that are often over looked due to the popular belief that sport is associated with positive developmental outcomes. The purpose is not to scare people away from competitive sport, but make people aware of the problems that exist and help prevent these problems from occurring. Furthermore, the relationship between mental toughness and emotional abuse will be discussed.

Some of the negative outcomes of competitive sport participation identified by researchers include occurrences of athlete maltreatment, overuse injuries, eating disorders, burnout, social isolation, lost childhood, premature identity forclosure, aggression and violence, doping, decreased self-perceptions, and dropout.

The outcome I believe to be the most overlooked is athlete maltreatment; particularly, emotional abuse. Recent research on athlete maltreatment in sport indicates that athletes are not immune to experiences of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse. In addition, research on abuse suggests that emotional abuse may be the most frequently occurring form of abuse in sport. Emotional abuse is defined as:

A pattern of deliberate non-contact behaviours by a person within a critical relationship role that has the potential to be harmful. Acts of emotional abuse include physical behaviours, verbal behaviours, and acts of denying attention and support. These acts have the potential to be spurning, terrorizing, isolating, exploiting/corrupting, or doing emotional responsiveness, and may be harmful to individuals’ affective, behavioural, cognitive or physical well-being. (Stirling & Kerr, 2008, p.178)

Emotional abuse can easily go undetected as its effects can be hard to notice. However, the most disturbing component of emotional abuse is how it is commonly normalized and referred to as a means of building mental toughness. It is very important for an athlete to have mental toughness, but let me make it clear that emotional abuse does not lead to mental toughness.

Some examples of emotional abuse include shouting, belittling, ignoring, threats, and humiliation. Note that emotional abuse differs from bullying because it is carried out by a person in position of power versus a peer.

Recent research by Stirling and Kerr on emotionally abused elite athletes found that the athletes perceived emotional abuse to have many negative psychological effects (e.g. decreased mood, self-efficacy, and self-esteem, as well as anger, poor body image, and increased anxiety) and many negative training effects (e.g. decreased enjoyment, impaired focus, difficulty with skill acquisition, and decreased motivation). As a result some of emotionally abused elite athletes perceived that emotional abuse had decreased their performance. Similarly, research by Miller-Perrin and Perrin found that long term effects of emotional abuse include low self-esteem, anxiety, depression, and dissociation.

Likewise, I can attest to the severity of emotional abuse. Throughout my career there has been many times where I felt playing hockey was no longer fun and even a few extreme cases where I hated hockey and just wanted to quit. These negative experiences from emotional abuse certainly did not make me mentally tough. Instead, it was mental toughness that got me through those negative experiences.

Mental toughness is a widely used term that generally refers to an athlete’s ability to persevere through difficult circumstances. There are various positive attributes used to describe mental toughness. The one that I think is the most important is confidence. For athletes to have the confidence to continue to believe in themselves when things are not going their way is a crucial factor in determining if they will persevere. Confidence is not built by emotional abuse, but destroyed by it. Confidence and mental toughness are built by appropriate challenges and support. Other key attributes of mental toughness include determination, focus, and self-control, which are also not built by emotional abuse.

In conclusion, remember that positive developmental outcomes are not automatically achieved through sport participation alone. Therefore, I suggest parents, guardians, and coaches make it their intention to create positive developmental outcomes, particularly in competitive sport, and to prevent negative developmental outcomes. On the other hand, it is important for athletes to realize that negative experiences are not required for performance success and that they have the right to positive experiences.