Resilience, stress and injuries in the context of the Brazilian elite rhythmic gymnastics

Abstract

The study had the goal to study the relationship between resilience, stress and injuries in the sport context. Eight female athletes, part of the Rhythmic Gymnastics Brazilian Team along the Olympic Cycle 2015–2016 participated in the study, with a mean age of 20.4±2.5 years. The following instruments were used: RESTQ-76 Sport, CD-RISC 10, documental analysis of physical therapy records, and structured questionnaire. Data was analyzed by descriptive statistics (frequency, mean and standard deviation); Repeated Measured ANOVA with Bonferroni’s post-hoc, Student’s “t” test, Friedman test, Pearson Correlation Coefficient, Cohen’s d, and inductive thematic analysis. We found relatively stable levels of stress and recovery across the season; total recovery levels were higher than stress at all four measured timepoints (p<0.05); All athletes had at least one injury, with a total of 14 injuries; No significant correlations were found between the quantitative scores of resilience, stress and recovery; Training and the sport’s scoring system were the most relevant perceived stressors; athletes presented meta-cognition and a non-positive evaluation (neutral) of stressors; Social support was considered the main psychological factor for the resilience process; such process resulted in improved control and interpretation of emotions; Our hypothesized model proposes that, in the relationship between stress and injuries, resilience acts by optimizing the injury recovery process. It was concluded that resilience plays a role in the process of injury rehabilitation and stress control in elite rhythmic gymnastics’ athletes.

Sporting Resilience During COVID-19: What Is the Nature of This Adversity and How Are Competitive Elite Athletes Adapting?

“…It is non-normative for core reasons: First, there is no experience involved, which is a core component of generating a sense of mastery key to resilience ( Galli and Vealey, 2008 ; Fletcher and Sarkar, 2012 , 2016 ; Morgan et al, 2013 ; Zurita-Ortega et al, 2018 ). Second, many usual resources accessed to enable a resilient response such as perceived/tangible social support ( Holt and Dunn, 2004 ; Mummery et al, 2004 ; Yi et al, 2005; Galli and Vealey, 2008 ; Hall, 2011 ; Fletcher and Sarkar, 2012 ; Morgan et al, 2013 , 2015 , 2019 ; Brown et al, 2015 ; Lu et al, 2016 ; Yamada et al, 2017 ), motivational climate ( Machida et al, 2013 ; Codonhato et al, 2018 ; Chacón-Cuberos et al, 2019 ), facilitative environment ( Fletcher and Sarkar, 2016 ; Galli, 2016 ; Wagstaff et al, 2016 ), and identity ( Cowden and Meyer-Weitz, 2016 ) are lost. Loss of training and sport also constitutes a loss of an adaptive coping mechanism often used by athletes ( Park, 2000 ).…”

“…Resilience is a temporally stable but dynamic psychosocial process that unfolds over time ( Fletcher and Sarkar, 2012 ; Bonanno and Diminich, 2013 ; Galli and Gonzalez, 2015 ; Bryan et al, 2017 ; Hill et al, 2018 ). Many of the established protective factors of resilience such as perceived/tangible social support ( Fletcher and Sarkar, 2012 ; Morgan et al, 2013 , 2015 ; Brown et al, 2015 ; Codonhato et al, 2018 ), sense of meaning/belonging ( Hall, 2011 ; Meggs et al, 2016 ), and motivational climate ( Machida et al, 2013 ; Chacón-Cuberos et al, 2019 ) have been severely disrupted. Athletes either cannot access them or do not have the quality of protective resources they used to.…”

The relationship of recreational runners’ motivation and resilience levels to the incidence of injury: A mediation model

“…For example, Jaenes et al [37] and de la Vega, Rivera, and Ruiz [38] described high-performance endurance runners as having a hardy personality, and Sarkar and Fletcher [33] also analysed athletes' resilience in connection with performance. Moreover, athletes' resilience and injuries have been studied in different competitive levels [45] and especially in high-performance athletes [16,44]. However, these psychological characteristics have been examined in relation to overcoming injury processes, i.e.…”

“…Resilience research in sports settings has focused mainly on competitive athletes of different sports [34] on seeking improved performance by individuals [22,28,30,[35][36][37][38] and teams [39][40][41] and on how resilience is connected with contextual factors [42,43]. In recent studies, resilience has been associated with elite athletes' injuries [16,33,44], and even though some research has linked this construct to athletes' competitive level [45], very little has been explored in relation to amateur athletes [43] or connecting this psychological factor with non-professional athletes' injuries.…”

The Influence of the Trainer’s Social Behaviors on the Resilience, Anxiety, Stress, Depression and Eating Habits of Athletes

“…The main areas that have studied resilience have been in the health field [ 21 ], the laboral field [ 22 ], the military [ 23 ] and recently in the academic field [ 24 ]. Studies on resilience highlight the positive effect it has on overcoming stressors and stressful situations, such as sporting failure [ 25 ] and injuries [ 26 ]. In addition, some studies have highlighted the positive effect that resilience has on athletes’ internal motivation [ 27 ], emotional intelligence [ 28 ] and psychological well-being [ 29 ].…”