Underachieving and How it Affects Athletes
Introduction
Athletes are often admired for their physical prowess. However, despite their exceptional talents, the demands of performance can take a drastic toll on their mental health. In recent years, the medical field, sports organizations, and popular culture have given more recognition to the importance of mental health in athletes. Read closely as we get into depth of how this plays in their day to day life.
Some challenges athletes consider and face in their everyday life:
Time Management- Student Athletes must be able to juggle their sport, their studies, their friends/family and their own lives. While the whole point of a schedule is to make sure you make adequate time for these things, many end up overlapping or not getting done at all due to overworking or unforeseen events. Finding the balance between all of these things requires extensive planning but can never be set in stone due to the endless moving parts in a day. Many coaches lack the awareness to realize that student athletes have other pressures in their daily lives and might need some flexibility in order to compensate. This lack of awareness can lead to extensive stress, lack of sleep, procrastination and poor performance.
Injuries- This is one of the most taxing, time consuming but also most common parts of a student athlete's life. Physical injuries lead to emotional stress and negatively affect student athletes' mental health. Lengthy injuries especially can lead to shock or denial as the student athlete refuses to focus on other aspects of life. Their injuries isolate them from their team and regular life, in which they resolve to remove themselves from normal interactions.
Performance Pressure- The pressures of performing consistently at a high level can be incredibly taxing. The fear of making a mistake can lead one down the rabbit hole of what coaches, teammates or even those watching from the side might think. The fear of failure in these areas can lead to intense anxiety and self-doubt and cause performance to fall even further.
Academic Pressure- Being able to keep good grades while performing at the highest level on the field is an asking task. The idea that one can be taken out of a team for academic performance or lose scholarship puts different pressures on student athletes depending on the situation. This fear of failure once again leads many down the path of anxiety and inhibits their ability to get tasks done in a timely manner.
Benefits of using cognitive therapy: Cali Werner
Anxious athletes may focus on negative thoughts that lead them to become overwhelmed with high-level competition due to perfectionism or even their own or others’ unrealistic expectations. CBT, or cognitive behavioral therapy, is a psychological treatment that attempts to change thinking patterns. With CBT, athletes are taught to change negative thought patterns and behaviors by setting realistic goals, monitoring their thoughts, emotions and behaviors to enhance self-awareness, and identifying and challenging negative thoughts to foster more positive and constructive thinking.
Elite long-distance runner, Cali Werner, is no stranger to the anxieties and fears of underachieving. Looking to improve her mindset, she turned to CBT. According to Werner, “confidence often leads to success, and so cognitive behavioral therapy at its core is the restructuring of negative thoughts into more positive ones.” Improving her mental outlook by letting go of perfectionistic thoughts improved her athletic performance.
What Werner recommends in athletes:
Werner advocates incorporating CBT into athletic training routines, which could enhance athletes' resilience, self-efficacy and overall mental well-being. Future research should develop and test the effectiveness of team-based mental health primary and secondary prevention models on both mental health and performance outcomes.
“Although CBT is not a ‘one size fits all’ approach, it may be a starting point to helping athletes reduce mental health risks, and if needed, begin the therapeutic process of obtaining specialized care instead of suffering in silence,” Werner advises.
Conclusion: There are many sides and points of view being seen amongst all athletes along this side of the spectrum and how their performance affects them. They can either choose to stand up for themselves and improve for the better or let this one bad performance affect them for the rest of their lives and ruin their careers and mental state.
Sources cited:
Athlete Mental Health: Everything You Need to Know | Mclean Hospital, www.mcleanhospital.org/essential/athlete-mh. Accessed 28 July 2024.
O’Toole, Aidan. “The Balancing Act of Student Athlete Mental Health.” LinkedIn, 30 Oct. 2023, www.linkedin.com/pulse/balancing-act-student-athlete-mental-health-aidan-o-toole-pbgoc.
Valentine, Corresponding author Verle. “The Importance of Salt in the Athlete’s Diet : Current Sports Medicine Reports.” LWW, journals.lww.com/acsm-csmr/fulltext/2007/08000/the_importance_of_salt_in_the_athlete_s_diet.9.aspx. Accessed 22 June 2024.
“Addressing Mental Health Challenges for Olympic and Elite Athletes.” Media and Public Relations | Baylor University, news.web.baylor.edu/news/story/2024/addressing-mental-health-challenges-olympic-and-elite-athletes. Accessed 27 July 2024.
“Addressing Mental Health Challenges for Olympic and Elite Athletes.” Media and Public Relations | Baylor University, news.web.baylor.edu/news/story/2024/addressing-mental-health-challenges-olympic-and-elite-athletes. Accessed 27 July 2024