Psychological resilience, also known as mental fortitude, is about how our minds and actions help us deal with tough situations (Helmreich et al., 2017; Kalisch et al., 2015). When people participate in sports, they face various challenges and problems, big or small. How they handle these stressful situations can affect how they feel and how well they perform. Two types of resilience are often talked about: “robust resilience,” which means staying strong and doing well even under pressure, and “rebound resilience,” which means quickly recovering from small setbacks and getting back to normal.
There are three theories that explain how psychological resilience works in athletes: the sport resilience model (Galli & Vealey, 2008), the resilience and optimal performance theory (Fletcher & Sarkar, 2012), and the resilience model for athletes recovering from injuries (Machida et al., 2013). Studies show that psychological resilience is important for athletes’ well-being and performance. Although researchers have used tests of resilience that were not specifically designed for sports, they agree that it would be better to have a test that is made just for athletes. It’s also widely recognized that people can develop psychological resilience through proper training, especially in challenging sports environments.
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Fletcher, D., & Sarkar, M. (2012). A grounded theory of psy- chological resilience in Olympic champions. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 5, 669 678.
Galli, N., & Vealey, R. S. (2008). “Bouncing back” from adversity: Athletes’ experiences of resilience. The Sport Psychologist, 22, 316 335.
Helmreich, I., Kunzler, A., Chmitorz, A., Ko ̈nig, J., Binder, H., Wessa, M., & Lieb, K. (2017). Psychological interven- tions for resilience enhancement in adults. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 2, 43.
Kalisch, R., Mu ̈ller, M. B., & Tu ̈scher, O. (2015). A concep- tual framework for the neurobiological study of resilience. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 38, 1 79.
Machida, M., Irwin, B., & Feltz, D. (2013). Resilience in com- petitive athletes with spinal cord injury: The role of sport participation. Qualitative Health Research, 23, 1054 1065.