Psychological resilience in sport: A review of the literature and implications for research and practice

Abstract

The ability to respond positively to setbacks, obstacles, and failures is essential for any successful athlete. Although resilience has been studied in general psychology for several decades, it is only recently that researchers and practitioners have begun to explore the construct within the sport context. The purpose of this article is to review the current state of resilience scholarship in sport, and to offer guidelines for future research and interventions in this area. Studies of resilience in sport to date have either used experimental designs to investigate resilience to performance failure, or qualitative interview designs to understand the thoughts and beliefs of athletes who have successfully overcome adversity. Researchers who wish to study sport resilience in the future should think carefully about how they operationalise the construct. Furthermore, knowledge will be enhanced by the development of a sport-specific resilience measure and the use of more sophisticated qualitative approaches and advanced statistical modelling procedures. Sport practitioners can learn from resilience-building programmes developed in other settings as they, craft evidence-based interventions to enhance resilience in athletes.

Keywords:

• positive adaptation
• adversity
• resilience training