Perfectionism and training distress in junior athletes: The mediating role of coping tendencies

Abstract

Training distress occurs when athletes fail to cope with physiological and psychological stress and can be an early sign of overtraining syndrome. Recent research has found that perfectionism predicts increases in training distress in junior athletes over time. The current study provides the first empirical test of the possibility that coping tendencies mediate the perfectionism-training distress relationship. Adopting a cross-sectional design, 171 junior athletes (mean age = 18.1 years) completed self-report measures of perfectionistic strivings, perfectionistic concerns, problem-focused coping, avoidant coping, and training distress. Structural equation modelling revealed that avoidant coping mediated the positive relationship between perfectionistic concerns and training distress, and mediated the negative relationship between perfectionistic strivings and training distress. Problem-focused coping did not mediate any relationships between dimensions of perfectionism and training distress. The findings suggest that the tendency to use coping strategies aimed at avoiding stress may partly explain the relationship between perfectionism and training distress but the tendency to use, or not use, problem-focussed coping does not.

Keywords:

• Perfectionism
• junior athletes
• overtraining
• stress
• motivation
• health

Acknowledgement

The first author would like to thank AH for their help with FOTC.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Cronbach’s α above .70 are indicative of adequate internal consistency (see e.g. Tabachnick & Fidell, 2007).

2 We also examined a second model that included a path between perfectionistic concerns and problem-focused coping. As hypothesised, this path was nonsignificant (β = –.11, p > .05).

3 Standardised path coefficients are interpreted in the same way as betas from regression analyses (i.e. standardised coefficients refer to how many standard deviations a dependent variable will change for every one standard deviation change in the independent variable).