The influence of mental toughness and self-regulation on post-season perceptions in varsity athletes

Abstract

Varsity athletes face an array of stressors, including balancing academic obligations with athletic competitions. Student-athletes appraising a situation as a “challenge” or “threat” directly impacts coping responses.

Objective

To investigate whether pre-season self-reported mental toughness and self-regulation strategies predicts post-season stress, mental health, group cohesion, and satisfaction in varsity athletes.

Participants

Sixty-seven varsity athletes from a U-Sport Canadian university.

Methods

Athletes completed pre- and post-season measures of mental toughness, emotion regulation, self-control, group cohesion, and satisfaction. Multiple mediation models were employed during analyses.

Results

Pre-season emotion regulation was a significant mediator for the relationships between mental toughness and post-season ratings of perceived stress, perceived mental health, and group cohesion. Self-control was not a significant mediator.

Conclusions

Emotion regulation plays a significant role in an athlete’s experience of perceived stress, mental health issues, and their ratings of group cohesiveness. Research on student-athlete health may benefit from examining emotion regulation training techniques.

Keywords:

• Mental toughness
• self-regulation
• stress
• student-athletes

Acknowledgments

We thank the Clinical Psychology Comprehensive Exam Committee at Queen’s University for their comments on this manuscript.

Conflict of interest disclosure

The authors have no conflicts of interest to report. The authors confirm that the research presented in this article met the ethical guidelines, including adherence to the legal requirements, of Canada and received approval from the Institutional Review Board of General Research Ethics Board of Queen’s University.

Funding

No funding was used to support this research and/or the preparation of the manuscript.