Topic: Burnout
Impacted domains: All athletes and performers
Researchers: Kimberley J. Bartholomew, Nikos Ntoumanis, Richard M. Ryan, Jos A. Bosch, and Cecilie Thøgersen-Ntoumani
Universities: Nottingham Trent University, University of Birmingham, University of Rochester, Rochester, University of Heidelberg
The one who quit early…
Whatever sport you’re in, I’m sure the community has a story of that special, mythical athlete who just “burned out” or quit too soon.
“If only they’d stuck with the sport… who knows how rich and famous they’d be… how many titles/medals they would have by now….”
But what if their burnout wasn’t random? What if it had something to do with how authority figures in their sporting life treated them?
Self-Determination Theory: Pillars to performance
Effective leadership in elite sport requires understanding self-determination theory and athletes’ basic psychological needs. For review, there are 3 main needs:
Autonomy: degree to which the athlete feels in control and responsible for their own behavior and actions.
Competence: feeling of being effective in interactions and social environments or knowing that your skills can still be improved and that there are ways to do so.
Relatedness: sense of belongingness, security, and connectedness to others in the sporting environment.
Needs thwarting and controlling behaviors
The conversation is not that simple, though. An athlete can have some psychological needs met at a low level… but on the other hand, coaches, program directors, and parents can actively “thwart” access to these needs.
A controlling coaching environment is an entirely different beast. This environment manifests in 4 distinct “controlling behaviors.”
Negative conditional regard: emotional blackmail—becoming less friendly or withdrawing attention when athletes do not adopt the coach’s approach.
Intimidation: using yelling, physical posturing, throwing things, constant threat of punishment to demand obedience or compliance.
Excessive personal control: authority figure tries to control life outside of set domain. Who you can date. What you can eat.
Controlling use of rewards: only giving praise for strict obedience. You’re only told “good job” because you did what you were asked. Compliance is the goal.
How does this affect athletes?
If an athlete is subject to such an environment where their needs are thwarted and they’re experiencing controlling behaviors, it can have a slew of negative impacts.
Psychological: need thwarting is a consistent predictor of negative affect (mood).
Maladaptive behaviors: when needs are not met and actively thwarted, athletes can engage in self-defeating behaviors like burnout or disordered eating.
Physical and physiological costs: athletes exposed to need-thwarting coaching showed changes in stress-related immune markers (S-IgA), suggesting that these environments may carry not just psychological—but biological—consequences (Bartholomew et al., 2011).
What did researchers do?
Correlation matrix taken from Bartholomew et al. (2011)
To validate and test these ideas, Bartholomew et al. (2011) conducted 3 distinct studies in the competitive sporting context.
Study 1: 303 females athletes were studied, focusing on the links between coaching styles, need thwarting, depression, and disordered eating. Study 1 found significant correlations for need thwarting with disordered eating and depression (to various levels). In other words, we can say that these variables are related to each other.
Study 2: 294 athletes. Study examined burnout symptoms and S-IgA saliva markers, finding that need thwarting coaches predicted physiological arousal before training. Put another way, there are actual biological markers in athletes that tell us that they’re stressed when they’re in a non-optimal environment.
Study 3: 61 athletes in a 2-week diary study which captured daily differences in mood and physical symptoms relative to the coaching behaviors they experienced. Confirmed that subjective experiences of needs thwarting had negative effects on athletes.
Limitations
As always, it’s important to consider limitations before applying this study and research:
These studies were cross-sectional—which means that they can’t definitively prove that coaching styles caused burnout, stress, increased arousal.
Reciprocal effect: we don’t know how much the athlete’s maladaptive behaviors could also be causing the controlling coaching behaviors.
With that being said, some really important takeaways for program directors and coaches.
What you can learn and how to apply this information
We’ve seen public examples of coaches responding with intimidation or aggression after subpar performances from their athletes. This research suggests those behaviors may carry deeper long-term costs than we assume.
To protect athlete well-being and make sure you’re building a high performance environment, here’s what you should think about:
Check for controlling behaviors and coaching environments: aim to identify and get rid of the use of “negative conditional regard” and “intimidation.” In other words, coaches and staff cannot rely on emotional manipulation, cold shoulders, and creating a psychologically unsafe environment in an effort to force compliance. Physical behaviors such as encroaching personal space in confrontations with players should also be limited. Praise should also not be dependent upon only doing what the coach wants. Make note if athletes are scared to make mistakes—this may be also related to coaching behaviors. The best way to gauge athlete experience is through feedback and communication; consider creating a survey through trained professionals (see the third point) that assesses how athletes feel in relation to their coaching environment
Protect personal boundaries: take note of when coaches are consistently pushing personal boundaries, controlling food intake, relationships, and otherwise acting inappropriately
Consider workshops and coach education from sport and performance psychology professionals: work with educated and credential mental performance professionals to help your coaches improve their training and competitive environments. The psychological side is often ignored—and can result in burnout, frustration, and poor performances, as evidenced by this study. If you’re serious about reducing burnout risk, structured coach education and mental performance training should be part of your organization—not an afterthought.
These studies do not prove that controlling coaching causes burnout.
But across three separate samples, need-thwarting environments consistently paired with psychological distress, maladaptive behaviors, and physiological stress markers. If you’re responsible for athlete development, this is something you should be thinking about.
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Reference
Bartholomew, K. J., Ntoumanis, N., Ryan, R. M., Bosch, J. A., & Thøgersen-Ntoumani, C. (2011). Self-determination theory and diminished functioning: The role of interpersonal control and psychological need thwarting. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 37(11), 1459–1473. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167211413125
