Burnout in Competitive Junior Tennis Players: III. Individual Differences in the Burnout Experience
in The Sport PsychologistClick name to view affiliation
This is the third in a series of manuscripts reporting results from a research project designed to examine burnout in competitive junior tennis players. Individual differences in burnout are examined by discussing idiographic profiles from three athletes who were identified as having burned out in the earlier phases of the project. These cases were chosen as they represented different substrains of social psychologically driven and physically driven burnout. In particular, the three cases included: (a) a player characterized by high levels of perfectionism and overtraining; (b) a player who experienced pressure from others and a need for a social life; and (c) a player who was physically overtrained and had inappropriate goals. It was concluded that although important patterns result from content analyses across participants, the unique experience of each individual must be recognized.
Daniel Gould is with the Department of Exercise and Sport Science at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, NC 27412-5001. Suzanne Tuffey is with the Science and Technology Division of the U.S. Olympic Committee. Eileen Udry is with the Department of Exercise and Movement Science at the University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403. James Loehr is with Loehr-Groppel Sport Science in Orlando, FL.
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