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The present study adopted a qualitative, exploratory approach to describe the underlying emotional climate among injured athletes within team sport environments. Nine elite athletes undergoing long-term injury rehabilitation (LTIR) participated in semi-structured interviews to describe their LTIR experience. A general inductive analysis extracted three higher-order themes: (a) emotional trauma, (b) emotional climate, and (c) emotional acting. Athletes reported experiencing emotional trauma throughout LTIR. To maintain in-group norms, they described engaging in avoidance behaviors and reported suppressing negative affect for fear of negative evaluation. They also reported frequently controlling emotions in public using acting strategies. Athletes perceived these emotionally inhibitive behaviors as encouraged within their team environment. These results have important implications for the identification and treatment of emotionally destructive behaviors that could potentially delay an athlete’s psychological rehabilitation from athletic injury.

Guided by the work-family interface literature, this study examined the concept of spillover in a sample of elite athletes. It was conceptualized that there would be potential negativity and interference between athletes’ intense demands of competitive sport and efforts to maintain positive relationships with their partners. Antecedents and consequences of the potential spillover phenomenon were assessed in a sample of 87 elite-level athletes who had either romantic or marital, heterosexual relationships. Findings indicated that while trust, commitment, and communication were not strongly related to spillover, negative transactions were. Moreover, the occurrence of spillover was negatively related to sport satisfaction and positively to depressive symptoms. Finally, it was found that a mechanism by which perceived negative transactions were linked to athletes’ satisfaction and depression was through spillover. Spillover can help explain how personal relationships and sport are likely to contribute to athletes’ performance accomplishment and overall well-being.

Heavy alcohol consumption is a well-known health compromising addictive behavior. A lesser known addictive behavior that may cause physical and psychological harm is exercise dependence. Research has shown that heavy drinking co-occurs with other addictive behaviors, but until recently little was known about the co-occurrence of alcohol use and exercise dependence. The purpose of the current study was to examine this relationship and assess whether the co-occurrence could be accounted for by personality characteristics. Participants were 283 undergraduate students at a large, Northeastern university. All students reported consuming alcohol in the past 30 days and the majority (95.9%) reported exercising at least occasionally. Results indicated that alcohol use and alcohol-related problems co-occurred with exercise dependence and that personality characteristics did not fully account for the relationship. These findings have implications for clinicians and prevention specialists working with college students and provide several avenues for future research in an innovative area.

This article proposes a new approach to health behavior change, the disconnected values (intervention) model (DVM). The DVM consists of predetermined cognitive-behavioral strategies for initiating and maintaining changes in health behavior, such as the implementation of an exercise program. The model consists of helping clients (a) examine the benefits, in contrast to the costs and long-term consequences, of the habit they most want to change; (b) identify their deepest values and beliefs (e.g., health, family, faith, integrity); (c) detect a “disconnect” between the negative habit and the identified values; and (d) conclude whether the disconnect is acceptable, given its costs and long-term consequences. The client’s conclusion that the disconnect is unacceptable creates incentive and commitment for health behavior change. The theoretical foundations of the DVM are explained, and its specific application for exercise behavior change is described. Three outcome studies also are reported, as well as a brief case study. Implications for practitioners and suggestions for future research are provided.

Disability sports organizations could benefit from a better understanding of the factors leading individuals with disabilities to participate in sport. This study explored relationships among four sources of motivation (i.e., escape, self-esteem enhancement, self-improvement, and social interaction) and six forms of social support (i.e., emotional challenge, emotional support, listening support, reality confirmation, task appreciation, and task challenge) among 133 male and 60 female wheelchair athletes, ages 13–34 years. Differences in motivation and social support needs were examined according to athletes’ gender, age, playing level, skill level, years of participation, and future playing intentions. Results indicated that males were more motivated than females were by desire for escape and that long-term participants were more motivated than novices were by self-esteem enhancement. Escape, self-improvement, and social interaction were stronger motivators for high school athletes than for collegiate athletes. Importance of social support types differed according to skill level, playing level, years played, and future playing intentions.