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Psychological skills such as goal setting, imagery, relaxation and self-talk have been used in performance enhancement, emotional regulation, and increasing one’s confidence and/or motivation in sport. These skills can also be applied with athletes during recovery from injury in the rehabilitation setting or in preseason meetings for preventing injury. Research on psychological skill use with athletes has shown that such skills have helped reduce negative psychological outcomes, improve coping skills, and reduce reinjury anxiety (Evans & Hardy, 2002; Johnson, 2000; Mankad & Gordon, 2010). Although research has been limited in psychological skill implementation with injured athletes, these skills can be used when working with injured athletes or in the prevention of injury. Injured athletes may use psychological skills such as setting realistic goals in coming back from injury, imagery to facilitate rehabilitation, and relaxation techniques to deal with pain management. In prevention of injury, the focus is on factors that put an individual at-risk for injury. Thus, teaching strategies of goal setting, imagery, relaxation techniques, and attention/focus can be instrumental in preparing athletes for a healthy season.

This review presents a framework for understanding the role of social support in athletic injury prevention and recovery. The stress-injury model is presented, which is the theoretical basis for many studies on psychosocial factors related to injury in sport. In addition, we discuss the definition of social support, types and sources of social support for the athlete, and strategies supporting others can use to show their support. Finally, using social support as a rehabilitation strategy and gender differences will be presented.

Previous studies have demonstrated that parents may influence the physical activity (PA) levels of children. The present study sought to determine whether PA-related parenting behaviors were associated with the physical activity and relative weight of children, controlling for other covariates. A community sample of mothers (n = 193) of after-school-program attendees completed questionnaires assessing parental social support for PA, sedentary behavior, and moderate-to-vigorous physical activity. Children (N = 193, 51% girls) were objectively assessed for height and weight via stadiometer and digital scale, and the data were converted to body mass index (BMI) percentile via Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC, 2010a) growth charts. Linear regression analysis revealed that maternal encouragement for child PA was positively related to both child PA and BMI percentile. However, mother-child shared physical activity was negatively related to child BMI percentile. Therefore, varying types of PA-related parenting behaviors may have differential relationships with child PA and relative weight.

Sports have received widespread attention for the risk of disordered eating, but prevalence rates among athletes have varied from one to 62 percent across studies (Beals, 2004). One explanation for this discrepancy has been the tendency for previous studies to select “at-risk” sports for examination. The current study extends prior inquiry by expanding the sample to the entire student-athlete group at Ohio State University. Approximately 800 varsity student-athletes at this large Division I university completed the Questionnaire for Eating Disorder Diagnosis (Q-EDD; Mintz, O’Halloran, Mulholland, & Schneider, 1997) in 2001 and 2002, allowing gender and type of sport comparisons. The purposes of the study were to identify at-risk athletes as part of a screening process designed for eating disorder prevention, and to continue to refine the assessment of disordered eating in athletes. Not surprisingly, results showed that subclinical eating problems were more prevalent than clinical eating disorders in athletes, with 19 percent of female athletes and 12 percent of male athletes reporting eating disorder symptoms in year one, and 17 percent of female athletes and nine percent of male athletes in year two. Because the Q-EDD does not fully capture male body image problems, in 2002 questions were added to the Q-EDD that assessed preoccupation with muscularity, and preliminary Endings showed that one percent of male athletes fit a diagnosis of Muscle Dysmorphia. For both years, athletes from lean sports reported significantly more eating disorder symptoms than did athletes from nonlean sports. Specific policies employed by this university and prevention strategies will be discussed.

Psychologists’ narrations have identified how difficult it is to treat individuals with eating disorders. Moreover, the further the illness has progressed, the greater is the resistance to treatment. Therefore, prevention is critical in reducing the prevalence of these disorders among female athletes. The individuals having the most contact with athletes, and thus constituting the first line of defense against this problem, are coaches. Yet, information about nutrition and proper weight control and how these topics should be properly communicated to athletes is frequently not part of a coach’s training, and consequently may not be part of a coach’s knowledge base. This study was designed to evaluate the perceived versus actual knowledge about nutrition and weight control held by high school coaches of girls’ teams (̲n = 42). Two questionnaires, designed by the investigators, were administered sequentially. The first requested perceptions on various nutritional and weight control issues. The second was a quiz on actual knowledge of nutrition and weight control. Ninety-one percent of the coaches rated their nutrition knowledge as average or above, while only 40 percent had taken any formal classes in nutrition. On the actual quiz, only 14 percent of the coaches knew what percentage of simple carbohydrates should constitute athletes’ diets, while less than half (40%) were able to identify sources of complex carbohydrates. Eleven percent of the coaches thought athletes should have a high protein diet, while almost all of them (80%) believed that muscle is gained by eating proteins. Furthermore, only eight percent were able to identify sources of low fat protein. In regard to issues of weight control, 40 percent of the coaches thought athletes would improve performance by losing weight, 33 percent had impressed on their team the need to lose several times, and 28 percent had spoken to individual athletes about the need to lose weight several times. The predominant method for monitoring weight loss in athletes was visual inspection (37%) rather than actual measurement. Moreover, 77 percent of the coaches thought weight loss had to exceed 15 percent to reflect an anorectic condition, suggesting a possible need for earlier intervention by coaches. Since 82 percent of the coaches incorrectly thought body image distortions occur equally among male and female adolescents, it seems they are unaware of the greater risk for eating disorders among female athletes. While this study represents a small sampling of coaches, the observed lack of congruence between perceived and actual knowledge regarding nutrition and weight control must be addressed if prevention of eating disorders among athletes is to become a reality.

Injuries contrast with the overwhelmingly positive benefits of sports participation for female athletes, with estimates of a third or more of all female athletes sustaining injury in any given season. Media headlines convey the impression that female athletes are more vulnerable to sports injuries than male athletes are. This observation led to our first purpose, which was to use evidence from the sports injury surveillance literature to examine the facts about female athlete risks of injury and compare these risks to those of male athletes. In light of Gill and Kamphoff’s (2010) observation that we largely ignore or underrepresent female experiences in the sport and exercise psychology literature, our second purpose was to highlight examples of the psychological, behavioral, and social aspects of female athletes’ injury experiences, and provide comparisons to male experiences within this realm of sports medicine psychology. These evidence-based observations guide our concluding recommendations for injury reporting, prevention, and rehabilitation roles of those in the media and sports professions.