Coach and Athlete Burnout - West Virginia University

Burnout 87
emotional, and cognitive categories. The success of an athlete’s adaptation to stress was
contingent upon the success of their coping strategy in combating the stressor(s). The
result of his/her coping response influenced that athlete’s state of adaptation. Failure to
adapt was marked by one’s physiological, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral
responses. Physiological signs of failure adaptation were exhaustion, illness, increase in
injuries, and a decrease in physiological capacity. Cognitively, one might expect to
experience catastrophic thinking, paranoia, and learned helplessness. Behaviorally,
failure adaptation was characterized by avoidance of practices and/or competitions.
Emotionally, he/she might experience extreme anxiety or affective disorders.
Because this model was recently developed research has yet to assess its utility.
However, Tennebaum et al. (2003b) conducted follow-up research to explore the value of
their model. The authors quantitatively and qualitatively studied 14 elite cyclists over 20
weeks. Their results supported their hypotheses derived from the Stress Response Model.
They noted that the model was successful in monitoring athletes’ stress response process.
The authors concluded that their model provides the means to examine the
comprehensive interaction of variables that were believed to affect an athlete’s adaptation
to stress.
Coakley (1992) presented an alternative model to the abovementioned, stress-
based theories. Although he acknowledged stress as an important component in
understanding burnout (a symptom rather than cause), Coakley suggested burnout is best
explained as a social phenomenon rather than a personal failure in coping with stress.
Specifically, he proposed that burnout is more closely tied to the social development of
young athletes, the social relations involved with participating in sport, and the social