Knowledge Nuggets

Many high-performance athletes scrutinize their own performances and often aim for perfection. A recent study delved into how perfectionistic athletes view success and failure in sports. Through interviews and season-long diaries, researchers found that an athlete’s ability to deal with failure depended on the type of perfectionism they exhibited.

Elite athletes often grapple with keeping their mental health in check while striving for peak performance. Digging into the experiences of Swedish elite tennis players and exploring how they manage this up and down balancing act of mental health and performance throughout their careers shows the importance of support from sports psychologists.

While physical activity typically strengthens the immune system, high-intensity training can weaken it, leaving some high performance athletes more susceptible to upper respiratory infections. Discover key nutritional strategies to stay healthy and perform at your best!

Being an elite athlete comes with many stressors throughout training and competition. A study done on various Swedish national teams found that lifetime prevalence of mental health problems was reported by more than half of the athletes, with 19.5% of athletes meeting the diagnostic criteria for anxiety and/or depression.

A new review of the academic literature shows that positive engagement and development in elite youth sport hinge on supportive environments, strong relationships, and age-appropriate training. Remember, even top performers need developmentally appropriate activities that focus on overall well-being, ensuring they thrive both in and out of sport.

Did you know that professional skiing and snowboarding has an injury incidence rate of 3.49 injuries per 1000 days? Among these injuries, lower extremity injuries are most prevalent, with freestyle skiing exhibiting the highest risk at an alarming 6.83 injuries per 1000 days.

In today’s media landscape, social media is essential for professional athletes to connect with fans. Different post types drive the most engagement, offering potential insights for professional athletes to amplify their brand and impact across social media platforms.

In aesthetic sports, athletes often perceive pressure to be thin to maximise performance. A recent study of elite-level gymnasts in Sweden showed a relationship between body dissatisfaction and symptoms of disordered eating over time, suggesting that monitoring of behaviours driven by body dissatisfaction, such as exercising for weight control, is important to identity athletes at...

It was once believed that being slightly behind in a game could boost winning chances in basketball, but new research challenges this idea. Tests across other sports like football and rugby found no similar effect.

A growing awareness of mental health needs among elite athletes has emerged, but the mental well-being of coaches and high-performance support staff (HPSS) in elite sports is less understood. Heightened levels of psychological distress, risky alcohol consumption, and sleep disturbances were found among coaches and HPSS, highlighting the need to extend mental health support to...