Motivational climate, resilience, and burnout in male athletes

Achievement goal theory is a widespread theoretical perspective for studying motivation. Particularly, theory underlines the importance of the motivational climate created by significant others, parents, and in sport coaches. In a mastery involving climate, success is defined as individual progress and the focus is on skill improvement; in a performance involving climate, social comparison, normative-based evaluation, and competition are emphasized. A mastery-involving climate fosters task commitment and correlates with functional affective reactions, such as enjoyment and satisfaction, whereas a performance-involving climate often results in low commitment and dysfunctional reactions. Some athletes could perceive physical and psychological demands of sport as excessive. A state of physical, emotional, and mental exhaustion that results from excessive demands of training and competing is defined burnout. This state can lead to an unpleasant sport experience and, eventually, to discontinuation or withdrawal. Resilience in sport pertains to an athlete’s ability to maintain relatively stable, healthy levels of psychological and physical functioning or competence, or experience positive adaptations following exposure to significant sporting adversity. The aim of our study was to examine the relationships among personal factors (perceived competence and resilience), a situational factor (motivational climate), and burnout in male athletes of different ages.