Stronger Under Stress
3 Science-Backed Resilience Principles for Elite Athletes
With immense pressures from within and outside, stress is a constant companion in sport.
Without the right mental tools, that stress can lead to poor performance, burnout, and dropout. The question is not how we can help athletes avoid stress, but rather how we can help them deal with it.
In this article, I’ll share three science-backed principles that help athletes build resilience to stress (as a sport psychology student and personal trainer).
Principle 1: Commit to values, not results
The scoreboard. The stats. The medals. The rankings.
The results are often the main interest for the high-performing athlete. But that relentless result focus creates pressure, anxiety, and stress. The question is how athletes can become more resilient to stress in a result-focused environment.
That is why you take the focus off the results.
Instead of focusing on the results, the athlete commits to pursuing values – principles that are deeply important to us and guide our behavior. As values are central to one’s identity, they remain stable despite the circumstances.
That is what resilience involves: Stability despite the circumstances.
The power of value-based motivation
- Young athletes with high psychological flexibility were found to have lower levels of perceived stress, anxiety, and depression (Ronkainen et al., 2024).
- Goals that reflect one’s interests and values promote vitality and prevent physical and emotional exhaustion (Martínez-González et al., 2025).
- Identifying personal values – and engaging in meaningful actions – can enhance athletes’ mental well-being, recovery experiences, and self-esteem (Ronkainen et al., 2024).
How can values be enacted into the life of the high-performing athlete? Here are some examples:
- Discipline – “I show up for training whether I feel like it or not.”
- Growth – “I’m here to improve, not to prove.”
- Courage – “I act in line with my goals, even when fear shows up.”
Principle 2: Stress = Challenge = Opportunity
Problematic, challenging, and stressful situations are not abnormalities in life.
They happen all the time.
A challenge mindset involves accepting that life is stressful (Maddi, 2004). Life throws challenging situations your way. In a challenge mindset, those challenges are seen as part of life. Instead of viewing them as obstacles on the road, they are part of the road.
Individuals who view stress as a challenge…
- Have reduced levels of psychological distress compared to those who view stress as a threat (Chen et al., 2022).
- Have increased anabolic growth hormone, positive emotions, and cognitive flexibility during stressful situations (Crum et al., 2017).
- Approach and deal with stressful situations, rather than avoiding them (Jamieson et al., 2018).
“Don’t go through it, grow through it,” as said by Kevin Elko (performance consultant to numerous NFL teams). When stress occurs, the tendency is often to escape it as quickly as possible. But what if stress signifies learning opportunities?
Like a heavy squat grows strong legs, a challenge grows strong psychological resilience. If you want stronger legs, you should squat more often. Likewise, to build resilience, one needs to be okay with being in stressful situations.
So, how can you reframe the occurrence of stressful situations to grow resilience?
- “This challenge will help me grow to a stronger version of myself.”
- “The more I learn from this challenge, the more resilient I’ll be for the next.”
- “Every time I face stress, I train my mind to stay strong under pressure.”
Principle 3: Be compassionate with oneself
Though failure is inherent to sports, an athlete can turn into their own harshest critic when failure happens.
However, resilience is not about kicking yourself while you’re down, but about helping yourself back up.
A self-compassionate mindset means treating yourself with kindness and understanding, especially when things don’t go your way (Neff, 2003). Self-compassion is the opposite of self-criticism, and according to research in sports psychology, it pays off.
Self-compassion is found to be linked to:
- Less emotional reaction after setbacks (Mosewich et al., 2011).
- Less negative emotions resulting from sport-specific daily stress (Rothlin et al, 2022).
- A higher overall well-being (Reis et al., 2019), even in high-pressure situations (Ceccarelli, 2019).
- Sustained motivation after failure (Reis et al., 2015).
- Greater help-seeking behavior (Waslykiw & Clairo, 2018).
The wealth of supporting evidence for self-compassion extends far beyond these 5 bullet points.
However, the elite sports world rejects self-compassion: it’s too soft.
Elite athletes need to be tough. Treating yourself with kindness and understanding sounds like you’re letting yourself off the hook, while many athletes feel like they need to work harder after failure.
In reality, self-compassion isn’t about letting yourself off.
It’s found that self-compassionate people sustain their motivation despite failure (Reis et al., 2015; Röthlin et al., 2022). Self-compassion facilitates resilience to the negative emotions that follow from failure, while maintaining focus on the goals.
Self-compassion is toughness.
So, how can you shift from being your own worst critic to your own best encouragement? Here is some implementable self-talk for failure:
- “I learn from my failures and move forward.”
- “I know this is hard for you, but you can get through it.”
- “Every athlete fails, I deserve support.”
Implementation Plan
The question becomes how we can implement these principles into organizations to create resilient athletes on a large scale.
This would require:
- A bottom-up approach, where athletes are provided with science-backed mental tools that are translated and tailored to the athlete’s experiences.
- A top-down approach, where resilience is cultivated into an organization’s culture through leadership.
The good news: I can help you with both.
Is your organization looking to cultivate resilience principles? Send me an e-mail.
References
Ceccarelli, L. A., Giuliano, R. J., Glazebrook, C. M., & Strachan, S. M. (2019). Self-compassion and psycho-physiological recovery from recalled sport failure. Frontiers in Psychology, 10, 1-14.
Chen, L.; Qu, L.; Hong, R.Y. Pathways Linking the Big Five to Psychological Distress: Exploring the Mediating Roles of Stress Mindset and Coping Flexibility. J. Clin. Med.; 2022; 11, 2272.
Crum, A.J.; Akinola, M.; Martin, A.; Fath, S. The role of stress mindset in shaping cognitive, emotional, and physiological responses to challenging and threatening stress. Anxiety Stress Coping; 2017; 30, pp. 379-395.
Martínez-González, N., Atienza, F. L., Duda, J. L., & Balaguer, I. (2025). The “What” of Athletes’ Goal Pursuit and Its Relationships to Goal-Related Processes and Well- and Ill-Being. Behavioral Sciences, 15(5), 661.
Jamieson, J.P.; Hangen, E.J.; Lee, H.Y.; Yeager, D.S. Capitalizing on appraisal processes to improve affective responses to social stress. Emot. Rev.; 2018; 10, pp. 30-39.
Mosewich, A. D., Kowalski, K. C., Sabiston, C. M., Sedgwick, W. A., & Tracy, J. L. (2011). Self-Compassion: a potential resource for young women athletes. Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 33(1), 103–123.
Reis, N. A., Kowalski, K. C., Ferguson, L. J., Sabiston, C. M., Sedgwick, W. A., & Crocker, P. R. E. (2015). Self-compassion and women athletes’ responses to emotionally difficult sport situations: An evaluation of a brief induction. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 16(Part 3), 18–25.
Reis, N. A., Kowalski, K. C., Mosewich, A. D., & Ferguson, L. J. (2019). Exploring Self-Compassion and Versions of Masculinity in Men Athletes. Journal Of Sport And Exercise Psychology, 41(6), 368–379.
Ronkainen, H., Lundgren, T., Kenttä, G., Ihalainen, J., Valtonen, M., & Lappalainen, R. (2024). Psychological Flexibility Skills and Mental Wellbeing in Athletes: An exploration of associations and gender differences.
Röthlin, P., Horvath, S., Messerli, T., Krieger, T., Berger, T., & Birrer, D. (2022). Associations of self-compassion with shame, guilt, and training motivation after sport-specific daily stress – a smartphone study. International Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 21(1), 90–101.
Wasylkiw, L., and J. Clairo. 2018. “Help Seeking in Men: When Masculinity and Self-Compassion Collide.” Psychology of Men & Masculinity 19 (2): 234–242.
