The Sporting Resilience Model
- Dr Paul McCarthy
- 2 days ago
- 14 min read
Foundations of sporting resilience
Research across 92 studies in sport and exercise psychology presents us with an evidence-based framework that helps us understand why some athletes maintain their equilibrium during adversity while others falter [1] [1] [1]. The Sporting Resilience Model emerges from systematic evidence (qualitative, quantitative, mixed-method, review, and conceptual investigations) to define sporting resilience as an environmentally adaptable, interaction-dominant, dynamic-process trajectory. Practically, it means that an athlete's metacognitive-emotional-behavioral capacities work together to maintain positive equilibrium and successfully adapt to sport-related adversities they encounter on their journey [1].
We build this theoretical foundation from sport psychology evidence alongside considerations from positive and clinical psychology, allowing broader application across our field [1][1][1]. The framework presents sporting resilience through a filtering mechanism—biopsychosocial protective factors form the core through which athletes process and respond to challenges. Similar to how a carpenter's workshop filters different tools for specific tasks, the strength of an athlete's protective filter determines both the impact of adversity and the trajectory of positive adaptation that follows [1][1][1]. Athletes with robust protective filters experience reduced negative impacts from identical stressors compared to those with weaker filtering systems.
Sporting resilience represents a learned process rather than an innate gift, developing through interactions across multiple environments throughout an athlete's journey [1]. The dynamic nature means resilience changes continuously, influenced by temporal and interactive factors such as career stage, personal circumstances, and the nature of adversity encountered—what we might describe as the 'ups and downs' and 'when-what-where' of athletic experience [1]. This constant interface between individual and environment makes sporting resilience fundamentally environmentally adaptable [1].
The interaction-dominant component indicates that resilience emerges from dual interactions: an individual engaging within themselves and with their environments, creating a dynamic cycle of learning and relearning [1]. Participants in resilience research emphasize how they "developed" and "learned" sporting resilience through interactions with situations and people across multiple contexts [4] [5]. The model recognizes that resilience arises from and responds to sport-related adversities, with existing protective resources determining the process-trajectory that unfolds [1].
Metacognitive-emotional-behavioral capacities serve as central operational mechanisms that work in tandem rather than isolation. Cognitive evaluation of thinking, emotional responses, and behavioral capacities demonstrate high overlap, much like how theoretical orientations in our field interconnect rather than operate independently [1]. Athletes engage metacognitions (evaluating their own thoughts) and positive evaluations (challenge appraisals) to protect themselves from potential negative effects of stressors [12]. Research shows that resilience models developed in other domains might not transfer effectively to sport contexts, so the Sporting Resilience Model provides a sport-specific framework for research and applied practice in testable, objective ways [12][1][1][1].
The framework acknowledges that resilience in sport relates specifically to an athlete's ability to manage daily stressors—environmental demands encountered during training and competition [12]. Evidence indicates resilience represents one of the key psychological characteristics for athletic success [12]. The framework maintains conceptual detail and testability by considering all aspects of resilience ontology in sport rather than reducing complexity for convenience; we need this thoroughness to serve our clients effectively [1].
Components of the Framework
The framework operates through interconnected elements that work together to determine an athlete's capacity for withstanding adversity. We might consider these components as layers within a system, where a central protective filter works alongside three operational capacities to create what we observe as sporting resilience.
The Protective Filter System
At the heart of this framework lies what we term the biopsychosocial protective filter - a collection of pre-existing resources that precede resilient outcomes and determines how adversities impact athletes [7]. This filter represents various resilience factors, broadly understood as pre-stressor qualities that increase the likelihood of an individual withstanding or quickly recovering from challenges [13]. The strength of this protective system directly establishes both the impact of adversity and the trajectory of positive adaptation that follows [6].
Research evidence supports ten key components within this protective filter:
Perceived and tangible social support: The athlete's perception or actual receipt of emotional, psychological, informational, and practical assistance [6]
Motivational climate and motivation: The psychological environment created by coaches or organizations that enhances training and competition engagement [6]
Metacognitive challenge appraisal: Processes used to plan, monitor, and assess adversity as challenging while recognising adequate resources exist to grow from the experience [6]
Sense of meaning and belonging: An individual's sense of purpose and emotional need for belonging central to their sporting identity [6]
Self-regulation ability: The capacity to understand, manage, and control thoughts, emotions, and behaviours that may disrupt goal pursuit [6]
Mastery and sense of control: Mastery and control over life circumstances within and outside sport [6]
Optimism: Attitudes reflecting hope and belief that action outcomes will be favourable and positive [6]
Facilitative environment: The physical and psychological sporting environment that balances challenge and support to optimise growth and performance [6]
Passion and love of sport: Strong inclination toward sport as a self-defining activity that is loved, valued, and receives regular time and energy investment [6]
Identity and self-insight: The qualities, beliefs, and standards comprising the mental model of an athlete's self, developed through introspection [6]
Whilst the protective filter appears consistent across athletes, the specific composition reflects individual differences [7]. We see this variation as athletes bring their unique personal histories, experiences, and developmental trajectories to their sporting endeavours.
Operational Capacities
Three interconnected capacities serve as the operational mechanisms through which the protective filter manifests in observable resilience outcomes. These capacities work in tandem rather than isolation, reflecting the integrated nature of human functioning under adversity.
Metacognitive capacity refers to an athlete's insight into and control over their own mental processes [14]. Athletes utilise these metacognitive processes to plan, monitor, and assess adversity experiences as they unfold [6]. Elite athletes function as experts not only in movement execution but also in planning, metacognition, and reflection [14]. This capacity enables athletes to appraise situations as challenges rather than threats, recognising they possess adequate ability and personal resources to grow and master adversity [6]. Metacognitive skills serve as higher-order regulatory functions that coordinate the use of psychological support techniques [14].
Emotional capacity encompasses an athlete's ability to manage and regulate emotional responses when facing adversity. Self-regulation ability specifically involves understanding, managing, and controlling emotions that might disrupt short-term and long-term goal pursuit [6]. Research demonstrates that emotional regulation proves trainable and sustainable through psychological skills training applications [14]. This capacity operates through the affect-attention relationship supported by clinical neuropsychology research [7].
Behavioural capacity represents an athlete's ability to perform observable actions in response to adversity [15]. These behavioural responses include supporting teammates following mistakes, displaying emotional regulation, making physical efforts to overcome challenges, showing positive reactions after errors, demonstrating composure under pressure, and exhibiting willingness to accept feedback [16]. Participants in resilience research emphasise that metacognitive, emotional, and behavioural aspects work in synergy rather than as isolated components, with each aspect remaining permeable and interconnected [7]. This mutual interaction between emotion, metacognition, and behaviour forms the operational engine of sporting resilience [7].
Practically, this means that when we observe an athlete responding effectively to adversity, we witness all three capacities working together through the mediation of their protective filter. The athlete thinks about their thinking (metacognitive), manages their emotional responses (emotional), and executes appropriate actions (behavioural) based on the strength and composition of their underlying protective resources.
The filtering mechanism: How sporting resilience unfolds
Sporting resilience operates through what we might consider a filtering system—one where biopsychosocial protective factors mediate the relationship between adversity and athlete outcomes [1]. When athletes encounter sport-related stressors, these challenges pass through their protective filter before manifesting as either minimal impact or requiring adaptive responses. The strength of this filter directly determines both the magnitude of adversity's impact and the subsequent trajectory of positive adaptation that unfolds [1] [2].
But how does this filtering process actually work? The operational process follows a dynamic cycle wherein athletes continuously engage with their environments through their existing protective resources. Specifically, the model operates on the principle that sporting resilience arises from and in response to sport-related adversities [1]. Athletes select context-appropriate solutions by engaging their protective resources in an environmentally adaptable manner, ensuring both performance maintenance and positive adaptation [1].
This selection process operates within constraints determined by the athlete's existing protective factors, which establish boundaries for available response options [1].
The model's process-trajectory maximizes performance and adaptation capacity while adhering to these protective factor constraints [1]. Consider two athletes facing the same competitive setback—one with robust protective factors experiences reduced negative impact from identical stressors compared to an athlete with weaker protective resources. This differential response illustrates how resilience trajectories emerge from filter strength rather than the adversity itself. The constant interface between the individual and environment makes the process fundamentally interactive rather than reactive [1].
The metacognitive-emotional-behavioral capacities function as the operational mechanisms through which protective factors manifest in observable resilience outcomes [1]. These three capacities demonstrate high overlap rather than operating as distinct, isolated systems [1]. During adversity encounters, cognitive evaluation of thinking, emotional responses, and behavioral capacities activate simultaneously and influence each other reciprocally. Athletes engage metacognitive processes to appraise challenges while emotional regulation modulates the intensity of stress responses and behavioral capacity enables the execution of adaptive actions.
The interaction-dominant nature means resilience determination occurs through dual interactions: an individual interacting within themselves (internal dialogue between cognition, emotion, and behavior) and engaging with their environments (responding to external stressors and support systems) [1]. This creates a dynamic cycle of environmentally adaptable learning and relearning [1]. Each adversity encounter provides new information that athletes integrate into their protective filter, potentially strengthening specific components through successful journey or revealing gaps requiring development.
The temporal and contextual factors termed 'when-what-where' continuously modify how the model operates [1]. A career-threatening injury during Olympic trials activates different protective resources than a minor training setback early in a season. The model accounts for these variations through its dynamic process-trajectory, recognizing that resilience capacity fluctuates based on career stage, personal life circumstances, and adversity nature [1]. Fletcher and Sarkar (2016) demonstrated how environments providing balanced challenge and support contribute to building this adaptive capacity [1].
The learned nature of sporting resilience manifests through repeated interactions with situations and people across multiple contexts [1]. Athletes develop and strengthen their protective filters through accumulated experiences rather than possessing fixed resilience levels. This learning occurs through the environmentally adaptable feedback loop where each adversity encounter informs subsequent responses, gradually refining the athlete's capacity to maintain positive equilibrium across diverse challenges [1]. We might consider this as the athlete's professional development unfolding through experience, much like how practitioners develop their therapeutic competencies through repeated client encounters and reflective practice.
Pathways Through Adversity: Two Resilience Trajectories
Research reveals two distinct pathways through which athletes experience sporting resilience when encountering isolated adversity: minimal-impact trajectory and emergent resilience trajectory [7]. The nature of adversity (controllability and severity), combined with an athlete's resilience capacity at the time of encounter, determines which trajectory manifests [7] [8]. Understanding these pathways helps practitioners recognise where their clients might be on their resilience journey; more importantly, it guides us in supporting athletes through different phases of their development.
Minimal-impact resilience
Athletes with robust protective filters often experience what we term the minimal-impact trajectory, where adversities create limited negative effects [7] [121]. These athletes describe challenges as events that "don't faze me as much" [7] [121]. One research participant captured this succinctly, noting that when true resilience exists, the magnitude of adversity makes minimal difference; conversely, weaknesses in protective factors cause smaller inconveniences to overwhelm athletes instead of athletes overcoming them [7] [121].
The controllability dimension proves critical in these responses. When facing controllable, significant adversities, athletes may engage brief self-reflection and learning to prevent similar situations; yet they recover rapidly without extended disruption [7] [121]. Uncontrollable adversities (environmental factors beyond an athlete's influence) typically result in acceptance and immediate progression without extended processing time [7] [121]. This trajectory represents resilience as maintaining wellbeing or functioning following stressors without substantial disruption to performance or psychological equilibrium.
Emergent resilience
Every participant in resilience research reported experiencing the emergent resilience trajectory, characterised by learning from setbacks to prevent future occurrences [7] [121]. This pathway unfolds across four sequential stages following adversity encounters, each stage serving a particular function in the athlete's developmental process.
Disruption of Equilibrium represents the initial stage, typically caused by multiple chronic or acute adversities temporarily coinciding [7] [121]. Athletes find their usual coping mechanisms insufficient; their protective filter becomes overwhelmed by the convergence of challenges.
Depletion-Hiatus follows as the second stage, during which athletes step away from the sporting environment or disengage from triggering adversities due to accumulated stress [7] [121]. Participants reported inability to sleep, think, or perform important functions during this phase. Rather than viewing this as failure, we might understand this withdrawal as the athlete's protective system creating space for recovery and reorganisation.
The third stage, Antecedent-Review, involves athletes undertaking critical re-evaluation of their lives and sport's meaning, ultimately identifying which components within their protective factors assist or debilitate their resilience [7] [121]. Participants described needing to step back from training, return home to spend time with family, and relax rather than allowing adversity to consume them [7] [121]. This reflective phase seems essential for meaningful growth; it allows athletes to examine their foundations and make conscious choices about their future development.
The final stage, Learning Antecedents-Rebound Resilience, encompasses effortful self-development in psychosocial factors to strengthen resilience mechanisms and achieve positive adaptation with return to high performance over extended periods [7] [121]. This trajectory demonstrates resilience as growth following stressor exposure, representing allostatic rather than homeostatic adaptation processes. Athletes emerge not merely recovered, but strengthened through their experience of adversity.
Cultivating resilience through practice and experience
Athletes develop resilience through sustained engagement with challenge rather than possessing it as a fixed trait. Research confirms that sporting resilience represents a learned capacity that builds throughout an athlete's professional journey [3] [1]. Participants in resilience studies consistently emphasize how they "developed" and "learned" sporting resilience, providing evidence that cultivation occurs through deliberate strategies and meaningful encounters with adversity [3].
How do we support athletes on this developmental pathway? The cultivation process requires systematic exposure to challenge within supportive environments, much like the progression we see in other areas of athletic development. Similar to learning technical skills or tactical awareness, resilience building follows a developmental trajectory where athletes gradually expand their capacity to manage increasingly complex stressors.
Encountering adversity as a catalyst for growth
Sports adversity serves as the essential ingredient for resilience formation, emerging from combinations of biological, psychological, and social stressors [9]. The degree of adversity exposure shapes developmental pathways in distinct ways. When athletes encounter minor adversities such as unfavorable training conditions or mild injuries, they typically maintain regular functioning while gathering psychological resources [9]. However, moderate or major adversities including performance failures or significant injuries trigger more complex psychological processes involving imbalance, depletion, disruption, and reorganization, potentially stimulating higher resilience levels through emergent developmental pathways [9].
Athletes build tolerance toward specific adversities through successful navigation experiences, enabling improved adaptation when facing similar challenges in future contexts. This phenomenon, termed the steeling effect of adversity, allows athletes to increase their tolerance by analyzing and applying knowledge gained from prior experiences, thereby reducing maladaptive psychological and behavioral responses [9]. Conversely, the sensitizing effect of adversity occurs when athletes fail to successfully navigate specific stressors, resulting in maladaptive outcomes and increased vulnerability to similar future adversities [9].
The key lies not in the presence or absence of adversity, but rather in how athletes process and integrate these experiences into their developing resilience framework. We might consider this as building a repertoire of responses, where each successfully navigated challenge adds to an athlete's capacity for future encounters.
Strengthening protective resources over time
Protective resources develop gradually through repeated encounters with challenge and support [9]. Social support from multiple sources including coaching staff, family members, and peer networks functions as a buffer, reducing adverse impacts on mental health while enhancing coping abilities [9]. Research confirms these protective resources can strengthen resilience mechanisms when athletes undertake deliberate self-development in psychosocial factors following adversity encounters.
The development of these protective factors occurs through the same learning principles we see in other domains of athletic development. Athletes require guidance, practice, reflection, and gradual progression to build robust protective resources that serve them across various contexts and challenges.
Creating environments that foster resilience
Facilitative environments balance high challenge with high support, proving essential for sustained resilience development [10]. Challenge involves maintaining high expectations and accountability, while support promotes learning opportunities and builds trust between athletes and their support networks [10]. Environments emphasizing excessive challenge without adequate support create conditions that compromise wellbeing rather than building capacity.
Effective resilience cultivation requires individualized approaches rather than standardized programming [3]. Each athlete brings unique personal history, cultural background, and developmental needs to their resilience building journey. Sport psychologists play crucial roles in creating positive psychological environments and promoting emotional regulation strategies that fit the individual athlete's circumstances and goals [3].
But how do we know when we are providing appropriate challenge and support? The answer lies in understanding where each athlete sits in their developmental journey and adjusting our approach accordingly. Similar to periodization in physical training, resilience development benefits from systematic progression that matches the athlete's current capacity and gradually expands their ability to handle increasing complexity.
From framework to practice: Implementation pathways
How do we move from understanding resilience as a theoretical construct to supporting athletes on their developmental journey? The framework requires testable, objective methodologies that translate theoretical constructs into measurable outcomes [2]. Assessment and formulation principles from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and
Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) demonstrate promise for securing quantitative, qualitative, and situational information through systematic 'who-what-where-when' documentation [6]. Psychometrics incorporated within mixed-method, longitudinal designs have shown effectiveness in evaluating sporting resilience across varied temporal contexts and competitive scenarios [6]. Qualitative evidence rates highly within extant literature, providing insight into the dynamic process of resilience across various sport samples and cultural contexts [6].
The operational definition's conceptual detail enables practitioners to assess resilience through multiple measurement modalities. A multidisciplinary, dynamic, and personalized research agenda integrates knowledge from psychology, physiology, sports science, and data science domains [11]. This approach requires defining factors for monitoring, employing existing measurement infrastructure at sports organizations, and determining appropriate assessment frequencies [11]. But we also need to know where athletes are in their resilience development so we can support them appropriately; so we can travel safely and confidently with them through their adversity encounters.
Psychological measures including mood, motivation, and self-efficacy warrant assessment at relatively high frequencies, such as at the start of training days, to capture responses to encountered stressors [11]. Physiological measures like Total Quality of Recovery (TQR) provide complementary data streams [11]. Conversely, protective factors including personality traits and long-term motivational orientations remain more stable across time, requiring measurement at lower frequencies during competitive seasons [11]. We might consider the practitioner and athlete working together like two craftspeople in a workshop, where the athlete assumes responsibility for outcomes in their sporting life while the practitioner manages the assessment and support process.
Temporal data analysis using machine learning applications enables pattern detection in multimodal dynamic processes [11]. These analytical approaches account for fluctuations in individual temporal processes, determining resilience capacity and detecting warning signals of potential resilience losses [11]. When time required for psychological or physiological measures to return to baseline levels increases, this pattern predicts potential resilience degradation [11].
Each athlete arrives at their resilience development with a unique experience of personal history, sporting background, and protective resources. Practitioners require individualized approaches rather than standardized programming, as athletes respond differently to identical stressors [3] [11]. For example, an athlete might prefer a person-centred approach to resilience building, yet the nature of their adversity encounters might require more directive assessment and intervention strategies to meet their specific needs and circumstances. Sport psychologists fulfill crucial roles in creating positive psychological environments and promoting emotional regulation strategies [3]. Fletcher and Sarkar's research emphasizes that effective implementation depends on breadth and depth of organizational commitment across all personnel layers, from executive boards to athletes and support staff [10].
With so many ways to assess and support resilience development, do we all end up using different approaches? The framework provides the structure, yet practitioners choose to implement their resilience support based on athlete preferences, organizational context, and available resources. Appreciating the richness of assessment approaches, intervention methods, and support strategies means a lifetime of learning unfolds before us as sport psychology practitioners working alongside athletes on their resilience journey.
Key Takeaways on The Sporting Resilience Model
The Sporting Resilience Model provides a comprehensive framework for understanding how athletes develop and maintain psychological resilience through systematic interaction with adversity and protective factors.
• Resilience is learned, not innate - Athletes develop resilience through repeated interactions with stressors across multiple environments, making it a trainable skill rather than a fixed trait.
• The biopsychosocial protective filter determines impact - Ten key protective factors (social support, motivation, metacognitive appraisal, etc.) act as a filter that determines how adversity affects athletes.
• Three capacities work together - Metacognitive, emotional, and behavioral capacities operate in synergy to enable athletes to process and respond effectively to challenges.
• Two resilience trajectories exist - Athletes experience either minimal-impact resilience (quick recovery) or emergent resilience (growth through four-stage learning process) depending on adversity severity and protective filter strength.
• Facilitative environments are essential - Environments balancing high challenge with high support prove crucial for sustained resilience development and optimal athletic growth.
The model's strength lies in its evidence-based approach, incorporating findings from 92 studies to create a sport-specific framework that acknowledges resilience as a dynamic, environmentally adaptable process rather than a static characteristic.
References
[1] - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9811683/[2] - https://researchonline.gcu.ac.uk/en/publications/the-sporting-resilience-model-a-systematic-review-of-resilience-i/[3] - https://www.port.ac.uk/news-events-and-blogs/news/whats-the-secret-to-building-resilience-in-elite-sports[4] - https://www.researchgate.net/publication/381247741_You_don't_get_resilience_overnight_a_grounded_theory_framework_of_the_A-R-C_sporting_resilience_development[5] - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36619099/[6] - https://www.open.edu/openlearn/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=114223§ion=2[7] - https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s44202-024-00169-8[8] - https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1270887/full[9] - https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1003053/full[10] - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4199257/[11] - https://researchonline.gcu.ac.uk/files/64289123/fpsyg_13_1003053.pdf[12] - https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10413200.2024.2361701[13] - https://researchonline.gcu.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/87647042/87204097.pdf[14] - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12206794/[15] - https://www.cases.org.uk/imgs/55_tses_editor_s_choice_spread__p20_21_815.pdf[16] - https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1750984X.2022.2039749
