Coping with and recovering from sport injuries in elite kayakists

Abstract

Injury is a major setback for both sportsmen and women, and more so for elite athletes. This has spurred research which is primarily focused on physical recovery and treatment where psychological resilience plays a crucial role in recovery. In order to assess the prevalence of injuries and strategies for coping with them used by elite athletes to recover from their injuries, 362 kayakists (226 men and 136 women) registered in the Spanish National Championship 2012 were assessed. Participants answered a questionnaire on sports injuries and the Athletic Coping Skills Inventory (Crocker, 1992). The results revealed that the probability of suffering a sports injury was significant (.376) and similar in all the different stages of training; athletes do not adopt just one coping style, but a combination of adaptive and maladaptive strategies; in the maintenance stage of performance gains athletes resort to fewer maladaptive strategies; and male kayakists use different strategies to female kayakists to cope with injury. These results lend support to the Lazarus and Folkman model (1984), and the implications for intervention are discussed.