Do It, Don't Feel It, and Be Invincible: A Prolog of Exercise Addiction in Endurance Sports

Investigating the effect of grit trait on performance and success in Hungarian athlete's sample

Background

The aim of the present study is to translate the Grit questionnaire into Hungarian and validate specifically within the context of sports. The second goal is to assess the questionnaire in Hungarian as a pilot study in the athlete population and to compare the grit trait with the coaches' athlete evaluation.

Methods

Two hundred and sixty nine athletes, including 40 national team players, took part in the study, with an average age of 18.17 years (SD = 5.51). For the preliminary assessment, the Cloninger Temperament and Character Questionnaire (TCI-RH) was used; the coaches' athlete evaluation was modeled on a talent map.

Results

The confirmatory factor analysis confirmed the fit of the two-factor structure, and the internal reliability of the questionnaire scales also proved to be adequate. 2. There is no relationship between adolescents' perceived grit and coach ratings. 3. The national team players achieved a higher grit score.

Conclusion

Based on the psychometric indicators, the validity and reliability of the questionnaire proved to be adequate. Therefore, it is applicable and useful for psychological practitioners and researchers in the Hungarian population within the context of sports.

Beyond a Game: A Narrative Review of Psychopathic Traits in Sporting Environments

There has been a growing interest around the broader effects of psychopathic traits, particularly in relation to deviant behaviors and the notion of so-called "successful psychopathy". As significant sociocultural touchstones, sporting events are often characterized by competitiveness and a sense of prestige. However, there has been limited attention towards psychopathic traits across recreational, amateur, and elite sports. Accordingly, we conducted a narrative review synthesizing primary observations on this topic, searching keywords in Scopus, APA PsychNet, and PubMed. Twenty-four academic papers were included in our results, which we thematized around demographic groups, namely: athletes and sport-adjacent non-athletes (i.e., coaches and spectators). Based on empirical findings from the reviewed papers, psychopathic traits could have medicolegal and forensic implications in relation to substance use, aggression, and violence. These could intersect with wider issues around doping, cheating, foul play, and have adverse outcomes for fellow participants, team dynamics, and spectators. Interestingly, our review also indicates that psychopathic traits may have correlations with determination and achievement in sport, echoing developing ideas around "successful psychopathy" in other domains. As such, increased awareness from all stakeholders and further multidisciplinary exchanges are vital to better understand the effects of psychopathic traits in sporting frameworks and their wider consequences.

Exercise addiction: A narrative overview of research issues

This narrative overview summarises the work on exercise addiction (EA) over the past 12 years and exposes critical conceptual and methodological issues. More than 1000 articles exist on EA, conceptualised as uncontrolled training harming the individual. Still, EA has no clinical diagnosis criteria at this time. Research is increasing continuously, but it is stale in advancing knowledge. Scalar measurement and lack of differentiation between addictive and instrumental exercise could be reasons for insufficient progress. Exercise addiction fits in the framework of behavioural addictions, but excessive exercise patterns also co-occur with other morbidities, including eating or body-image disorders. In these cases, exercise is instrumental; it functions to achieve a non-exercise-related goal. Therefore, it is essential to separate primary from secondary EA. Based on the interactional model, significant stress and capacity-exceeding ambitions fuel primary EA, while chief motives behind secondary EA embed body image dissatisfaction and eating disorders. Few reports exist on EA's brain mechanisms, which could delay its classification as a distinct psychiatric dysfunction. Treatment of EA involves cognitive-behavioural approaches, but we know little about their effectiveness. Conceptually focussed psychophysiological research and in-depth interviews, complementing scalar data, could answer several open questions in this widely studied but relatively stagnant scholastic field.

Can Cycling Be Addictive? A Qualitative Interview Study Among Amateur Female Cyclists

Exercise and healthy eating are proposed as a recommended lifestyle by the World Health Organization with several positive outcomes, including a decrease in pathologies such as diabetes and reduction in mortality rates. However, research suggests that there is the potential for exercise behaviour to become addictive among a small minority of individuals, which detrimentally impacts their lives. The risk of exercise addiction increases for endurance sports, of which cycling is considered one, given the intense physical and psychological demands, due to elevation and distance, in amateur cycling events. Understanding the risk factors specific to cycling is worthy of investigation, as it is not clear whether cycling can become an addiction. Using the ‘addiction component model’ as a framework, qualitative analysis was used to determine whether symptoms of addiction were present among a sample of eight female cyclists. Through the use of thematic analysis, the results showed that symptoms of addiction were reported by participants. Three themes were generated from research interviews comprising ‘addiction components’ (i.e. salience, conflict, mood modification, tolerance, withdrawal, and cycling despite health problems), ‘enabling infrastructure’ (i.e. supportive work, supportive family and friends), and ‘striving for excellence’ (i.e. needing to be the best, pushing too far, and having unrealistic expectation), currently measured in the ‘addiction component model’. There were also novel themes including ‘cycling above health’ where the participant continues to cycle against medical advice; ‘enabling infrastructure’ where work, family, and friends are accepting of cycling; and ‘striving for excellence’ where the participants ‘needing to be the best’ when comparing themselves to their peers, ‘pushing too far’ to achieve the goal set, and finally ‘unrealistic expectations’ resulting in negative comparison to peers. These findings suggest that addiction to cycling should be investigated further, and implications may necessitate clinical intervention to find alternative coping mechanisms when exercise is not available to an individual as there is a likelihood that individuals will continue to exercise in spite of injury and against medical advice.

Perfectionism Patterns, Dark Personality, and Exercise Addiction Trend in High-Intensity Sports

The present work tries to describe the relationships among perfectionism, dark traits of personality, and exercise addiction and according to highly intense sports. Following research on perfectionism in sport, its dysfunctional facet is based on a continuous and negative cognitive-evaluative judgement about the difficulties to achieve the accomplishment of tasks or behaviors that improve their sport performance, describing how athletes configure altered thoughts or cognitive resources in their sport experiences. The Spanish versions of the Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale, the Short Dark Triad Scale, and the Exercise Addiction Inventory were applied in a sample of 462 Spanish amateur athletes (39.6% women and 60.4% men). The findings show that a more maladaptive perfectionist pattern (concern over mistakes and external criticism) is related to higher levels of dark personality traits and a greater risk of exercise addiction. However, there are no differences between runners and CrossFit users on the subject of perfectionism, dark traits, and exercise addiction scores.

The Role of Sports Physiotherapist in Confronting Exercise Addiction

Everyday physical activity plays an important part in health maintenance and disease prevention. Excess exercise, however, can cause detrimental effects on both physical and mental health. It can also hamper the quality of life to an extent that individual is unable to regulate this behavior. ‘Addicted’ exercisers are more likely to work out for intrinsic rewards and experience troubling feelings of deprivation. In comparison, ‘committed’ exercisers participate in physical activity for extrinsic benefits and, when they cannot exercise, do not experience extreme withdrawal symptoms. Sportspersons indulge themselves in long hours of training as a response of their quest to improve endurance and performance in the face of common setbacks. Recognizing the addiction to exercise is also a contentious idea and the aim of this article is to draw an attention towards the same. Exercise Addiction diagnosis needs employment of questionnaires such as Exercise Dependence Scale, Obligatory Exercise Questionnaire, and Exercise Addiction Inventory. They need to be employed in the pre-participation evaluation of an individual participating in any sports event. Physiotherapists are often the first to meet an individual with exercise addiction. Physiotherapists play an important role in diagnosis of exercise addiction as well as in prevention as they are aware of challenges of treating exercise addicted patients and develop specific approaches to deal with their issues. As if it goes unnoticed, the prognosis can even be fatal.

The clinical utility of the cervical vestibular-evoked myogenic potential (cVEMP) in university-level athletes with concussion

INTRODUCTION

Concussion is defined as a mild traumatic brain injury that can occur in all sport activities. Cervical vestibular-evoked myogenic potentials (cVEMPs) are accepted to demonstrate the vestibulocollic reflex. MAIN: To evaluate subclinical cervical abnormalities in the vestibulospinal pathway in subjects with concussion history with and without related symptoms via evoked vestibular potential.

METHODS

Monaurally air conduction cVEMP (500 Hz tone bursts) at intensity of 100 dBnHL and 200 sweeps. All responses were replicated.

RESULTS

One hundred fifty-four participants were initially tested; however, three (03) participants did not produce usable data (no response) and were eliminated for the dataset cutoff values analysis, being considered just as abnormal response. One hundred fifty-one responses consisted of 45 non-athlete individuals without any history of a concussion or concussion symptoms (normative group), 45 athletes without any history of a concussion or concussion symptoms (control group), 33 athletes with a history of at least one concussion but no concussion symptoms related (history group), and 28 athletes with a history of at least one concussion and concussion symptoms (symptoms group). The history and symptoms groups had statistically higher latency scores than the control and the normative groups. The Index Ratio data and Threshold data did not produce a significant effect for four groups. But, a pattern of abnormal cVEMP was found when comparing those without a history of concussion (0% abnormal response) versus the history group (24%) and symptoms group (32.3%).

CONCLUSION

The study provides data which supports the positive impact of cVEMP when evaluating athletes and identifying concussion processes.