Athletic Training Must Go Beyond Physical Health

By Holly Hearn

With so much emphasis on conditioning and learning a sport’s individual techniques and rules, little time is spent focusing on the athlete’s mental health.

“Balancing academics and athletics, heavy training schedules, classwork and social demands is stressful,” said Mary Tinlin, Flagler College’s Dean of Health and Wellness. “Good evidence shows external pressures like ‘perform well, don’t fail and maintain identity as an athlete’ contribute to depression and anxiety risk.”

Female athletes also deal with facing gender-based inequalities such as less funding, fewer opportunities for advancements, body-image pressures, body shaming and more from those in authority.

Biological factors can also present different, long-lasting issues for female athletes, such as hormonal fluctuations, energy and nutritional demands and injury recovery time, adding stress that might not be present in their male counterparts.

Despite this, many athletes are expected to simply put these issues aside and focus on the game.

“I think oftentimes athletes have been taught to push through pain and play through everything,” said Lainee Mack, who plays volleyball for College of Charleston. “From an early age we have been told to be tough and fight through everything. Although this is good and can be beneficial at times, sometimes pushing through and ignoring your mental health does more harm than good.”

When athletes are struggling mentally, it can have multiple negative impacts — including on their athletic performance. According to a study by the National Library of Medicine, bad mental health is linked to greater physical ailments and worse athletic performance.

Various stigmas also exist surrounding mental health in sports, and even if athletes are aware they have things that they need to work through, the stigmas often lead to silence.

Being seen as “weak” is one of these stigmas. Being strong — both mentally and physically — is seen as the only path to success in sports, and anything less could be seen as a failure.

In some cases, external pressure can cause disordered eating and nutritional deficiencies, worsening athletic performance and adding to the stress. There a strong sense of shame surrounding these struggles with body-image because they are often dismissed or seen as a “part of the sport,” even though their impacts can be dangerous.

“In the dance community, there is a stigma and lack of conversation surrounding mental health awareness, it is generally expected that dancers don’t talk about issues like this even though it’s something that almost everyone has an experience with in some form,” said Olivia Murphy, a freshman who dances for the University of Maine at Farmington.

These struggles are all an unfortunate reality for many female athletes. It is something that they have all dealt with or know someone who has. Even so, the gender-specific issues are often overlooked in women’s sports.

“Gendered stressors that are specific to female physiology may be misunderstood or undervalued by coaches or administrators more accustomed to male athlete norms,” Tinlin said.

Understanding mental health care for female-specific issues from both the coaching and athlete level will help to combat these issues at the source. There are ways that these struggles can be dealt with from every level, including the institutions, coaching staff and by the athletes themselves.

Mental health struggles can affect performance, safety and how long the athlete stays in the sport. It can lead to increased risk of injury, slower recovery times and burnout. Outside of athletics, it can also impact academic success, personal growth and overall quality of life.

Creating routine mental health check-ins is also beneficial for dealing with issues from the start. Having mental-health training, teaching stress-management skills and nutrition and recovery education from the beginning will give athletes the proper resources before it is too late.

“Treat your [mental] health with the same respect you treat your physical health. As an athlete you spend an inordinate amount of time training and conditioning to perform at your physical best. It is essential to do the same for your mental and brain health,” Tinlin said. “If you sprain an ankle, you take some time off, you get physical therapy, the trainer weighs in on when it’s safe to return to sport. It should be no different for mental and brain health.”

Creating an environment focused on breaking stigmas will help to normalize these conversations and help athletes find support.

“It is important for dancers who are struggling to find the people you can talk to about it,” Murphy said. “Start creating open conversations with your friends and peers at the studio cause you’re probably not alone in your feelings.”

A holistic perspective is also important when considering the many roles athletes play in their lives beyond their sport. Monitoring schedules and commitments is important when working to prevent burnout, especially in competitive seasons, injuries and times of high academic stress. Beyond this, educating athletes and coaches on healthy sleep, nutrition, rest and recovery is the long-term solution to this issue.

“Find things outside of your sport that bring you joy. Form friendships with people outside of your team, learn a new skill, pick up a book. Taking the time to pour into other areas of your life will ultimately — and ironically — allow you to pour more into your sport,” Mack said.