Resilience and burnout in dual career

Abstract

The dual career in which an athlete combines studies or work with sport, can be facilitated or interrupted by different factors. The aim of the present study was to know the prevalence of resilience and burnout symptoms of professional athletes; and analyze the differences based on their compatibility or not with an academic and/or professional career. Elite athletes of different modalities were evaluated, 29 men and 3 women (age: M = 22.37 SD = 3.9), who were administered the Resilience Scale (Ruíz, De la Vega, Poveda, Rosado, & Serpa, 2012; adaptation of Wagnild and Young, 1993) adapted to Spanish and the Burnout Inventory in Athletes Revised (IBD-R; Garcés, De Francisco and Arce, 2012). The results showed that 27.7% of the elite athletes who, in turn, carried out their studies, presented a high resilience compared to 10% of the athletes who only practice sport, notable significant differences. Regarding burnout syndrome, 81.25% of the athletes evaluated had related symptoms, without significant differences depending on whether they were pursuing a dual career or not. In this way, information is provided on the beneficial and complementary nature of the dual trajectories compared to the single sports, with more resilient athletes; capable of facing the academic/professional and sports transitions that become a motivating challenge and not a threat, preventing stressful situations, abandoning your sport and/or studies. In addition, resilience is presented as a key emotional competence in the skills training dual career.