Helping someone on your own team when they are injured is part of having compassion in sports.

Stress is an intrinsic component of participation in collegiate sport (Etzel, 2009). Elevated levels of stress have been found to negatively impact well-being and sport performance (Etzel, 2009) as well as exacerbate susceptibility to athletic injury (Williams & Andersen, 1998). Although student athletes are likely to encounter stressors, their responses will vary dependent on situational factors and individual differences. Self-compassion may be an alternative way for athletes to respond to stressors in a healthy way. Existing literature suggests that in response to a stress-provoking situation, self-compassion can be used to enhance adaptive coping and well-being and reduce anxiety (Allen & Leary, 2010). However, the application of self-compassion in sport is a relatively new area of research that has yet to be studied within the stress-injury framework.

Self-compassion has been found to be positively associated with measures of well-being and psychological functioning (Allen & Leary, 2010). Thus, in response to a stress-provoking situation, a self-compassionate athlete would demonstrate understanding rather than self-judgment and would be able to acknowledge that stress is a part of the human and sport experience and need not be overwhelming. Self-compassion would allow the athlete to create mental distance from the stressor such that they do not overidentify with the experience. In this way, self-compassion would serve as a coping mechanism for stress in a similar way as other coping resources in Williams and Andersen’s (1998) stress-injury model. Coping is defined as the engagement of thoughts or actions to manage a situation that is perceived to be stressful (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984).

In the current study, negative life stress was negatively associated with emotion-focused, avoidance-focused, and problem-focused coping, which is consistent with H1 and the theoretical role of coping strategies in stress reduction (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). Conceptually, self-compassion should therefore also be negatively associated with life stress. However, findings from the current study indicated that self-compassion was positively associated with negative life stress, which is in contrast to the hypothesized direction. Nonetheless, the correlational nature of the analyses allows for an alternative interpretation: When athletes experience elevated levels of stress, they subsequently show themselves self-compassion in response to the stress. The experience of stress does not preclude someone from being a self-compassionate person. In the presence of high levels of stress, an athlete high in self-compassion treats themselves more kindly than an athlete low in self-compassion. They accept that sometimes they will feel stressed and there is no reason to judge the self because of that stress. Neely, Schallert, Mohammed, Roberts, and Chen (2009) found that overall well-being in college students was significantly predicted by both student stress and self-compassion. This suggests that self-compassion may be a useful strategy to reduce the negative consequences of stress on well-being but not necessarily reduce the stress experience itself (Neely et al., 2009). Self-compassion allows for stressors to be reappraised and experienced in a more positive light from a foundation of self-kindness, while simultaneously allowing individuals to accept their role in those events (Leary et al., 2007). Future studies may consider using structural equation modeling (SEM) to determine whether an athlete’s level of self-compassion alters the relationship between stress and overall well-being. That is, when self-compassion is high, there may be a weaker association between stress and reductions in well-being than when self-compassion is low. Sample size prevented the use of SEM in this study.

Preliminary evidence was provided for the role of self-compassion in reducing negative emotions such as anxiety that may arise in response to a stressful situation. If an athlete is more compassionate with themselves when they experience stress, subsequent anxiety may be reduced. In support of this hypothesis, higher levels of self-compassion were associated with lower levels of SAS somatic anxiety, SAS worry, and SAS concentration disruption. This is consistent with Neff et al. (2007) findings that college students higher in self-compassion reported less self-evaluative anxiety than those lower in self-compassion when exposed to a stress-provoking situation. The mindfulness component of self-compassion may allow the athlete to experience stress without subsequent increases in anxiety levels by creating mental distance between the athlete and the stress-provoking experience, thereby allowing it to be experienced without judgment. In support of this theory, the average mindfulness score was the highest of the six subscales of the SCS-SF. Studies in sport indicate that mindfulness may impact psychological adjustment through mechanisms such as the ability to regulate negative emotions (anxiety) and to remain willing to keep in contact with stress-provoking situations (Birrer, Röthlin, & Morgan, 2012).

The current study also examined the relationship between self-compassion and coping. The findings from this study were threefold. First, in contrast with H4, self-compassion was negatively associated with emotion-focused coping. Research indicates that self-compassion is positively correlated with the emotion-focused strategies of positive reframing and acceptance (Allen & Leary, 2010) and is conceptualized to be a form of emotional approach coping that allows emotions to be identified and expressed in a psychologically adaptive way (Neff, 2003). Emotional approach coping is viewed as a proactive strategy to manage emotions by engaging in effortful attempts to fully understand and experience them (Neff, 2003). Self-kindness and mindfulness allow individuals to hold their emotions in conscious awareness without criticism. This creates the necessary space for cognitive reappraisal of negative emotions and enables the individual to view the situation with more optimism (Allen & Leary, 2010; Neff, 2003). The counterintuitive findings from this study may indicate that self-compassion is its own form of coping that does not necessarily accompany other forms of coping such as emotion-focused coping. However, in support of self-compassion’s role as a form of emotional approach coping, self-compassion was negatively associated with venting of emotions. Venting of emotions is seen as a ruminative behavior that results in overidentification with negative emotions, which is the opposite of the mindfulness component of self-compassion (Neff et al., 2005).

Second, consistent with prior research, self-compassion was negatively associated with avoidance-focused coping. Avoidance-oriented coping strategies are negatively associated with psychological well-being and are therefore considered to be maladaptive (Allen & Leary, 2010). Self-compassion has been found to be negatively associated with the avoidance-focused coping strategies of denial and mental disengagement (Neff et al., 2005). Self-compassionate individuals do not run away from their emotions and strive to be mindful in their experience of emotions. During times of perceived inadequacy, individuals high in self-compassion are more likely than those low in self-compassion to accept responsibility for their mistakes while maintaining self-kindness and striving for positive self-change (Allen & Leary, 2010). Self-compassion may therefore be useful for athletes who inevitably face setbacks such as poor performance or defeat in a competition that may be unavoidable (Mosewich et al., 2013). Furthermore, athletes higher in avoidance-focused coping have been found to display a stronger stress-injury relationship than athletes lower in avoidance-focused coping. This suggests that self-compassion may indirectly affect injury susceptibility through its negative association with avoidance-focused coping (Maddison & Prapavessis, 2005).

Third, self-compassion may promote proactive coping behaviors that allow for action to be taken when a stressor can be resolved (Allen & Leary, 2010; Breines & Chen, 2012). Self-compassion enhances emotional clarity, which may facilitate a mindful approach to stress that allows for more effective resolution of the stressor (Neff et al., 2005). However, the present study indicated that self-compassion was negatively associated with problem-focused coping, which contradicts H4. This is consistent with Allen and Leary’s (2010) review, which indicates that evidence is mixed for the role of self-compassion as a problem-focused coping strategy. Self-compassionate individuals may only choose to engage in problem-focused strategies when they perceive the stressor to be one that is within their control and able to be resolved through action-taking. In the current study, it is possible that athletes responded to the problem-focused coping items with a specific stressor in mind that may have been out of their control. Research has found that when a specific stressor is not referenced, problem-focused coping is more likely to be positively associated with self-compassion (Neff et al., 2005).

The primary aim of this study was to explore the role of self-compassion in athletes’ responses to stress and subsequent susceptibility to injury. It was hypothesized that a self-compassionate mindset would allow for more effective coping with stress, which would lower the stress response (i.e., physiological activation and attentional disruption) involved in risk for injury. The mindfulness component of self-compassion may be especially important within injury prevention given that sport interventions rooted in mindfulness result in significant improvements in allocation of attentional resources (Gardner & Moore, 2012). Through mindfulness, athletes are better able to direct their focus such that desired stimuli can be tracked while simultaneously monitoring other relevant sensory data. Attentional disruption is a core component of the underlying cause of heightened risk for injury in response to stress. Thus, the mindfulness component of self-compassion may help athletes better manage their attentional resources.

However, multiple linear regression analyses indicated that self-compassion did not contribute significantly to frequency of injury; self-compassion levels were similar across frequencies of injury. Exploring the self-compassion findings alongside evidence for Williams and Andersen’s base stress-injury model may help explain the findings. Specifically, although the regression equation was nonsignificant, 19.0% of variance in injury frequency could be accounted for by the predictor variables, with positive life stress as the only significant predictor. When positive life stress was higher, frequency of injury was lower. Negative life stress did not contribute to frequency of injury. There is some inconsistency in the literature in terms of the differential impact of negative and positive life stress on frequency or severity of injury (Johnson, 2007; Petrie, 1993). However, no prior studies have found a negative association between positive life stress and injury. Evidently, there is a need for further exploration of the precise role of positive and negative life stress in susceptibility to injury. Therefore, it is possible that the role of self-compassion in susceptibility to injury may take a more predictive form in a sample where a base stress-injury association is present. Furthermore, in the current study, the base association between coping and injury was also weak. Coping in Williams and Andersen’s stress-injury model has a two-part role: (a) Effective coping helps the athlete adequately manage stress (which was previously discussed), and (b) effective coping will in turn reduce the physiological stress response that impacts risk of injury. However, regression analyses indicated that none of the coping variables were significant contributors to injury. Nevertheless, R2 for frequency of injury was .190, and R2 for severity of injury was .124, indicating that the predictor variables are contributing in some way to injury, but the power of the sample may not have been sufficient to detect significance.

An alternative explanation for the null regression results is that injury is influenced by a multitude of factors, especially in contact/collision sports. In addition to psychological factors, there are a wide range of noncontrollable factors (i.e., opponents, environment, etc.) that contribute to risk of injury in contact/collision sports (Bahr & Holme, 2003). In order to distinguish between the potential risk factors for injury, a future study may aim to use a case-control design, whereby injured athletes would be interviewed immediately after injury and compared with noninjured athletes. Athletes would be asked to identify the cause of their injury (i.e., attribution), which may include options related to attention and muscular tension. Ideally, injuries caused by attentional or physiological disruptions would be identified as injuries where self-compassion could play a role. An athlete higher in self-compassion would be able to cope more effectively with life stressors and competitive trait anxiety than an athlete lower in self-compassion, which would reduce the magnitude of the stress response (i.e., attentional disruption and muscular tension) that leads to injury risk.

It is also necessary to explore whether or not the culture surrounding sport allows for concepts such as self-compassion to be acknowledged and whether its use for athletes is more complex than with other populations. Although self-compassion research indicates that it is a promising avenue for athletes to pursue, some athletes have expressed concern that self-compassion may promote passivity and acceptance of mediocrity (Reis et al., 2015). Reis and colleagues (2015) suggested that their brief self-compassion induction in female athlete was ineffective due to a hesitancy to adopt a self-compassionate mindset and fear of the effect of self-compassion on striving for optimal performance. Rather, self-criticism is seen as a necessary component for improvement and goal attainment in sport, and athletes fear that too much self-compassion may promote complacency (Reis et al., 2015). Literature indicates, however, that self-criticism is negatively associated with goal progress and self-concordant goal motivation (Powers, Koestner, Lacaille, Kwan, & Zuroff, 2009), whereas self-compassion has been found to increase self-improvement motivation and behavior (Breines & Chen, 2012). Despite this evidence, it is possible that given 69.2% (n = 81) of the athletes in the present study were male football players, which may be a subculture in sport that is even more resistant to self-compassion, athlete resistance to self-compassion could have resulted in inaccurate or biased reporting of self-compassion levels.

Although existing research indicates that self-compassion may promote athlete well-being (Ferguson et al., 2014), the perception that self-compassion is countercultural to the sport setting may still persist and needs to be considered in future studies. The inclusion of an assessment of hypermasculinity and sport ethic such as the Hypermasculine Values Questionnaire (Archer, 2010) may allow this distinction to be made. Although no significant gender differences were found in levels of self-compassion, further studies may consider whether there is an interaction between gender and measures of conformity to sport ethic and attitudes of hypermasculinity. A larger sample size may help clarify the nuances of any gender differences. Additional research is needed to better understand the complexity of self-compassion in sport and clarify its role for male and female athletes within the context of stress and coping as well as in injury susceptibility. An exploration of these constructs across different sports and competitive levels is also warranted. Furthermore, the use of self-compassion within the context of injury may be more applicable once an athlete has sustained an injury rather than as an antecedent of injury. Subsequent to injury, self-compassion could be used to reduce negative self-evaluative thoughts, manage emotions, and promote a mindful approach to rehabilitation. Self-compassion may help athletes maintain a healthy level of patience and self-kindness during the rehabilitation process as well as aid in focusing their attention on what they can do to help themselves rather than what they cannot do (Ferguson et al., 2014).

This study is not without its limitations. At the outset, several assumptions were made. First, it was assumed that DII athletes would experience comparable stress levels to Division I athletes. Second, the use of convenience sampling of DII athletes at a mid-Atlantic university limits generalizability of findings to larger collegiate DII populations across the United States. Third, considering that the current study was correlational, causal conclusions cannot be made about the role of self-compassion in the experience of stress, anxiety, and injury. Fourth, much of the data had to be transformed due to violations of normality. Although transformations can be useful in reducing the risk for Type I or Type II errors, transformed data are difficult to interpret with respect to the original hypotheses. In addition, the reliability of the SCS-SF was lower (α = .71) than in prior research (Raes et al., 2011). A sporting culture that is resistant to self-compassion may have influenced the validity of the SCS-SF; all preseason measures were self-reported, which introduces risk for bias or social desirability.

Concurrently, the LESCA is a difficult and long measure to complete and often has a wide range of reported scores. In the current study, a large number of athletes incorrectly completed the LESCA and had to be excluded from analyses. Consequently, sample size for the regression analyses was lower than the power analysis figure and may help explain why a moderately sized R2 value (.190) was not statistically significant. Additional instructions for completion of the LESCA may have to be included to reduce risk of its improper completion. Next, sample size and statistical power for severity/time loss of injury was inadequate given that it was only the athletes who sustained an injury who could be included in these analyses. Having a larger sample size to begin with (i.e., recruiting participants from multiple universities) may help increase the number of athletes that would be included in the severity of injury analyses. A larger sample size would also improve the statistical power of an analysis that involves a multitude of predictors as is the case with injury research. Although this study chose to include a large number of predictors as it was a preliminary exploration, future studies may consider limiting the number of predictors.

Despite several significant findings from this study, timing of assessment at preseason is a major limitation. There was an underlying assumption that preseason scores on these measures would be representative of subsequent stress and coping strategies later in the season. However, Lazarus and Folkman’s (1984) transactional approach to stress and coping states that it is more likely the case that stress levels and coping strategies would change over time and would depend on the type of stressor encountered. Equally important, stress levels at preseason may not be as high as later in the season. Subsequently, this may have resulted in an overestimation of coping resources because athletes were under low levels of stress and were confident in their ability to handle any challenge they may encounter. Williams and Andersen (1998) emphasized the need for assessing psychological states immediately prior to an injury. This is difficult to accomplish given the limited potential to predict exactly when and where an injury will occur. However, a design similar to Kleinert’s (2007) could be considered where psychological states of athletes are assessed immediately prior to an aptitude test, and then injury rates are measured within a 7-hr period of time (Kleinert, 2007).

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Frequency and Severity of Injury Regression Coefficients