Playing through distress A pilot study on psychological flexibility and endurance in Athletes

Abstract: This study aimed to contribute to the understanding of playing through distress and painduring athletic training and competition by investigating athletes’ psychological flexibilityand psychosocial responses to pain. This quantitative study consisted of two parts: (1) anonline survey (explicit measures) consisting of the Personalized Psychological FlexibilityIndex (PPFI) and the behavioural subscale of the Avoidance-endurance Questionnaire(AEQ). (2) an Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP-Athlete) that was specificallydeveloped for this project, to assess patterns of psychologically flexible responses todiscomfort and pain responses in a homogeneous sample of athletes’. Twenty-nine malefootball players that were pain-free with no injuries completed the survey, and 15 of themalso completed the challenging IRAP-Athlete. The results showed that athletes reportedhigher frequencies of endurance responses to pain as compared to avoidance responses, andhigher levels of acceptance towards discomfort when pursuing a goal relevant to theirtraining. The IRAP-Athlete seems to be a promising tool that can be used to further exploreathletes’ responses to distress.