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- Issue 30
- Mental recovery and running-related injuries in…
Mental recovery and running-related injuries in recreational runners: the moderating role of passion for running
Key Points
- The Dualistic Model of Passion describes two types: harmonious passion and obsessive passion.
BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVE
It is widely claimed that training errors are a leading cause of running injury, but it begs a question - what factors lead to such training errors? If we consider training to be a behavior, we might suspect that thoughts, feelings and personality traits could influence this behavior and risk of injury through excessive training or inadequate recovery. Some evidence supports this, for example perfectionism has been reported to predict injury in junior athletes (1).
This study sought to examine an athlete’s ‘passion’ for running and whether this was ‘harmonious passion’ (HP) or ‘obsessive passion’ (OP), and how this influenced injury incidence. This approach is known as the Dualistic Model of Passion and the paper goes on to summarise the differences as follows:
“The two types of passion demonstrate the way running has been internalized into a runner’s identity: HP in which the person controls the activity, and OP where the activity controls the person”.
Simply telling athletes with obsessive passion to exercise less doesn’t appear to work.
METHODS
The research team carried out a cross-sectional survey of 246 Dutch recreational runners (both novice and experienced). Scales were used to determine HP and OP as well as mental detachment and recovery. Running-related injury (RRI) was self-reported based on the