Self-control in sports

Abstract

Imagine yourself walking to the gym in the rain after a long hard day at work. Picture yourself lifting heavy weights, even though you would prefer sitting on the sofa watching your favorite baseball team win a playoff match. This is just one sports-related example during which self-control processes enable us to keep striving for a desirable goaland suppress potentially tempting action alternatives. In general,“self-control refers to the capacity for altering one’s own responses, especially to bring them into line with standards such as ideals, values, morals, and social expectations, and to support the pur-suit of long-term goals” (Baumeisteret al.,2007,p. 351). However, self-control is not always applied ef-fectively as, for instance, evidenced by the largenumber of gym dropouts every year(e.g., Englert & Rummel, 2016). In this chapter, we will discussempirical findings that highlight the importance of self-control for sports-related performanceand we will introduce the theoretical accounts that try to explain why self-control sometimes appears to fail. Finally, we will discuss open research questions in order to improve our understanding of how self-control operates and why it cannotbeapplied at all timesand at all costs.