Sport And Exercise Psychology: A Critical Introduction

up to 1.5 inches of girth size in their quadriceps muscles—a fact which explains why they
have to work so hard in rehabilitation (Smith, Hartman and Detling, 2001). During this
rehabilitation period, Roy Keane worked on his upperbody strength in the gym, reduced
his alcohol intake and planned his life more effectively (Keane, 2002). A similarly
constructive use of injury “down-time” was evident in the case of Robert Pires, the
Arsenal and French international soccer player. This player experienced a seven-month
injury in 2002 which forced him to miss the World Cup finals in Japan and Korea.
During this recovery time, Pires claimed that:

you see things differently after something like that. Compared to people

who have really bad accidents, what happened to me was nothing so at a

certain point I need to be aware just how lucky I am. I can keep doing

what I’ve always loved doing... Life goes on, I still have two legs, and

111 play again, (cited in Fotheringham, 2002a, p. 3)

Of course, another aspect of athletes’ emotional reactions to injury concerns the possible
“secondary gains” (Heil, 1993) which they may experience. Specifically, sometimes
athletes gain sympathy or social support simply as a result of adopting the role of an
injured patient. Ironically, this type of secondary benefit could delay the rehabilitation of
the athlete concerned because it encourages him or her to become passive and dependent
on others.

Critical evaluation of the grief model

Although the “grief reaction” model of injury seems eminently plausible, it has been
criticised on a number of grounds (see reviews by Brewer, Andersen and Van Raalte,
2002; Evans and Hardy, 1995).
First, at a conceptual level, there are obvious and significant differences between the
type of loss which people tend to experience when bereaved and those that often follow a
physical injury. In particular, while the former loss is irrevocable due to death, the latter
loss is usually only a temporary phenomenon. Similarly, if the hypothetical emotional
reactions of injured athletes are accepted as facts, certain problems may develop in the
patient-physician relationship (Brewer, 2001b). For example, sport medicine specialists
may perceive injured athletes as being “in denial” when they have got over the initial
feelings of distress that accompany any physical trauma. Therefore, we should be
cautious in extrapolating from theories based on terminal illness to the world of sport.
Second, researchers disagree about the extent to which the alleged sequence of stages in
grief reaction models is fixed. Thus some critics claim that these stages are circular
rather than linear (Evans and Hardy, 1995). If so, then regression to earlier stages in the
sequence may occur among certain athletes. Clearly, this possibility makes it difficult to
specify testable predictions from grief reaction models of injury. Third, at least one of the
hypothetical stages in the grief reaction may be difficult to measure psychometrically
(Udry and Andersen, 2002). Specifically, if “denial” is an unconscious process, how can
it be assessed validly using self-report scales or interviews that are limited to experiences
that are consciously accessible? Fourth, stage models tend to ignore substantial individual
differences between athletes in emotional reaction to injuries (Brewer et al., 2002). For

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