Author(s): ZHUOYING, F., ZHANG, S., Institution: ​​HUNAN UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY, Country: CHINA, Abstract-ID: 1548

How competitive athletes perceive sport injury and its rehabilitation through a lens of compassion: Insights from three focus group discussions

Background:
Sport injuries are common across competitive levels, disrupting performance, identity, and psychosocial wellbeing. Research has documented physical and psychological challenges in relating to athletes’ injuries and rehabilitation, yet with a relatively narrowed focus on the type of injury and insufficient articulation of the comprehensive emotional, motivational, and relational factors that warrant further qualitative exploration. The present study recruited athletes with diverse experiences of sport injuries and rehabilitation for a focus group discussion to identify shared patterns in the challenges they faced and their perceptions of the injury and rehabilitation, through a lens of compassion, given prior work on the benefit of compassion in sport.
Methods:
Three focus groups were conducted with athletes who had experienced sport-related injury. 14 competitive athletes (Mage = 21.7 years old, SD = 3.10) voluntarily participated in the present study, involving 10 female and 4 male participants who recently experienced a sport injury and were undergoing a rehabilitation process at the time of data collection. Among these participants, 8 competed at the university or regional level, 5 were semi-professional, playing sport for part of their income, and 1 was competing at the international level; 11 were from team sports (i.e., football, rugby, netball, cricket) whilst 3 were from individual sports (i.e., athletics, badminton, boxing). Reflexive thematic analysis was conducted to capture the shared patterns in how athletes experienced and navigated injury and recovery.
Results:
Four themes were identified. First, athletes described a pronounced emotional and psychological impact of injury, characterised by emotional distress, fluctuation, and sustained psychological burden. Second, injury was experienced as a source of disruption, loss, and vulnerability, including disruption to routine and role, alongside fear and uncertainty related to reinjury and return to performance. Third, participants reported varied responses to injury, encompassing changes in motivation, effort regulation, and the use of different coping and self-regulation strategies during recovery. Finally, experiences of compassion and social context featured prominently, with athletes describing both supportive interpersonal responses to their suffering and clear limits to self-compassion, including reluctance to seek help and self-imposed barriers.
Conclusions:
These findings highlight sport-related injury as a multifaceted experience involving how athletes experience and relate to suffering across emotional, motivational, and social domains. Attending to these experiential patterns may support more psychologically attuned approaches to injury recovery without presuming the presence or effectiveness of compassionate response.