The Role of Resilience on Stress and Recovery of Elite Athletes in Nigeria

Resilience is an important psychological factor in sport that contributes greatly to the ability to overcome and adapt positively to difficult and challenging situations. Elite athletes face a lot of pressure, stressor and adversity from sport and non-sport milieu which affect their psychological well-being and sport performance. Ability of the elite athletes to cope, overcome and adapt to various sources of pressures, stressors, adversities and recover quickly will make them to attain optimal health, peak performance and achieve success. The purpose of this study was to examine the role of resilience on stress and recovery of elite athletes in Nigeria. Participants were 187 subjects (118 males; 69 females), age ranged between 18years and 42years (mean=26.4; SD=4.82) were selected from various sports using purposive sampling technique to select elite athletes who participated in 2021 National Sports Festival in Nigeria. Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale-10 (CD-RISC-10) and Stress-Recovery Questionnaire for Athletes (RESTQ-52 Sport) were used for data collection. Shapiro-Wilk Test, Pearson Product Moment Correlation (PPMC) and Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) were employed for data analysis. Results of the study showed that resilience correlated with the factors of stress and recovery. Structural equation modelling results showed that resilience had significant direct effect on stress and recovery with variability of 26% and 55% respectively. Resilience negatively predicted stress and positively predicted recovery. The model invariant was not significant to gender and sport-type of the participants. It was therefore concluded that resilience plays an immense role in coping, overcoming and positively adapting to situations of stress and recovery of elite athletes. Keywords: resilience, stress, recovery, adversity, elite athlete