A controversial issue in sport perfectionism research concerns the degree to which athletes’ perfectionistic tendencies are adaptive or maladaptive. Insight into this issue can be obtained by distinguishing between two perfectionism dimensions: perfectionistic strivings and perfectionistic concerns. Past narrative reviews concede that perfectionistic concerns are maladaptive in sport, but offer contrasting conclusions about whether athletes’ perfectionistic strivings are adaptive or maladaptive (see Flett & Hewitt, 2005; Hall, 2006; Stoeber, 2011). To address this discrepancy, this review systematically documented, categorized, and quantitatively analyzed 201 correlations from 31 studies on perfectionism in athletes. When bivariate correlations were regarded, the proportion of evidence associating perfectionistic strivings with adaptive characteristics in sport was slightly greater than the proportion of evidence associating the dimension with maladaptive characteristics in sport. When partial correlations were regarded (i.e., correlations that controlled for overlap with perfectionistic concerns), a clear majority of evidence associated perfectionistic strivings with adaptive characteristics and only a small minority associated it with maladaptive characteristics. Across both instances, though, considerable evidence (as represented by nonsignificant correlations) associated perfectionistic strivings with neither adaptive nor maladaptive characteristics. Collectively, these findings suggest that perfectionistic strivings among athletes are predominantly adaptive, occasionally neutral, and rarely maladaptive. However, this trend is only apparent when the negative influence of perfectionistic concerns is controlled. Implications of these findings on future research directions and applied sport psychology practice are discussed

Research on perfectionism suggests that is it useful to differentiate between perfectionistic strivings and perfectionistic concerns. Regarding the 2 × 2 achievement goal framework, the usefulness of this differentiation was recently demonstrated in a study with university student athletes (Stoeber, Stoll, Pescheck, & Otto, 2008 Stoeber, J. , Stoll, O. , Pescheck, E. and Otto, K. 2008. Perfectionism and goal orientations in athletes: Relations with approach and avoidance orientations in mastery and performance goals. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 9: 102–121. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] [Google Scholar] , Study 2), in which it was found that perfectionistic strivings were associated with mastery-approach and performance-approach goals and perfectionistic concerns with mastery-avoidance, performance-approach, and performance-avoidance goals. Because the study was largely exploratory and only used non-elite athletes, the aim of the present research was to replicate and extend these findings by investigating a sample of 138 young, elite ice-hockey players, while adding further measures of perfectionism and using structural equation modelling (SEM) to confirm the relationships between perfectionistic strivings, perfectionistic concerns, and the 2 × 2 achievement goals. The SEM results showed that, in elite athletes also, perfectionistic strivings are associated with mastery-approach and performance-approach goals, whereas perfectionistic concerns are associated with mastery-avoidance, performance-approach, and performance-avoidance goals. Our findings corroborate the importance of differentiating between perfectionistic strivings and perfectionistic concerns when studying perfectionism in sports, because only perfectionistic concerns (and not perfectionistic strivings) are associated with maladaptive patterns of achievement goals.

Due to physiological and anatomical sex differences, there are variations in the training response, and the recovery periods following exercise may be different. High-intensity interval training (HIIT) protocols are well-suited to differentially investigate the course of recovery. This study was conducted to determine sex-specific differences in the recovery following HIIT intervals interspersed with recovery phases of different lengths. Methods: Well-trained cyclists and triathletes (n = 11 females, n = 11 males) participated in this study. There were no significant sex differences in maximal heart rate (HR), relative peak power to body mass and fat-free mass, training volume, and VO_2max-percentiles (females: 91.8 ± 5.5 %, males: 94.6 ± 5.4 %). A 30 s Wingate test was performed four times, separated by different active recovery periods (1, 3, or 10 min). Lactate, HR, oxygen uptake, and subjective rating of exertion and recovery were determined. Results: For the recovery time of three and ten minutes, men showed significantly higher lactate concentrations (p = 0.04, p = 0.004). Contrary, HR recovery and subjective recovery were significant slower in women than in men. Conclusion: During HIIT, women may be more resistant to fatigue and have a greater ability to recover metabolically, but have a slower HR and subjective recovery.