Are you interested to find out how some individuals may be adversely impacted by their commitment to training?

In this free course Learning from sport burnout and overtraining, you will meet a number of sports people who have become successful in their sport as a result of their dedication to training. You will also encounter others who have suffered psychologically and fallen out of love with their sport.

This ‘burnout’ may be caused by a range of different contributing factors that you will explore from different perspectives. In doing so, you will gain a deeper understanding of the physical and mental aspects of sport such as athletic identity, overtraining and perfectionism.

Throughout this course, you will study sports people who have experienced overtraining, which is often a pre-cursor to burnout, but who have successfully returned to later career success. By the end of the course you will also have a better understanding of your own work or training situation and the balance between physical and emotional stress and recovery.

The course is introduced by sport psychologist Kate Goodger. She is one of the most experienced performance psychologists in British Olympic sport having worked with athletes at seven Olympic Games and has researched burnout extensively.

Enrolling on the course will give you the opportunity to earn an Open University digital badge. Badges are not accredited by The Open University but they're a great way to demonstrate your interest in the subject and commitment to your career, and to provide evidence of continuing professional development.

Once you are signed in, you can manage your digital badges online from My OpenLearn. In addition, you can download and print your OpenLearn statement of participation – which also displays your Open University badge.

The Open University would really appreciate a few minutes of your time to tell us about yourself and your expectations for the course before you begin, in our start-of-course survey . Once you complete the course we would also value your feedback and suggestions for future improvement, in our end-of-course survey . Participation will be completely confidential and we will not pass on your details to others.

Course learning outcomes

After studying this course, you should be able to:

• Understand what burnout and overtraining are, the relationship between them and how they can affect athletes and coaches differently
• Describe the main factors influencing burnout and some of the key theories and models used to explain it in sport psychology
• Evaluate coach and parent contribution to the motivational climate in sport and how they can help prevent burnout and overtraining
• Identify strategies to help prevent and manage sport burnout and overtraining.