A five-page outline and notes are in the attachment. Please complete a six-page essay in APA style based on this document.
No additional references are needed. The format of the essay must conform to the title and subtitles in the outline. Natural transitions and logical connections between the arguments are required in the final work. Please also pay attention to the highlighted part.

Part 1: Outline for Final Exam Paper

Introduction (Oglesby et al., 2020) 

• Burnout → psychology of sports → athletic burnout.
• Define the key term: Athletic Burnout.
• Purpose: explain athletic burnout from a psychological perspective; discuss existing assessment methods and interventions.
• At the end of the introduction, summarize the conclusions come to through research. The thesis should be clearly stated. (What are claimed about athletic burnout? That it is real? That it is preventable? That there is a best method for treating it?)

Background

Subsection 1: Explain athletic burnout from a psychological perspective.

• Causes of athletic burnout (Raedeke & Smith, 2001)

1. physical exhaustion: staleness and overtraining
2. emotional disturbances
3. cognitive changes

• Consequences of athletic burnout (Markser ,2011; Hakanen et al.,2008)

1. physical illness (e.g., headaches, indigestion, sleeplessness)
2. loss of motivation and decreased self-esteem
3. emotional and cognitive exhaustion

Subsection 2: Assessment of athletic burnout. (Isoard-Gautheur et al., 2018)

• the Athlete Burnout Questionnaire (ABQ)
• the Athlete Burnout Scale (ABO-S)
• differences between the assessments

Subsection 3: Intervention to cope with athletic burnout.

• Coping techniques can be taken by athletes.

1. Stress Inoculation Training (Hourani et al., 2018)
2. Stress Management Training (Sigwalt et al., 2020)

• Explain how do the interventions work.
• Discuss the limitations of existing interventions.

Summary & Future Directions

• Briefly summarizes the main points.
• Future directions.

Part 2: Notes for Final Exam Paper

Introduction

• Burnout: a psychological syndrome characterized by both physical fatigue and emotional exhaustion. (Oglesby et al., 2020)
• has been identified in various occupational groups.
• Athletes have a constant pressure to succeed and win → always feel overwhelmed → easy to be bothered by burnout.
• Athletic Burnout: a reaction to the chronic burden of continuing demands of a sport or practice that does not allow sportsmen to have physical or emotional relaxation and rehabilitation. (Oglesby et al., 2020)
• Mental stability → determines athletes’ performance.
• Intervene from the perspective of sports psychology → help athletes maintain a good mental state. (Psychology of Sports: a science in which psychological principles are applied in a sport or exercise setting.)
• Purpose: explain athletic burnout from a psychological perspective; discuss existing assessment methods and interventions.

Background

Subsection 1: Explain athletic burnout from a psychological perspective.

• Causes of athletic burnout (Raedeke & Smith, 2001)
  • physical exhaustion: overtraining & staleness.
    • attributed to the rising loads in training and competitive pressure.
    • wrongly assessed the benefits of training.
    • did not aware of the athletes’ psychological threshold.
    • short-term insufficient recovery → decline in performance
• emotional disturbances
  • feel emotional exhausted from intense demands.
  • inevitably produce adverse attitudes → detached and impersonal responses
  • sport devaluation: did not concern about sports and performance.
• cognitive changes in perspective
  • put in a lot of energy and effort but did not get rewards → perceived helplessness.
  • a decrease in the sense of accomplishment in terms of sports skills and abilities → tend to judge themselves negatively.
  • feel that one's contribution to the team has decreased.
  • change the cognition to sports.
  • staleness: a psychological syndrome. Although athletes feel depressed and underperforming, they continue to maintain their energy for more training (Sitzler, 2016).
  • Consequences of athletic burnout (Oglesby et al., 2020)
    • physical illness (e.g., headaches, indigestion, sleeplessness)
    • loss of motivation and decreased self-esteem (as the cognition part before)
    • emotional and cognitive exhaustion
      • Cognitive exhaustion relates to the brain → negatively alters mental health in athletes (Markser, 2011).
• Negative effects on life and interpersonal relationships may even cause some professional athletes to end their careers early.

Subsection 2: Assessment of athletic burnout. (Isoard-Gautheur et al., 2018)

• Several transition sentences from causes to assessment tools.
• are prone to experience exhaustion and fatigue symptoms.
• may never realize the existence of maladaptive conditions such as burnout.
• the Athlete Burnout Questionnaire (ABQ)
  • developed by Raedeke & Smith (2001).
  • a second-order dimension to measure athlete burnout.
  • 3 factors: reduced sense of accomplishment, sport devaluation, and exhaustion
  • no item can assess mental or emotional exhaustion → Researchers cannot confirm whether this dimension should be separated.
  • All components of exhaustion should be explored, including emotional, physical, and cognitive parts.
  • the Athlete Burnout Scale (ABO-S)
    • based on ABQ, uses a 5-point Likert scale.
    • 5 of 20 items are added to assess emotional exhaustion.
    • 799 adolescents and young adult athletes from France were recruited. 
    • They are divided into two groups to verify the reliability of the scale.
    • The standardized pattern coefficients in results support the scale to conceptualize athlete burnout as three factors (same as ABQ factors).
    • Integrate emotion exhaustion into sport devaluation → one of the three factors is entitled to “negative feelings toward sport”.
    • This scale help psychologists determine whether athletes are experiencing burnout more scientifically.
    • To further ensure its validity, the scale should be repeated among a wider group of athletes to avoid bias caused by specific sample groups.
    • A longitudinal design can be created to study the relationship between burnout and potential determinants in more detail.

Subsection 3: Intervention to cope with athletic burnout.

• The way to deal with burnout is to prevent overtraining and maintain adequate rest and recovery time.
• According to National Athletic Trainers' Association, when burnout is serious, athletes should completely stop exercising for a period to recover, but this is unrealistic for many professional athletes. (Sitzler, 2016)
• Specific relaxation techniques can help athletes manage their mental, emotional, and physical states, as well as help them intervene in the problem of burnout.
• Coping techniques can be taken by athletes.
  • Stress Inoculation Training (Hourani et al., 2018)
    • SIT: a method that can be incorporated in dealing with anxiety and stress.
    • In high-pressure situations, athletes often tend to negatively talk to themselves, and there is almost no defense mechanism to protect mental health.
    • SIT helps athletes recognize negative emotions and to understand the different causes of stress reactions.
    • According to the study, SIT skills such as relaxation breathing decrease participants’ physiological arousal levels.
    • A lower physiological arousal level represents a more relaxed state. Reduce the negative impact on the cardiovascular system and mental.
    • Can reduce the risk of PTSD and protect mental health.
• Stress Management Training (Sigwalt et al., 2020)
  • SMT may lead to reduced responses to stress.
  • In the SMT program “Optimize the Potential”, participants received training including regulating breathing, Visuomotor learning, and biofeedback training.
  • The results show that a reduction in individual stress reactions improves participants’ performance in a stressful situation.
  • Progressive Relaxation is a specific technique in SMT, it aims to reduce anxiety by tightening and relaxing the muscles of the whole body.
  • After athletes learn progressive relaxation, they can relax their body quickly through controlling muscles.
  • Discuss limitations of existing interventions.
    • Most of the existing technologies based on relaxation require pre-training.
    • In stressful situations, they still rely on individuals for self-regulation.
    • But people with mental health problems are often less interested in learning stress control techniques. (Hourani et al., 2018)
    • study how to effectively promote SIT and SMT programs to athletes.
    • study how to arouse athletes' interest in actively learning decompression techniques.

Summary & Future Directions

• Briefly summarizes the main points.
  • information is provided on the issue of burnout affecting athletes in the sporting world.
  • address factors that include physical exhaustion, emotional disturbances, and cognitive changes.
  • Discuss assessments and coping interventions.
  • Future directions.
    • Use a broader range of samples to test the reliability of ABO-S. An effective scale can help athletes realize the problem in time.(Isoard-Gautheur et al., 2018)
    • Since burnout is a long-term mental illness, a longitudinal study should be designed to deeply analyze the relationship among the three factors. (Isoard-Gautheur et al., 2018)
    • How to motivate athletes who are experiencing burnout to learn coping strategies spontaneously is still challenging. (Hourani et al., 2018)
    • Add more contents about future directions.