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New Studies in Athletics · no. 3.2015 27
© by IAAF
27
A New Understanding of
Stress and Implications
for Our Cultural Training
Paradigm
by John Kiely
Introduction
he difficulty is not in creating new
ideas, but escaping from old ones.
John Maynard Keynes
Physical training imposes stress on the ath-
lete’s neuro-biological system, thereby stimu-
lating adaptation and promoting an improved
resilience to similar forms of stress in the fu-
ture. The direction and magnitude of these ap-
plied training stressors must be appropriately
targeted to enhance the athlete’s performance
capacity. If, however, imposed training stress
continually exceeds the athlete’s capacity to
dissipate the lingering consequences of such
stress applications then residual deficits tem-
porarily remain and accumulate. Inevitably
leading to an increased vulnerability to injury,
illness, overtraining, burnout and overuse syn-
dromes.
ES S ay
T
ABSTRACT
The science of stress has greatly influenced
sport training. The formative works in the
field from the early 20th century, par-
ticularly those by Walter Canon and Hans
Selye, are frequently cited as the basis for
the understanding of how humans adapt
to training-imposed stress. However, key
cornerstones of the conventional under-
standing have shifted in recent decades.
In addition to its physiological aspects,
stress is now seen to have important psy-
chological and emotional components,
making the body’s response to imposed
stress more individualised and difficult to
predict. Although the evidence and logical
rationale supporting the new perspective
seem incontrovertible, it has as yet failed to
spark the revolution in the commonly held
training planning and prescription, or re-
covery and regeneration, paradigms it may
warrant. The author provides a history of
stress theory, culminating with the current
understanding and its relationship to train-
ing theory. Although how the new aware-
ness will be used to better design training
and recovery processes remains to be fully
explored, he suggests that gains are most
likely to be realised when both training en-
vironment and coach-athlete interactions
are designed to moderate rather than esca-
late non-physical training stressors.
AUTHOR
John Kiely works as a doctoral supervisor in
the Institute of Coaching and Performance
at the University of Central Lancashire in
Great Britain and as a strength and condi-
tioning coach with the Irish national rugby
team. From 2005 to 2009 he was Head of
Strength and Conditioning for UK Athletics.
30:3; 27-35, 2015
New Studies in Athletics · no. 3.2015
28
increases in arousal begin to diminish perfor-
mance. However arousal was neither specifi-
cally defined nor directly measured. Instead,
the effect of varying intensities of (crudely cali-
brated) electric shock on a mouse’s capacity to
discern between differently coloured pathways
was used as proxy. Although replication at-
tempts using various animal models repeatedly
failed to find comparable results4,5, the proposi-
tion that adverse events evoke predictable re-
sponses falling along a stereotypical trajectory
was subtly implanted in the collective scientific
consciousness.
Subsequently, in the 1920’s, CANNON,
echoing BERNARD’s earlier work, proposed
that strongly aroused animals conserve the
constancy of their internal environment via
the mediation of catecholamines — epineph-
rine, norepinephrine, dopamine — secreted
from the adrenal medulla. He employed the
term ‘‘homeostasis’’ to describe the process
through which stable steady-state functioning
was preserved; suggesting that increasing cat-
echolamine concentrations powered a ‘fight or
flight’ response designed to remove imposed
threats and facilitate a return to baseline condi-
tions of homeostatic equilibrium6.
A decade later SELYE began the body of
work that was to revolutionise the field, switch-
ing attention from the catecholamine’s of the
adrenal medulla to the glucocorticoids of the
adrenal cortex. He observed that rodents ex-
posed to a variety of physiological discom-
forts exhibited a common set of prototypical
responses. Regardless of whether rats were
immobilised, electrically shocked, or exposed
to heat or cold, the resultant mal-adaptations
seemed to share a common trajectory. In
a now famous 1936 letter to Nature he de-
scribed a triad of symptoms — adrenal en-
largement, gastrointestinal ulceration, atrophy
of the thymus — commonly elicited by a wide
variety of biological challenges.
SELYE re-employed the engineering term
‘stress’, first used by CANON7 a decade ear-
li e r, to describe the organism’s reaction to such
perturbation. He defined the stress response
as the “non-specific response of the body to
From this perspective the training process
is an exercise in stress management1. A pro-
cess demanding that the strategic application
of training stress is appropriately balanced
with adequate recovery. To this end, a vari-
ety of planning and periodisation strategies
are typically used to balance imposed training
stress with appropriate rest and various recov-
ery and regeneration techniques are employed
to expedite the athlete's return to an uncom-
promised state of training readiness.
This rationalisation, however, provides noth-
ing new. The teachings of the early pioneers of
the science of stress, Walter Canon and Hans
Selye, have long been acknowledged as great-
ly influencing contemporary training theory and
coaches have long understood the importance
of balancing imposed training stress with ad-
equate recuperation. What has changed sub-
stantially in the decades since Canon and
Selye’s formative work is our understanding
of the true nature of the stress phenomenon.
This theoretical revision poses an important,
but as yet unexamined, question: have we built
aspects of traditional training philosophy upon
an incomplete understanding of the nature of
stress and, if so, what might we learn from re-
aligning training and recovery practices with
an updated understanding of contemporary
stress science?
A Brief History of Stress
In the late 19th century, BERNARD de-
scribed how the constancy of the internal bio-
logical environment, the milieu intérieur, was
maintained in the face of imposed challenges
by adapting aspects of function so as to main-
tain an optimally healthy state2.
Although this work pre-empted much of
what was to follow, the evolution of the science
of stress did not begin in earnest until the first
decades of the 20th century. The landmark
work of YERKES & DODSON described the
proto-typical ‘inverted-U’ relationship between
arousal and performance3: suggesting that in-
creased arousal steadily improves performance
until, at some hypothetical turning point, further
A New Understanding of Stress and Implications for Our Cultural Training Paradigm
New Studies in Athletics · no. 3.2015 29
A Challenge and a Revolution
SELYE’s paradigm undoubtedly represent-
ed a leap forward in our understanding of how
humans respond to stress. Nevertheless by
the end of the 20th century, philosophical and
academic shortcomings of the conventional
stress paradigm became apparent.
Crucially, the concept of ‘stress’ was prov-
ing to be more complex, multi-faceted and
difficult to define than previously envisaged.
For medically-oriented researchers homeosta-
sis and GAS were both firmly biologically en-
trenched concepts; an issue acknowledged by
SELYE, late in life, when he noted that he ''gave
little thought to its psychological or sociologi-
cal implications for I saw stress as a purely
physiological and medical phenomenon”15.
Yet psychologists, whose research tradi-
tions had evolved along an independent tra-
jectory, held a very different view. In contrast to
their more biologically-oriented counterparts,
they considered stress to be primarily a cogni-
tive and mental phenomenon. As physiological
and psychological research traditions inevi-
tably overlapped and clashed, the dominant
model of SELYE began to be challenged by
researchers adopting more inter-disciplinary
perspectives.
any demand”, and a stressor as any challenge
“noxious to the tissues”8. SEYLE’s observation
that the stress response appeared to follow a
predictable trajectory led to his later formula-
tion, in 1956, of the General Adaptation Syn-
drome (GAS). The GAS framework described
how, once the stress response was evoked,
biological stressors were countered in a pre-
dictable fashion progressing through a stereo-
typical sequence of phases: first alarm, then
resistance and eventually, if the stress was suf-
ficiently overwhelming, resulting in exhaustion9.
As the 20th century entered its final quar-
ter, our understanding of biological adaptation
following stressful challenge was shaped by
these early pioneers, as was the associated
terminology which subsequently percolated
into popular culture — stress, homeostasis,
‘fight or flight’, GAS. Although acknowledging
that each individual has distinct stress thresh-
olds and set-points, strengths and vulner-
abilities, the subtly imposed presumption was
that we all respond to biological stress along
a common trajectory: a perspective re-enforc-
ing the covert message that we all respond to
stress in predictable stereotypical fashion.
Stress and Training Theory
Although SELYE himself claimed never
to have considered the application of his re-
search to sporting domains, it was not long
before astute coaches began to appreciate
the potential relevance of this emerging sci-
ence to athletic training contexts10. As early as
the 1950’s the influential swimming coaches
Forbes Carlile and James “Doc” Counsilman
had already begun interpreting and translating
SELYE’s work to sports training contexts. They
were soon followed in this effort by track and
field coaches Fred Wilt and Deloss Dodds11,14.
Toda y the influence of the early doctrines of
the science of stress remain apparent in both
sports science and coaching realms, as con-
temporary theorists continue to re-cycle the
teachings of CANON and SELYE to justify and
substantiate key aspects of current training
practice12, 13, 14.
Key points:
• Training adaptation and recovery are
highly individualised and heavily
modulated by back ground emo-
tional setting.
• Physiological training and recovery
are not purely physiological phenom-
enon.
• Optimal training and recovery strate-
gies blend physical and psycho-
emotional elements.
A New Understanding of Stress and Implications for Our Cultural Training Paradigm
New Studies in Athletics · no. 3.2015
30
A Resolution Emerges
Greatly facilitated by the technological and
neuro-imaging revolution of recent decades,
the historical disconnect between physiologi-
cal and psychological stress interpretations
has been largely resolved. Of particular rele-
vance is the growing awareness of the central
role played by the brain’s emotional centres in
mediating the stress response. These, primar-
ily mid-brain, regions are highly interconnected
with the neural systems underlying sensation
and perception on one hand, and cognition,
goal-directed behaviour and motivation on the
other. This organisational structure firmly plac-
es the brain’s emotional centres at the inter-
section between bottom-up sensory feedback
and top-down goal-directed thought. From
this perspective the emotional centres con-
stitute the intersection where sensation and
perception are interpreted and blended with
conscious intentions and desires19, 20.
Accordingly, when we experience any
change in circumstance, such as a sudden in-
crease in physical exertion, the sensory infor-
mation heralding this change is gated through
the brain’s emotional circuitry where it is evalu-
ated on a continuum ranging from benign to
‘threatening’. This emotional interpretation
of the ‘threat’ posed subsequently launches
the stress response initiated by the Central
Nervous System (CNS), and calibrates the
magnitude of this response to the individual’s
emotional state. Hence, it is our emotional in-
terpretation of the imposed stress that launch-
es the cascade of neuro-chemical events con-
stituting the human stress response. These
neuro-chemical events, in turn, trigger the
subsequent down-stream alterations in con-
centrations of circulating hormones that drive
adaptations in all dimensions of function —
from cognitive sharpness to psychological
state to physiological regulation — as the sys-
tem prepares brain and body to cope with the
anticipated challenge.
Crucially, the magnitude of the stress re-
sponse is not directly dependent on the mag-
nitude of the stressor. Instead it is the emo-
tional resonance attached to the stressor —the
At the heart of this challenge were two cen-
tral assumptions: first, that the stress response
follows a stereotypical non-specific trajectory
as portrayed by the GAS response and, sec-
ond that physiological stress is predominantly
caused by physiological challenge and that its
consequences are primarily physiological in
nature.
Central to these controversies was the ori-
gin of the so-called ‘first mediator’: the uniden-
tified event first triggering the stress response.
SELYE predicted, and fruitlessly searched for,
a biological first mediator. In contrast LAZA-
RUS and MASON proposed that the first me-
diator is psycho-emotional in genesis, in es-
sence suggesting that the body’s physiological
stress response is not instigated directly by the
physiological stressor, but by the changing
emotional state of the individual brought about
by personal interpretation of their capacity to
cope with the imposed challenge 16,17. Notably,
MASON’s experimental work led him to con-
clude that whenever the noxious “psychologi-
cal concomitants” of physical stressors could
be removed, or substantially reduced, then the
GAS response was drastically moderated18.
This work clearly demonstrated that the mag-
nitude of the stress response, subsequent to
any imposed physical stress, was in large part
modulated by the individual’s emotional re-
action to it. In other words that the adaptive
response launched to cope with a physical
challenge was not solely dependent upon the
extent of that physical challenge, but also on
the set of psycho-emotional anxieties, expec-
tations, projections and associations accom-
panying that stressor.
As the century drew to a close, these de-
bates remained largely unresolved. Neverthe-
less the failure of purely biologically-oriented
concepts of GAS and homeostasis to satisfac-
torily explain the increasingly apparent effects
of non-physical factors – emotional regula-
tion, anticipation and learning – on stress re-
sponses, suggested the portrayal of the stress
response as a physiological response to a
physiological challenge was fundamentally un-
reflective of reality19, 20, 21.
A New Understanding of Stress and Implications for Our Cultural Training Paradigm
New Studies in Athletics · no. 3.2015 31
ers of the stress response, contemporary in-
sight firmly places the brain, and in particular
the emotional circuitry, as the ultimate control-
ler of our reaction to imposed challenge25.
Relevance for Sport Training Theory
In relation to sports training theory, evidence
illustrating the interactivity between emotional
state and physical consequences continues to
grow. As illustration: Individual differences in
self-confidence, self-esteem and anxiety have
been demonstrated to elevate injury occur-
rence and impede recovery26,27. Accordingly
it has been suggested that stressed athletic
populations, in particular those with low self-
esteem, are especially vulnerable to the family
of stress syndromes typified by overtraining,
fatigue and depressive-like symptoms26.
Other research studies have established
that: 1) athletes, self-rated levels of mental
stress were predictive of the magnitude of
their individual adaptive responses following
a highly controlled training intervention27; 2)
the combination of low stress resilience and
elevated stressors can interact to compro-
mise both cardiovascular and power training
adaptations28; 3) exposure to elevated levels of
training and psychological stress increase the
incidence of negative health outcomes in well-
trained triathletes29,30; and 4) heightened anxi-
ety can lead to increased incidence of injury in
professional soccer players31.
In fact, a wide range of imposed stress-
ors — emotional, dietary, social, sleep and
academic — have now been demonstrated to
variously down-regulate the immune system,
dampen adaptive responses and negatively
affect motor coordination, cognitive func-
tion, mood, metabolism and hormonal health:
thereby diminishing multiple dimensions of
athletic performance and elevating injury risk31.
Historically we assumed that adaptation to
stress could be partitioned into a regimented
sequence of events following a predictable
trajectory. From a contemporary perspective,
registering of the stimulus as threatening or
benign; as stimulating or anxiety-inducing—
that ultimately dictates the extent of the stress
defences mobilised, and dictates whether this
response will be proportionate or dispropor-
tionate to the actual challenge imposed. Ac-
cordingly, the response to any given stressor
is heavily modulated by subjective perception.
We analyse the stress, and from this analysis
emerges our individually-specific sense of se-
curity, predictability, motivation and compe-
tence, or alternatively our sense of insecurity,
unpredictability, anxiety, fear and impending
risk. Thus our personal emotional interpretation
of the applied challenge amplifies or damp-
ens the subsequent cascade of bio-chemical
events constituting the stress response. This
sets the bio-chemical backdrop upon which
training stress is overlaid and, in turn, shapes
consequent neurological, psychological and
physiological adaptations19, 20, 21.
This entangled interactivity ensures that no
stressor is ever solely psychological, physi-
ological, cognitive or emotional. Instead every
stressor — every stimulus triggering a stress
response — exerts a neurological, biological,
psychological and emotional toll. Thus even
stress responses triggered by stimuli that
appear far removed from psycho-emotional
significance, such as cold exposure, vary
dramatically dependent upon the emotional
resonance attached to the stress-inducing
event18 ,19. Similarly healing times following lab-
oratory-induced inflammatory reactions can
be readily amplified or dampened, extended or
shortened, simply by manipulating perception,
emotional appraisal, and background levels of
psycho-social stress20. Furthermore the influ-
ence of prior experiences, such as an early-life
exposure to specific forms of pain, can ever-af-
ter alter the stress response induced by similar
future events 21, 22, 23, 24. These examples, along
with many more, illustrate the deficiencies in
conventional rationalisations of the physical
stress response as a direct consequence of
the applied physical stressor.
Importantly, and in contrast to traditional
Selye-led perspectives, which considered the
pituitary and adrenal glands as the critical driv-
A New Understanding of Stress and Implications for Our Cultural Training Paradigm
New Studies in Athletics · no. 3.2015
32
the individual’s emotionally-driven response to
background levels of current life stress.
From this perspective the objective of phys-
ical training, and of recovery and regeneration
processes, is to positively manipulate these
chemical environments to maximally accentu-
ate athletic performance and optimally facilitate
physiological and psychological recuperation.
Practical Implications
Unquestionably the empirical descriptors
of training — the numbers we use to describe
and prescribe training sessions — remain of
great importance. As coaches we need a plan
and we need a practical means of clearly com-
municating the plan to the athlete. We need to
be able to clearly empirically prescribe training
parameters: how long, how many, how quickly
and so on. But we must also be aware that
simply conforming to these mechanical train-
ing parameters does not adequately control
the imposed training stress and does not guar-
antee a specific training effect.
In order to most productively accentuate
training-induced adaptation we must be aware
of the unseen influences that conspire with
physical training to dictate the subsequent
adaptive response.
When athletes are subjected to elevated
non-training stressors, physiological training
adaptations will inevitably be compromised.
This will occur regardless of the origin of that
stress: whether it be anxiety due to loss of form,
exam pressure, relationship turbulence, poor
sleep, corrosive environmental conditions, etc.
Furthermore, the extent to which the athlete’s
physical health is impacted by such accumu-
lating multi-source stress will vary extensively
dependent on their personal stress reactivity
to the specific forms of stress imposed.
Accordingly athletes will be most predis-
posed to negative training outcomes — injury,
illness, poor performance — during periods of
heightened stress, and individuals with high
however, it is evident that individual adaptation
subsequent to any imposed stressor is not the
generalised process historically suggested by
homeostatic and GAS models. Instead it is
highly specific and largely unpredictable with
each stressor eliciting a uniquely individual
stress ‘signature’ personalised by the blending
of genetic, behavioural, experiential, historical
and environmental idiosyncrasies, and ampli-
fied or dampened by the emotional resonance
attached, by the individual, to that stressor.
This rationale does not suggest that stress
is purely an emotional phenomenon, but high-
lights that once a stressor is applied the stress
response is initiated, and its magnitude regu-
lated, by the individual’s emotional evaluation
of the challenge posed by that specific stress-
inducing event. This emotional attribution is
in large part set by the combination of Nature,
in terms of genetic heritage, and Nurture, in
terms of early life experiences: both factors
over which the athlete or sports coach exert
no retrospective control. Importantly however,
although our emotional reactivity to imposed
stressors is heavily influenced by heritage and
history, we can nevertheless favourably manip-
ulate current and future conditions to promote
positive adaptation, and diminish the negative
impacts of excessively elevated or prolonged
stress responses.
Inescapably, at its most fundamental level
the adaptive response to training is instigated
and driven by a cascade of stress-induced
chemical changes in various internal environ-
ments: changes in concentrations of molecular
messengers in the muscle; hormones circulat-
ing throughout the body; and neuro-trans-
mitters, neuro-modulators and neurotrophic
factors in the brain. These various chemical
environments, however, are not simply dictat-
ed by training performed but are overlaid upon
the bio-chemical backdrop shaped by the ath-
lete’s current emotional state. In essence the
bio-chemical context is set by the integration
of training-imposed stress, overlaid upon the
existing bio-chemical backdrop of the individu-
al. In turn, the bio-chemical backdrop is set by
A New Understanding of Stress and Implications for Our Cultural Training Paradigm
New Studies in Athletics · no. 3.2015 33
turbulence, is not necessarily a new insight. As
is often the case, we find certain coaches have
intuitively evolved philosophies, processes and
practices promoting stress resilience in their
athletes. Famously, Percy Cerutty, the coach
of 1960 Olympic 1500m champion Herb El-
liot, emphasised and designed interventions to
build character as well as physical robustness.
What this new science does add, however,
is an explanation of the mechanisms through
which such interventions positively impact
stress resilience and the removal of doubt as
to whether or not such strategies are useful to
the athlete.
There is a final, perhaps hidden, implica-
tion here: how the athlete reacts to stressful
situations is, as we have noted, dependent on
their individual predispositions combined with
the individual coping strategies they may em-
ploy. But an individual’s stress response is also
highly influenced by context and environment.
And a key influencing factor for athletes is how
the coach reacts to stress. Is the coach calm,
or worried? Does the coach project an aura of
thoughtful decisiveness or anxious reactivity?
Stress is contagious and if as coaches we
wish to build low stress environments, perhaps
as a first step we need to develop our own ca-
pacity to deal with stress. In essence to prac-
tice what we preach.
Conclusions
One of the great paradoxes of stress, first
highlighted by SELYE, is that although we
commonly think of it as a negative, it is es-
sential for life. Without the changes driven by
successive stress applications, we fail to adapt
and instead become fragile to future challeng-
es: but excessive or prolonged stress imposed
on an individual lacking the capacity to cope,
inevitably leads to some form of breakdown.
Despite the dramatic evolution of stress
science since SELYE’s foundational work, our
translation of stress theory to training theory
appears frozen in time, as illustrated by the
stress reactivity will be especially vulnerable.
In contrast, athletes displaying more stress-
resilient characteristics will inevitably be more
robust to the wide variety of challenges im-
posed by an athletic life. Such characteristics
are, like all other human traits, partly bestowed
by genetic legacy and partly by practice; partly
by Nature and partly by Nurture.
The coach can, however, play a crucial role
in designing the athletic environment and the
culture of the training group so as to moder-
ate background stressors. The coach can en-
courage, or prescribe, activities that have been
demonstrated to reduce background stress:
practices such as mindfulness meditation,
socialising with family and friends, expressive
writing, or activities as simple as walking in na-
ture, breathing-based relaxation exercises or
engaging in enjoyable hobbies.
Furthermore coaches can tailor their inter-
actions with athletes to help nurture and devel-
op stress resilient traits: for example, ensuring
all competition and training plans have been
clearly communicated to the athlete and that
the athlete has been given the opportunity to
input into these plans. This develops the ath-
lete’s understanding of the programme; faith in
the programme; and a sense that his/her voice
and opinions are important. Nurturing the ath-
lete’s sense of ownership, empowerment and
sense of control over their own destiny greatly
reduces the experienced sense of threat and
anxiety that drives an over-active stress re-
sponse.
The psychological hardiness, necessary for
success in competitive environments, is com-
monly ascribed to three interrelated personal-
ity characteristics: commitment, control and
openness to challenge. Those displaying har-
diness characteristics are not simply mentally
tougher, but also exhibit more robust immune
response 33.
Understanding that athletes will be most vul-
nerable to physical, psychological and immu-
nological breakdown during times of emotional
A New Understanding of Stress and Implications for Our Cultural Training Paradigm
New Studies in Athletics · no. 3.2015
34
Please send all correspondence to
John Kiely
jkiely@velan.ac.uk
continued recycling of the doctrines of the
early stress theorists. As coaches we often as-
sume physical training is an exclusively physi-
cal phenomenon: we numerically prescribe
physical training and expect training outcomes
to be predictable and directly dependent upon
the imposed training load.
MASON, the physician and researcher at
the forefront of the revolt against conventional
stress dogma, once noted “The knowledge that
the psyche is superimposed upon the humoral
machinery for endocrine regulation drastically
complicates our whole view”16. Understand-
ing the complex nature of the stress response
certainly complicates our view of the training
adaptation process, but it also helps illuminate
the way forward, adds explanatory clarity and
provides coaches with an opportunity.
An updated appreciation of how an exces-
sively activated stress response can negatively
impact the athlete’s health and performances
provides the coach with important background
information. The science has advanced rapidly
in recent decades and today we have a much
richer understanding of the nature of the stress
phenomenon than previous generations. Yet,
crucially, how this knowledge is most effective-
ly translated into coaching practice is a ques-
tion that empirical science cannot answer, and
which remains open to argument and personal
interpretation. As with other bodies of aca-
demic information the science can ‘suggest’,
but the coach must ‘decide’. As always, each
coach must thoughtfully weigh the presented
arguments and filter them through the lens of
their personal experience and philosophy, be-
fore deciding how these insights may — or may
not — apply to their coaching context.
A New Understanding of Stress and Implications for Our Cultural Training Paradigm
Summary:
• The stress response is not the mono-
lithic, predictable process traditionally
envisioned.
• Stressors impose distinct adaptive
‘signatures’ dependent upon context,
constitution, history, and persistently
transitioning biological states.
• The consequences of an imposed
stressor may be broadly predictable
on a population-wide basis but, at the
individual level are unpredictable.
• Each stressor exerts a psycho-emo-
tional toll, which if unremediated,
damages the neural circuitry driving
emotional responses, inevitably lead-
ing to ‘wear and tear’ and reduced
resilience to future similar stressors.
• Physiological stress is not solely
physiological in genesis, similarly
stress of any origin exerts a physio-
logical toll.
New Studies in Athletics · no. 3.2015 35
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A New Understanding of Stress and Implications for Our Cultural Training Paradigm
