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“It’s easier to just keep going”: Elaborating on a Narrative of Forward
Momentum in Sport
Katherine A. Tamminen, Mathew Lau, and Jelena Milidragovic
Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
This is an accepted draft of the paper published in Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and
Health. Please refer to the paper on the publisher’s website and cite as:
Tamminen, K. A., Lau, M., & Milidragovic, J. (2022). ‘It’s easier to just keep going’:
elaborating on a narrative of forward momentum in sport. Qualitative Research in Sport,
Exercise and Health. Available online ahead of print.
https://doi.org/10.1080/2159676X.2022.2098809
Author Contact Information:
Katherine A. Tamminen, Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education, University of Toronto,
55 Harbord St., Toronto, ON, M5S 2W6 Email: katherine.tamminen@utoronto.ca Tel: 1 (416)
946-4068 (corresponding author)
Declaration of conflicting interests: The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with
respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding: This research was supported by a SSHRC Institutional Grant awarded to the first
author.
Author Bios: Katherine Tamminen, PhD, is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Kinesiology
and Physical Education at the University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Mathew Lau, MScOT, was a Master’s student in Occupational Therapy at the University of
Toronto during the preparation of this manuscript.
Jelena Milidragovic, MScOT, was a Master’s student in Occupational Therapy at the University
of Toronto during the preparation of this manuscript.
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“It’s easier to just keep going”: Elaborating on a Narrative of Forward
Momentum in Sport
Abstract
In this article we elaborate on a narrative of forward momentum in sport drawing on multiple interviews
(total = 37 interviews) over six months with thirteen current and former competitive athletes (9 women, 4
men) from various sports and different stages of their sport careers. Using Dialogical Narrative Analysis
to guide the analysis (Frank, 2010), the results elaborate on a narrative of forward momentum and the
ways it is drawn upon by athletes to make sense of their experiences in sport. A narrative of forward
momentum emphasizes concerns about continual progress and increasing achievements in performance
over time, and athletes’ stories and lives were structured around the continual pursuit of success at the
highest possible level in sport before the end of one’s career. Athletes felt ‘swept along’ by the structure
of sport, and injuries and illnesses were seen as setbacks that could cause athletes to lose out on their
progress and which they would have to ‘catch up’ on. We further elaborate on the concept of a contract
within the narrative of forward momentum, wherein athletes invested hard work that would eventually
‘pay off’ and which promoted continual training and improvement in order to make progress and maintain
momentum. A narrative of forward momentum is explored as a useful companion story, and as a
potentially ‘dangerous’ companion story (Frank, 2010). We conclude by discussing the implications of a
narrative of forward momentum for exploring the ways that athletes make sense of their experiences in
sport.
Keywords: narrative, sport career, injury, coping
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Introduction
Athletes performing at an intercollegiate, semi-professional, professional, and
international level tell many stories of their experiences in sport. Athletes share numerous
benefits associated with playing elite sport, including a sense of fulfilment, social recognition,
development of life-long relationships with teammates, and improved physiological health
(Jewett et al., 2019; Cavallerio et al., 2019). On the other hand, athletes have also described
challenges and difficulties associated with the unique physical and psychosocial demands of
high-performance sport such as harsh criticism, pressure to succeed, managing and returning
from injury, experience of burnout, and retirement and withdrawal from sport (Adam et al.,
2021; Hill et al., 2015; Jewett et al., 2019). Difficulty navigating such challenges and
consequences can be detrimental to an athlete’s psychosocial wellbeing and contribute to stress,
anxiety, and depression (Bird et al., 2020; Mosewich et al., 2019). Exploring the ways that
athletes story their experiences of successes, failures, and other challenges can provide insight
into the ways that they make meaning of these experiences.
Narrative inquiry is one useful approach for gaining insight into the stories that athletes
tell about their experiences, and to explore the narrative templates or resources that people draw
on to make sense of their experiences (Smith and Sparkes, 2009). Narrative inquiry is a broad
term that includes a variety of approaches that share a focus on stories and which seeks to
explore how a person or people tell stories to communicate meaning (Reissman, 2008).
Narratives are templates or resources that people use or draw on to construct stories (Frank,
2010, p.121; Harrington, 2008); a narrative can be drawn on to make sense of various
experiences, as it “encompasses any number of times, places, and persons in its sphere of
reference” (Frank, 2010, p.199). Thus, narratives are not stories themselves, but rather they
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generate stories and mark similarities between stories (Frank, 2010), which are more immediate
and concern concrete events and people (Harrington, 2008). Narratives are both personal and
social; there is a degree of personal agency where the individual telling the story has freedom to
choose the characters involved and how to situate them within the story (Smith and Sparks,
2009). Narratives are also social because cultural and social worlds largely determine the
available narrative resources that individuals can draw upon to articulate their stories (Smith and
Sparks, 2009). By drawing on narratives to find meaning and structure the stories they tell,
people’s identities as relational beings are constructed as they make sense of themselves, others,
and the world around them (Papathomas, 2016). Taken together, the narrative(s) that individuals
draw on will shape how they make sense of their experiences and identity in relation to others,
thereby influencing their thoughts, emotions, behaviours, and psychosocial well-being (Douglas
and Carless, 2015; Papathomas, 2016; Jewett et al., 2019).
Various narrative types have been proposed in the sport literature. For example, Douglas
and Carless (2015) described three narrative types in their examination of elite and professional
athletes’ life histories: a performance narrative, a relational narrative, and a discovery narrative.
Of these, a performance narrative was identified as a dominant narrative that athletes adopted
throughout their careers, although some athletes also adopted relational or discovery narratives
as alternatives to the dominant performance narrative. In research examining gymnasts’
experiences of retirement, Cavallerio et al. (2017) identified other narrative types that athletes
drew on in making sense of their retirement experiences: an entangled narrative, a making sense
narrative, and a moving forward narrative. Recently, Everard et al. (2021) described six narrative
types representing athletes’ sport injury experiences, including a resilience narrative wherein
athletes maintained well-being and progress in their athletic trajectory despite setbacks due to
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injuries, a ‘merry-go-round’ narrative reflecting recurring sport injuries affecting athletes’ well-
being, and a snowball narrative typifying athletes’ experiences of decreasing wellbeing following
numerous sports injuries. Across these studies, narratives may differ in their narrative structure
(Gergen and Gergen, 1986), reflecting progressive, regressive, or stable narrative forms. They
may also reflect various characteristics of redemption/restitution, chaos, or quest narratives
(Frank, 1995) and they vary in their content, for example by focusing on relationships,
performance, or discovery narratives across athletes’ careers (Douglas and Carless, 2009),
experiences of time and temporality (Phoenix, Smith, and Sparkes, 2007), identity, and injury
(Everard et al., 2021; Sparkes and Smith, 2002). Together, these narratives represent possibilities
for the different storylines that athletes may draw on as they make sense of and as they represent
their lives and their experiences in sport.
Toward a Master Biographical Narrative of Forward Momentum
In this paper we advance a narrative of forward momentum as a biographical master
narrative (McLean and Syed, 2015) for competitive and high-performance athletes. The initial
concept of forward momentum was recently proposed in a qualitative study examining the
experiences of success and failure among perfectionistic athletes over the course of a competitive
season (Gotwals and Tamminen, 2021). Forward momentum was characterized by a focus on
continual progress, perpetual improvement, and an orientation toward upcoming challenges, as
well as an orientation away from current accomplishments and experiences (Gotwals and
Tamminen, 2020). Failures were characterized as instances of ‘stalled momentum’ and
positioned as adversities to be overcome by the refocusing of attention and efforts toward future
training and competition in order to resume forward momentum. Hard work was a response to
failures and stalled momentum, and it was positioned as an investment in forward momentum
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and the promise of progress toward performance goals. However, in instances when hard work
did not ‘pay off’, athletes expressed feeling upset, confused, insulted, and that their expectations
were violated, suggesting that a lack of a successful outcome invalidated their hard work
(Gotwals and Tamminen, 2020). The initial research by Gotwals and Tamminen (2020)
identified some key characteristics of forward momentum, although it was not formally
identified as a narrative typology or as a master narrative, as the focus of their study and their
thematic analysis precluded such an examination. Consequently, one aim of the current research
is to further explore the notion of forward momentum as a type of narrative that athletes may
draw on in making sense of their experiences across their sport careers.
To advance this inquiry, we draw on McLean and Syed’s (2015) work which
conceptualizes biographical master narratives as “culturally shared stories that guide thoughts,
beliefs, values, and behaviours … that are available for individuals to potentially internalize and
resist, both consciously and unconsciously” (p. 323). McLean and Syed outlined five principles
that can be used as a foundation for identifying master narratives and exploring how they
function, although these principles may vary in strength depending on the master narrative. A
first principle is that master narratives have utility in providing a foundation about expectations,
guidelines, and templates that individuals can internalize. Second, they are ubiquitous, in that
they are shared by a group of people with a shared culture. Third, master narratives are invisible
and hard to see, although they can become visible when individuals negotiate with them and
violate or resist them. Fourth, they are compulsory and contain messages about particular values
and about how to behave and feel; therefore, aligning with master narratives feels ‘right’.
Finally, a fifth principle of master narratives is that they are rigid and difficult to change or resist.
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According to McLean and Syed (2015), there are three broad categories of master
narratives: biographical (e.g., master narratives about how a life should unfold; cultural life
scripts relating to traditional expectations for men or women, etc.); structural narratives that
focus on how stories or episodes should be structured (e.g., redemption narratives); and episodic
master narratives, which dictate the telling of particular episodes (e.g., narratives about historical
events that united people together against a common enemy). Biographical master narratives
dictate “that there are common events that occur at a certain time and in a certain order that we
would expect to see in the life story” (McLean & Syed, 2015, p.329); for competitive athletes
pursuing high-performance sport participation, a biographical master narrative would concern
how an athlete’s life and sport career should unfold. Elucidating the features of a biographical
master narrative of forward momentum for competitive athletes would be valuable in elaborating
on the structures that tell how athletes’ lives should unfold, and could provide insight into the
characteristics of a narrative that individuals may draw on to make sense of their experiences and
structure their lives.
Adopting a narrative inquiry approach to examine forward momentum in sport would
also address some limitations of the research by Gotwals and Tamminen (2020). First, while
their initial study adopted a longitudinal approach to examine athletes’ responses to success and
failure over a competitive season, their analysis did not explicitly articulate forward momentum
as a narrative that athletes used to make sense of other experiences across athletes’ sport career
trajectories such as team tryouts, injuries, or plateaus in performance. Thus, one purpose of the
current study is to examine how athletes may draw on a narrative of forward momentum to make
sense of different sport experiences across athletes’ careers, in addition to competitive successes
and failures. Additionally, the athletes sampled in the study by Gotwals and Tamminen included
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only varsity athletes who were identified as having perfectionistic tendencies; in the present
study, we aimed to explore forward momentum as a narrative across a broader group of
competitive athletes, including high-performance at different stages of their sport careers.
Extending the investigation of forward momentum as a narrative type would be useful to
examine the ways that it is maintained and circulated within sport, and to identify how the
structure of sport and various actors within it may serve to perpetuate this narrative. Finally, a
fuller examination of a narrative of forward momentum aims to examine how it may be a useful
or a dangerous companion story (Frank, 2010). Thus, the overarching aim of the present research
was to elaborate on the conceptualization of a narrative of forward momentum and to explore
this narrative across a broader sample of competitive athletes.
Methods
Narrative Approach and Philosophical Position
This study is positioned primarily within a ‘storied resource’ perspective of narrative
identity, although it is also informed by a ‘dialogic’ perspective of narrative identity (Smith and
Sparkes, 2008). According to a storied resource perspective, narratives are personal but shaped
by socio-cultural conventions; within this perspective, we turn to narratives not as a way of
grasping private experience or interior authentic self and identity, but rather we look at narratives
as socio-cultural phenomena, and these narrative resources may be used and drawn upon to
shape the ways that people engage in habitual, rehearsed, and repetitive patterns of identity work
(Smith and Sparkes, 2008, p. 17). This study was also approached from an interpretivist
paradigm which holds assumptions rooted in ontological relativism and social constructionism
(Papathomas, 2016; Mersel, 2010; Tamminen and Poucher, 2020). A relativist ontology holds
the belief that reality is a subjective experience and is dependent on the perception of the
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individual who is interpreting it (Mersel, 2010). The stories shared by the athletes were
understood on the basis of this assumption. This paradigm also assumes a subjectivist and
transactional epistemology which posits that an individual’s story is co-created between the
story-teller and the story listener. This co-construction of knowledge during storytelling was
recognized by the researchers whereby their own subjectivity, biases, and beliefs were
acknowledged and discussed throughout the research process in shaping the development of the
research idea, data generation, and analysis (Mersel, 2010). As a mid-career researcher in sport
psychology, the first author had personal and professional interests in exploring issues of
achievement and accomplishment and meanings associated with being ‘productive’ (i.e.,
personally, as a researcher, and in doing research and working with athletes in competitive
sport); hence, these perspectives informed the topic of research and the areas explored in the
interviews and data analysis. The second and third authors were graduate students in
occupational therapy with an interest in the psychological and emotional experiences of athletes,
which informed their interest in exploring the meanings that athletes make of their experiences of
adversity and injury over their sport careers.
Participants
We recruited competitive, high-performance athletes across a range of sports and at
various stages of their sport participation, in order to explore the features of a narrative of
forward momentum across various athletes’ stories of their sporting careers. The participants for
this study included 13 competitive athletes (9 women, 4 men) from Canada, the United States,
and the United Kingdom. The athletes represented various sports, including ice hockey, rowing,
running, skeleton, trampoline, track & field, camogie, swimming, soccer, wrestling, and
volleyball. The athletes’ competitive levels ranged from varsity sport and provincial sport teams
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to international and Olympic teams.
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The athletes ranged in age from 18 to 32 years (M = 25.5
years) and they had between 4 and 26 years of experience in their respective sports (M = 14.07
years). Twelve athletes identified as White/Caucasian and one athlete identified as Chinese. Six
of the athletes were currently competing (or intending to continue competing post-pandemic); the
remaining athletes had retired from their sport within the previous two years. Pseudonyms are
used to protect the participants’ identities in the results.
Data Generation
The data were generated through three interviews with each participant.
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The interviews
were informed by a life-history approach for the athletes to reflect on their sport careers (Cole
and Knowles, 2001) using a semi-structured interview based on broad themes related to the
research focus (Tierney and Lanford, 2019). Before the first interview, athletes were asked to
prepare a timeline of significant events from their sport careers to guide the discussion during the
interview (Adriansen, 2012). During the first interview the athletes described and recounted
significant events that occurred during their sport careers. In the second interview, athletes were
asked about the meanings of positive and negative events that were described in the first
interview, as well as questions regarding athletes’ responses to successes and failures in
performance during their sport careers, and their expectations for themselves in sport. The third
interview served as a follow-up interview for the researchers to discuss the events from the
previous two interviews, as well as to discuss the researchers’ interpretations of the meanings
developed regarding the phenomena of interest (e.g., member reflections, Smith and McGannon,
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According to Swann et al.’s (2021) classification of varying levels of elite status, the participants in this study
ranged from semi-elite to world-class elite athletes; according to the system of classification proposed by McKay et
al. (2022), the participants would be classified as Tier 3 (Highly Trained/National Level) to Tier 5 (World Class)
athletes.
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One participant chose to only complete the first interview.
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2018). While the interviews were generally structured according to this format, they were semi-
structured to allow researchers to ask probe questions when athletes discussed meaningful events
(e.g., team selection, injuries, notable competitions, and interactions with others that were
memorable for the athlete). The use of timelines in the interviews generally focused on situating
the ‘big stories’ of major events in athletes’ lives, although during the interviews the athletes also
shared ‘small stories’ and ‘middle stories’ (Bamberg, 2006; Papathomas, 2016; Phoenix and
Sparkes, 2009) about everyday occurrences that were also analysed to consider the ways that a
narrative of forward momentum appeared in their daily lives. For example, athletes shared
stories about conversations with teammates while driving to competitions, stories from practices
unrelated to a particular event or competition, and ‘mundane’ training activities during injury
rehabilitation.
The interviews were scheduled at least two weeks apart to allow the researchers to review
the previous interview and interview notes, and to prepare additional notes regarding areas to
revisit for further exploration in subsequent interviews. The first interviews ranged in length
from 47-123 minutes (M = 74min), the second interviews ranged from 48-111 minutes (M =
76min), and the third interviews ranged from 31-101 minutes (M = 57min). The interviews were
transcribed verbatim and generated 718 pages of transcripts in total (Interview 1 = 262 pages of
transcripts; Interview 2 = 252 pages of transcripts; Interview 3 = 204 pages of transcripts).
Data Analysis
To address the research purpose, the analysis process focused on exploring a narrative of
forward momentum within athletes’ stories across their sport careers. The researchers adopted
the role of story analysts (Smith, 2015) to analyse the athletes’ stories following Frank’s (2010 ;
2015) Dialogical Narrative Analysis (DNA), which interrogates what is being told in
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participants’ stories (i.e., the content), as well as how it is being told and what happens as a result
of the telling of the story (i.e., the effects). The process of analysis was iterative and cyclical
throughout the research process, as opposed to being linear and fixed (Smith, 2015). Reflexive
notes about the topic were documented throughout the research project, from the development of
the interview guide and in early discussions with colleagues about the research project, during
and following interviews, and throughout the analysis process.
Once all the interviews were complete and transcribed, the researchers immersed
themselves in the data through reading and re-reading the transcripts (i.e., indwelling; Smith,
2015). In keeping with a DNA approach, stories were selected for focused attention on the basis
of phronesis (Flyvbjerg, 2001), which is the researcher’s ‘practical wisdom gained through
analytic experience’ (Frank, 2015, p. 43). For example, stories that were relevant to the research
focus included athletes’ stories about progression through their sport from one season to the next,
challenges in training or performance plateaus, stories of injuries and illnesses, as well as stories
where athletes used language that related to the sensitizing concept of forward momentum (e.g.,
phrases such as ‘setbacks’, ‘bouncing back’, ‘continually working’, ‘just keep pushing’, ‘it will
pay off eventually’). Hence, while there were examples within the athletes’ stories that might
have been interpreted to reflected other narrative types (e.g., restitution, performance, or
relational narratives), for the purposes of this paper we focused on themes that reflected a
narrative of forward momentum.
Rather than following prescriptive steps or procedures, DNA emphasizes the use of
questions to guide analysis and interpretation and to encourage movement of thought (Frank,
2010; Smith, 2015). The following guiding questions were used to lead the analytic process:
How does this narrative offer plotlines that people can rely on? What are the consequences of
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this narrative? What does the story require us to do? What are our obligations within this
narrative? How does the story coordinate actions among members involved in this setting who
share the expectation that life will unfold according to certain plots? How does this narrative
emplot lives and give a projection about plausible, particular futures? What are the virtues in this
story? How and where does this narrative live in objects? How is this narrative sustained and
maintained? Is this narrative being used or employed by the person, or are they being pulled
around by the narrative? How is this story a good companion, and how would we know if it is a
dangerous companion? The first author led the analysis, guided by these questions, reading all
the athletes’ interview transcripts multiple times, making detailed notes by hand about thoughts
and reflections related to the research focus. Each athlete’s set of transcripts was read in full
before moving on to the next athlete’s set of transcripts. The second and third authors also
conducted an analysis of the interviews from the athletes they had interviewed, and the
researchers met and discussed their interpretations of the athletes’ stories and the themes in the
analysis. The first author then imported the interview transcripts into NVivo qualitative analysis
software to organize the interview transcripts and the narrative themes that were being
developed. The interviews were re-read and relevant passages (e.g., stories, passages, phrases)
were coded according to the different narrative themes that were identified, such as the structure
of sport, getting swept along, legitimate breaks and pauses, investments and rewards, goals and
progress, looking ahead, and a contract and contract violations. Multiple drafts of the results
were written and re-written to illustrate the features of a narrative of forward momentum and to
demonstrate how it operates as a master narrative that athletes draw on to make sense of their
experiences and used to build and structure their stories. In the results, we aim to ‘avoid an epic
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closure’ (Kim, 2016, p.235) and instead aim to provide an open-ended perspective that stimulates
critical thinking about the athletes’ experiences.
Methodological Rigour
The methodological rigour of this study was enhanced by using multiple interviews with
each athlete and the use of timelining (Adriansen, 2012) in the interview as a way of exploring
stories that were important to each athlete over their sport career. Engaging in multiple
interviews with each participant allowed for the interviewer to build rapport with them and to
engage in a joint process of meaning-making about the events in their sport careers (Grinyer and
Thomas, 2012). Throughout the project, the researchers engaged in multiple, ongoing
discussions about the interview process and acted as ‘critical friends’ to consider the
development of themes and narrative analysis (Miles and Huberman, 1994). Thick descriptions
(i.e., interpretations that explore the underlying meanings of participants’ experiences; Denzin,
1989; Holloway, 1997; Schwandt, 2001) are supported by rich quotes to illustrate the ideas
presented in the results and to provide credibility for the interpretations offered. Another strength
of the research was the use of member reflections (Smith and McGannon, 2018) within the third
interview with the participants; taking time in the interview to discuss concepts that had been
identified in previous interviews enabled the researchers to share interpretations and to explore
topics that had arisen across interviews with other participants. Athletes elaborated on the ways
that their experiences were reflected in the concepts and interpretations and they also clarified
the ways that their experiences differed from the narrative developed in the results.
Results
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A Narrative of Forward Momentum - Overview
A narrative of forward momentum is positioned as a biographical master narrative
(McLean and Syed, 2015) for competitive athletes. This narrative holds a progressive form or
structure (Gergen & Gergen, 1986) that emphasizes how sequences of events should be
constructed and sets parameters and expectations within which predictable things will happen for
particular reasons (Frank, 2015). A narrative of forward momentum emphasizes concerns about
continual progress, successive improvement, and increasing achievements in sport performance
over time. Athletes’ stories reflected the notion of always looking ahead—to the next
competition, the next practice, the next season, cycle, or major event—and their stories and lives
were structured around the continual pursuit of success at the highest possible level in sport
before the end of one’s career. This narrative focuses athletes’ efforts in competitions and
training, day-to-day planning, recording and logging details of workouts and training, and in
scheduling careers, education, and life plans. The competitive structure of sport (e.g., sport
seasons, competition schedules, Olympics cycles) maintains a narrative of forward momentum
by providing an external structure around which athletes set goals, organize their lives, and plan
their training. The structure of sport also contributes to sustaining a narrative of forward
momentum by providing tangible and measurable rewards as evidence of progress and success
(e.g., trophies, medals, personal bests, scholarships), as well as intangible rewards and validation
of athletes’ progress (e.g., praise from coaches, teammates, and others). A narrative of forward
momentum is maintained through messages and mantras shared within the sport environment
which emphasize refocusing on future events and documenting evidence of investment and
progress.
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A key element within a narrative of forward momentum is the concept of a ‘contract’
which implicitly suggests that athletes’ investments in hard work and training will pay off or be
rewarded with improvements in performance and progress toward their goals; hence, athletes’
forward momentum is maintained by continuing to work hard with the belief that their work will
eventually pay off. Athletes may perceive ‘contract violations’ if sacrifices and investments in
training do not pay off or if their progress does not conform to the expected trajectory of
improved performance, progress, and achievement in sport. Within this narrative, then, virtues
that are valued include hard work, investment of effort for the possibility of long-term gains,
sacrifice, pushing through injuries, bouncing back after setbacks or failures, and personal
accountability. A narrative of forward momentum is also embodied: the emphasis on continual
progress and improvement directs one’s focus toward increasing one’s physical and bodily
capacity for performance. In this sense, the body may be a site where a narrative of forward
momentum exists and is demonstrated through the development and maintenance of an ideal
body for performance and ongoing improvements in the body’s capacity to perform.
Aligning with a narrative of forward momentum meant that disruptions due to injury or
illness were seen as setbacks which could cause athletes to lose fitness and strength, and ‘fall
behind’. Consequently, a narrative of forward momentum creates expectations for performance
and training so that athletes were reluctant to take breaks or pauses, fearing the impact that these
breaks could have on their physical fitness and subsequently on their performance and progress.
As such, stopping or pausing training and taking breaks are devalued and discouraged, unless
there are ‘legitimate’ reasons for doing so. In these cases, ‘sanctioned breaks’ are acceptable,
although athletes may still draw on a narrative of forward momentum within these breaks or
periods of slower progress, for example to refocus on moving forward and make progress in
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rehabilitation (e.g., reflecting a restitution story set against a broader master biographical
narrative of forward momentum; Allen Collinson and Hockey, 2007; Williams, 2020). In some
cases, a narrative of forward momentum and the pursuit of continual improvements in
performance could lead to overtraining, burnout, and exhaustion – illustrating how this narrative
could be a dangerous companion story.
The Structure of Sport and Getting Swept Along
Athletes’ focus on moving forward and maintaining momentum in their progress was
supported by the structure of sport, including the scheduling of competitions across multi-year
Olympic cycles, within-season schedules of competitions and training, and within-competition
structures (e.g., periods, innings, shifts). These schedules provide a structure that is predictable
and serves to orient the athlete toward ‘the next thing’ following positive or negative events and
experiences in sport. Reflecting on her sport career to date, Kayla (skeleton) said that after each
competition, ‘you're so set on the next… what's the next goal? What's the next event? You know,
what's the next… what's the next Olympics?’ (Int2), and during her subsequent interview she
said that following a successful performance at a selection event, ‘I celebrated it but then I just
thought, okay like, now I just need to prep for the next [one] … um, I guess that’s just a typical
athlete where you’re just like, ‘okay on to the next challenge, on to the next challenge’’ (Int3).
Sydney (camogie) participated in her sport in multiple leagues, describing a never-ending cycle
of seasons and competitions:
Interviewer: What happens when you meet the goals or expectations that you set for
yourself?
Sydney: In terms of the winning, I think it was just next one, next one, next one. I mean,
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that was always the way cause you always rolled from club into county into university, to
county to club to university, and we were always on the go… (Int2)
Athletes described their experiences as ‘part of the game,’ ‘getting back to business’ or ‘moving
on to the next thing,’ and they often described feeling that they were being swept along by
momentum with little opportunity to pause and reflect in the present moment, demonstrating an
internalization of a narrative of forward momentum:
Interviewer: What’s it like for you to have a season that’s year round?
Jack: I don’t even think of it like a season anymore, it’s just a lifestyle. I'm here, training,
doing some school, trying to do this and get good at this tournament, you don’t really
have that time to go relax, which at first you kind of miss, but then you start to like it and
like, just the non-stop, you’re always going. (Jack, wrestling, Int1)
Heather (ice hockey) shared her experiences during the selection process for the national
Olympic team and described the emotional toll when teammates were cut from the team, but she
also noted that the structure of the Olympic cycle and the overarching goals of the team and
national sport organization required athletes to move on and resume training:
Interviewer: I guess, it I mean like, the moving on sounds like it can be helpful, is that
right? Like it kind of gives you something to focus on or to keep going?
Heather: Yeah. If we stop work, you know, our goal of winning an Olympic gold medal
is, that's what you're risking right? You can have every emotion, like you're allowed to
feel how you need to feel. But, just like in the middle of a hockey game, you can be mad
but you gotta move on real quick. And so I think that application applies to those, to that
scenario as well … It's, you know, this train has to keep going because our common goal,
our end goal has not changed and will not change. (Int2)
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Within the structure of their sport, athletes described being ‘swept along’ as they
continually looked ahead to the next period, event, game, practice, or season. For Julia (soccer)
the notion of being swept along was more apparent as she discussed how ‘you just stay so busy
and I think, you don’t really get a lot of time to think or process things’ during each season.
According to McLean and Syed (2015), master narratives may offer a false sense of agency for
those who are aligned with them, where individuals may feel agentic and perceive control over
their actions, yet they may lack actual agency to address the constraints and systems that
inherently limit individual agency (p.336). Indeed, athletes’ internalization of a narrative of
forward momentum seemed to diminish their agency when following the expected trajectory. In
describing her experience of training and competing within her sport, Beti (track and field) said:
It’s not a question. Like, we don’t - at least, I’m speaking for me, I won’t have to
convince myself to keep moving forward. Like, it’s a given, it’s out of the question …
It’s not like every year you stop and think like, “Oh, maybe, what should I do now?” It’s
just, momentum that you have from so many years, and something really bad needs to
happen for me to [stop and] think about it.
Messages from coaches also reinforced the idea that athletes needed to focus on the next goal
following competitions or at the end of a season:
Interviewer: I'm curious about what happens after the meet? After the meet's over?
Emma: Our coaches were very much like ‘OK time to get ready for next season kind of
thing.’ We weren't the type of team that took long periods of time off between seasons.
They trained all year round, even in the summer … Um, it very much fed into my need
and desire to continue working and like you know be super driven. So I think that was,
you know, a positive and a negative. It gave me something to continually work towards
20
which really fed that need in me. But it also kind of fed into some of those you know
‘never stop pushing, never take a day off’ kind of perfectionist tendencies that I had.
(Emma, running, Int1)
Athletes also described how the structure of their sport and their sense of a need to
maintain momentum kept them from slowing down or taking breaks from training, highlighting
the difficulty in resisting a master narrative of forward momentum. Charlotte (rowing) said ‘It’s
kind of easier to just like… I mean up to a point, it's easier to just keep going.’ (Int2). She
elaborated, saying:
I just had like so much forward momentum and like lots of like external factors kind of
pushing me forward. So even if I was like, ‘Oh my God, like I could really use a week
off,’ well like I was just kind of swept along in like the tide of like, daily practices and
making it to lift on time and all of that, um, kind of external framework like kept me from
giving in to the desire to take a bit of time off. (Charlotte, rowing, Int2)
Breaks, Pauses, and Injuries: Stalled Momentum/Falling Behind
One consequence of a narrative of forward momentum was that athletes felt it was
difficult or impossible to pause or take breaks from training, due to concerns that they would lose
momentum and fall behind other athletes who would continue to make progress in their training
and performance. Athletes tended to describe a desire to maintain a sense of forward momentum
and continual progress, noting that it was ‘easier to just keep going’; conversely, athletes also
discussed the difficulty in regaining momentum after a break in training due to injury or when
they felt they had lost momentum due to burnout or overtraining:
Interviewer: One of the things I’m curious about in these experiences, is that kind of,
having to keep shifting and thinking about the next game and the next game and the next
21
game and just, what that’s like, and what impact that has on athletes, and how that
works?
Sydney: Even though sometimes getting a break from it is actually what you need to do,
sometimes it’s hard to feel that that’s gonna benefit you because you think, ‘oh, what if I
miss that training session?’... It’s almost like you need to be on your guard all the time.
You can’t let your guard down because if you do, you’re showing vulnerability.
(Interviewer: Mm-hmm). The worry for you is that you then think, ‘might I become
weaker?’ … So, there’s almost that fear of stopping in some respects as well, you know,
‘will I be able to recapture what I’ve got now?’ (Sydney, camogie, Int2)
Charlotte (rowing) talked about the challenges in taking breaks in her training, saying:
It takes so much momentum to like keep yourself at a certain training volume and like, at
that intensity. It's like, it's like watching a track cyclist get their fixed gear bike going,
where it's those initial huge powerful strokes to get the bike moving. But then once it's at
speed, you're just ripping around. So now I feel like my heavy fixed gear bicycle has like
come to a stop and I have to like, get it going again. But I am having trouble finding that
energy to get everything moving forward again. (Charlotte, rowing, Int1)
In her second interview, she elaborated, saying:
When you take time off like it is kind of inevitable that you'll lose a little bit of fitness. So
then you’ve kind of got to, you know, like your train has slowed down and you're going
to have to, like, work to ramp it up again. (Int2)
Athletes also received messages from others (e.g., teammates and coaches) indicating that breaks
and pauses due to injuries were discouraged or unacceptable:
22
Our coaches weren’t very supportive of people who had injuries. I think there’s kind of
this unwritten code among athletes that like, if you complain about injuries too much, you
were weak. You know, if we’re constantly complaining, she would like call us weak. And
I got a lot of those messages from my coach and from my teammate and it caused a lot of
conflict (Emma, running, Int3).
The messages that athletes received from coaches and teammates echoed findings reported by
Cresswell and Eklund (2006), who noted similar perceptions among elite rugby athletes
regarding an ‘anti-rest culture’ in elite sport and pressure to comply with demands places upon
them, contributing to experiences of burnout and exhaustion.
A narrative of forward momentum also shaped the way that athletes told stories about the
timing of their sport injuries in relation to their sense of forward momentum; for example,
injuries sustained during the off-season were described as less disruptive to their progress and
sense of momentum in sport. Emma (running) said that an off-season injury ‘didn’t feel like I
lost that much or that it was unusual in the way that it might feel if it was like during the middle
of the season’ (Int2). Conversely, Michael (volleyball) said ‘all the injuries I’ve gotten have been
in the worst timing. The best time would be in the off-season, because then I’d have time to
recover for the, for the next season’ (Int2). These results reflect similar themes related to
differences in athletes’ emotional responses to becoming injured at different points during their
competitive season (Gayman and Crossman, 2003). Thus, injuries that were ‘well timed’ and that
were minimally disruptive to the athletes’ forward momentum were viewed as easier to deal with
compared to injuries that might occur in the middle of a season or training program: ‘what are
you supposed to do – stop? Like, if you stop, you stop for months and that’s an entire season
thrown out’ (Beti, track and field, Int2).
23
Taking breaks from training were described as difficult and undesirable due to the
potential impact on athletes’ sense of progress, which was similar to work by Mosewich and
colleagues (2014), who reported that competitive women athletes felt their progress in sport had
stalled or declined because of injuries. However, in the current study, athletes suggested that
taking a break from training due to injury could be ‘allowed’ if injuries or requests for time off
were validated or sanctioned by doctors or coaches. Charlotte (rowing) described the relief she
felt when taking a break from training:
I think it was good to take some time off, that was like sanctioned time off. Like, I talked
about it with my coaches and they were like on board with it, and it was… like
everything was kind of approved. So, I didn't really have to feel guilty, and there was like
a set date that I was going to return. (Int2)
In instances where athletes did take a break from their training and competition, they continued
to draw on a narrative of forward momentum to make sense of their injury and rehabilitation
progress by focusing their attention and efforts on activities that could return them to training
and competition as soon as possible. Following an ACL injury requiring surgery, Victoria
(soccer) shared how she approached her goal-setting and rehabilitation process, as well as her
ambitions to return to play ahead of the timeline recommended by her physiotherapist and
coaches:
Basically I set that goal in my mind that I’m going to be back [playing within 7 months
instead of 9 months post-surgery] and my coaches were really against it and my like – my
physio guy was really against it cause he thinks it’s way too early … but I was like, no,
I’m going to do it and so, I did rehab for like 5, 6 hours a day. I’d go swim in the pool for
3 hours, keep my cardio up, I do rehab at 5 in the morning, come back in the evening and
24
do it at 5pm, so I was a bit crazy … but at the end of the day, I was cleared at 7 and a half
months, and I went to that tournament. (Int1)
Here, Victoria’s story reflected a restitution narrative, set against a backdrop of forward
momentum: in this story of her recovery from injury, it was necessary and valuable to set goals,
work hard, and commit to rehabilitation in order to return to competition ahead of schedule and
to minimize disruptions to her progress and overall forward momentum in her athletic career.
While such an approach appeared to be valued and deemed successful by Victoria because it
enabled her to return to sport faster than expected, a contrasting example was provided by
Barker-Ruchi and colleagues (2019), detailing the ways that an injured athlete adopted restitution
strategies to re-align with a performance narrative during rehabilitation. In their study, Barker-
Ruchi and colleagues described how the athlete sustained further injuries and disrupted his
qualification for the Olympic games. The intersection of a narrative of forward momentum with
a restitution and performance narrative may provide athletes with a sense of coherence and
direction in their rehabilitation efforts, yet these efforts may ultimately be harmful in the long
run.
The Contract: Investments and Rewards Maintain Momentum and Progress
In order to make progress and maintain forward momentum, athletes needed to invest
time, effort, money, and make sacrifices that they believed would eventually be rewarded with
performance achievements. Hence, a key aspect of the narrative of forward momentum is the
internalization of an implicit contract or agreement wherein athletes invested hard work and
effort into their sport, with the expectation that ‘at some point it’s going to pay off’ (Victoria,
soccer, Int1). Alex (swimming) said ‘all this effort, all this hard work you put in, you want to be
recognized’ (Int3), while Emma (running) said:
25
You know, there’s a saying like, you get out what you put in. Initially when I first started
I was training hard, and if I trained hard, then I got a good performance. So I found that
to be really true and that was kind of what hooked me in. It was very much like, I felt like
I got what I deserved. It’s a little more complex when you really get into it, but I think
most people will think like, yeah, if they’re performing well, they must be working hard.
(Int3)
Athletes’ stories of success and accomplishments during their careers reflected the idea that their
hard work had ‘paid off’ and served as validation of the work they had invested: ‘It's super
gratifying just to know that like what you're putting in is actually paying off. It's a nice feeling to
know you're doing the correct thing, like it's very validating’ (Charlotte, rowing, Int1). She went
on to say: ‘like you get over the finish line… it's again like another one of those sort of like
gratifying moments of like, the work paying off.’
The idea of athletes investing in hard work with the expectation of a performance payoff
thus provided structure and guided their actions in training: ‘at some point it’s going to pay off
and when it does pay off, I'm going to be like, it’s because I did everything I could right, every
single day.’ (Victoria, soccer, Int1). Athletes also documented their investment of hard work and
effort that was materialized and made tangible in training logs, journals, blogs, and diaries:
I have in my bookshelf probably like 8 or 10 training logs that I would you know, write
down all of my workouts. I took a very data-driven approach to, you know, being an
athlete and trying to train and get better. (Emma, running, Int1)
I want to have evidence of my training and I want to have something quantifiable and
some metrics. I treat my training diary and my training as, you're investing in yourself,
you're investing in the bank. It is written evidence that you have done all of it and that
26
when you have that in the bank, know you couldn't have done anymore. (Sydney,
camogie, Int3)
While a narrative of forward momentum provides structure and guidance for the
enactment of agency to pursue their goals in sport, it also emphasizes personal accountability for
one’s own success, and also and for one’s own lack of progress: ‘I get very caught up if I'm not
like improving week to week. It feels like if you're just plateauing, week to week, that it's
somehow your own fault.’ (Charlotte, rowing, Int2). Within a master narrative of forward
momentum, the responsibility lies with the athlete to make investments of effort and time in
training in order to progress; whereas the moral violation (Syed, Pasupahi, and McLean, 2020)
arises from lack of effort, taking time to rest, or complaining about one’s training or setbacks.
Indeed, athletes emphasized personal responsibility for re-focusing and determining how to
move forward again after being injured and missing competitions: ‘I just had to take a step back
and go, “OK what can we do going forward?” When you really boil it down, you go, well
complaining isn’t going to do anything, so you just got to push through it’ (Jack, wrestling, Int1).
Contract Violations
While athletes’ stories of their successes and the structure of their training reflected the
idea of a contract that required an investment of hard work, there were instances where the
‘payoff’ did not materialize. These instances were interpreted as contract violations, where the
assumptions of eventual success for the investment of hard work were not fulfilled. Examples of
these violations were evident in athletes’ stories of injuries, performance failures or losses, or not
being accorded playing time or recognition for their work: ‘you know, I always thought that if I
showed up and worked really hard, I’d get recognized for it, and just never getting recognized for
that, really took a toll on me in terms of like, cause, well, how am I gonna like prove that I am
27
actually a really good player now?’ (Julia, soccer, Int3). Contract violations characterized by a
lack of improvement or progress in performance outcomes were often described as ‘frustrating’
because ‘I’m putting in so much work and not really seeing a benefit’ (Charlotte, rowing, Int2).
Similarly, in their study of competitive women athletes, Mosewich and colleagues (2014) also
noted that performance plateaus were frustrating setbacks, and participants found it frustrating to
put effort, time, and commitment into their sport but cease to improve. In the current study,
athletes described a sense of demoralization and dejection about the hard work and effort they
had invested:
I think the very frustrating parts of sport are when you’re putting in effort and you’re not
getting the returns that you think that you deserve, I guess. And it kind of feels like, you
know, I deserve to have a good performance because I put in the work. And when it
doesn’t happen, it feels like, well that was a waste . (Emma, running, Int2)
Following contract violations, athletes expressed feelings of unfairness and frustration,
yet they also took accountability and personal responsibility for the lack of success, which
provided a sense of agency for the athletes as they could take actions to move toward their goals:
I ended up losing the match to the guy I beat a 100 times; after that … I just kept seeing
like, ‘oh here’s the problem and if I fix it then I’ll be better.’ So I was pretty much just
focused on the problems and how to fix them. (Jack, wrestling, Int1).
Hence, when athletes’ progress did not materialize after the time and effort they have invested in
training, athletes took personal accountability for determining how to move forward, and
working harder in the future was presented as the solution to regain forward momentum. Taking
personal responsibility in this way also serves to maintain the contract and the idea that hard
work will eventually be rewarded with performance accomplishments and improvements,
28
thereby strengthening the narrative of forward momentum. However, previous research suggests
that athletes’ efforts to try harder in response to performance frustration can result in further
deterioration of performance, leading to exhaustion and burnout (Cresswell & Sklund, 2006). In
the current study, when athletes’ training, effort, and sacrifices did not pay off, their stories also
reflected negotiations with the master narrative, saying they could take comfort in the knowledge
that they had left ‘no stone unturned’ (Kayla, skeleton, Int3) if they felt that they had worked as
hard as possible and invested everything they could into their sport and their training:
Interviewer: You mentioned that you had a, had written in a journal or diary previously
about your, um, competitions. But, I'm curious about how or, you know, why do we keep
these things? Why do we hold on to them?
Sydney: I think the training diary is very much about that evidence. If you go in there
knowing that you left no stone unturned, you have that evidence, then you are going to
feel more confident, regardless of what happens. But ultimately, unless that's down on
paper, you're not going to conjure that up when you're in the hardest moments. Whereas
if you can turn around and say, ‘I've trained 300 times this season. You know, I could not
have done any more for this, ’cause you can see it, it’s written down.’ (Sydney, camogie,
Int3)
Together, these examples emphasize athletes’ sense of agency and personal accountability: on
one hand, athletes described searching to identify problems in their performance or training
where they could work harder or train differently in the future, taking responsibility to improve
their performance. Conversely, athletes could also take comfort following performance failures if
they felt that they had evidence of their personal accountability and that they had made every
effort and investment into their training.
29
A Narrative of Forward Momentum as a Useful and a Dangerous Companion
A narrative of forward momentum provides a map of common events that an individual
would expect to see in their life story as a competitive athlete pursuing high-performance sport,
and it serves as an organizing template for athletes’ efforts and actions. It provides expectations
for how progress should be made, and it provides a framework to account for and make sense of
progress or a lack of progress in sport. A narrative of forward momentum can be valuable for
athletes, as it supported an orientation toward their next goal, whether this was the next shift, the
next competition, or the next season. Following poor performances, athletes commented that the
best thing to do is to ‘have a short memory’ and focus on the next objective (Jack, wrestling,
Int2). Charlotte (rowing) said:
In a more positive sense, like that mindset of ‘just keep going’ like, it ends up showing
you that you can do a lot more than you think you can… it does I think build some sort of
faith in yourself that even if things are really crappy, eventually you're going to emerge
on the other side if you just keep like progressing and trusting the process, kind of. Yeah,
so that's, that's like my more positive spin on like, my drive to keep going. (Int 2)
Thus, a narrative of forward momentum can be a useful companion (Frank, 2010) for providing
athletes with a structure to focus their attention and effort in their training and competitions, to
set goals, and for making progress to attain higher levels of achievement in their sport. Beyond
the day-to-day and year-to-year structure that this narrative provided athletes to make sense of
their progress in training and competitions, it also seemed to provide a sense of hope for oneself,
as it suggests a potential for continual growth and improvement: ‘I guess I find it very re-
assuring that I can do things like that, and that the way that I am now is not fixed forever’
(Charlotte, rowing, Int2).
30
Conversely, a narrative of forward momentum could also be a dangerous companion
story (Frank, 1995) in cases where athletes may get ‘swept along’ within their sport, for example
if they continue training and pushing their bodies to the point of becoming injured, or returning
to training too quickly after being injured: ‘I think that’s why injuries often get rushed, because
time doesn't stop for an athlete. The season continues, games continue on. And so that, that pause
is hard, to find that time when a pause can happen’ (Heather, ice hockey, Int 3). Emma (running)
said ‘As a competitive athlete it was really like, the biggest thing was making sure that you were
always getting better, always improving, always being the best you can be, but often at great
physical costs’ (Int2). Hence, a narrative of forward momentum might be a dangerous
companion story (Frank, 1995) in cases where athletes may feel the need to continue to maintain
high levels of performance and progress, leading to overtraining, burnout, and injuries.
Concluding Thoughts
The purpose of this study was to elaborate on a narrative of forward momentum in sport.
Through analysis of 37 interviews with 13 current and former high-performance athletes, the
results highlighted in this study advance a more nuanced and complex explanation of a narrative
of forward momentum as a biographical master narrative (McLean and Syed, 2015) or as a
dominant narrative type (Douglas and Carless, 2015). By including a broader group of
competitive athletes at different stages of their sport careers (i.e., beyond athletes who identified
as perfectionist; Gotwals and Tamminen, 2020), it was possible to identify how a narrative of
forward momentum was evident across multiple athletes’ stories of their sport careers.
Understanding narratives as commodities or resources (Frank, 2015), it is useful to
question the utility of aligning with a narrative of forward momentum for athletes. As a
biographical master narrative (McLean and Syed, 2015) or a dominant narrative type (Douglas
31
and Carless, 2015), a narrative of forward momentum is valuable in providing a structure for
expectations about how to achieve success in sport, expectations for training and performance,
and ways to go about attaining exceptional performance and sustaining high levels of
performance over the course of one’s sport career. Furthermore, a narrative of forward
momentum provides athletes with a template for setting goals (Weinberg and Butt, 2014), coping
with setbacks and challenges in sport (Mosewich et al., 2014), and maintaining adherence to
rehabilitation following injuries (Evans and Hardy, 2002). This may be due to the feeling that
athletes need to ‘maximize time’ to make the most out of one’s sporting career while the body is
at its peak, and to avoid future regrets and missed opportunities (Phoenix et al., 2007). Yet, while
messages of ‘moving on’ and ‘looking ahead’ can be useful for athletes, one potential danger of
a narrative of forward momentum is that it may implicitly promote over-training, burnout, injury,
and other harmful behaviours (e.g., eating disorders, doping, etc.) that might occur when athletes
are pursuing continual improvement (see also Busanich, McGannon, and Schinke, 2016; Kirby,
Moran, and Guerin, 2011; Papathomas and Lavallee, 2014). A narrative of forward momentum
may also be at odds with the need for rest and recovery, which has been culturally and societally
undervalued (Cresswell and Eklund, 2006; Eccles et al., 2020). Eccles et al. (2020) argued that
“sport organizations and coaches should avoid using narratives that devalue rest and should
challenge others’ use of them” (p. 17) and narratives about ‘relentless practice’ should be
replaced with those that emphasize ‘smart practice’ and ‘smart rest’ as key for athletic success,
enjoyment, and health. However, such efforts may simply re-position training, rest, and recovery
as useful for helping athletes to maintain forward momentum in sport. Nonetheless, it may be
valuable to question whether and when a narrative of forward momentum is harmful and how it
32
can be resisted to promote athlete wellbeing, or whether the promotion of athlete wellbeing is
itself an alternative narrative constructed in resistance to a narrative of forward momentum.
Another implication of aligning with a narrative of forward momentum is that by
emphasizing progress and moving forward, athletes are not able to savour their successes and
accomplishments. Savouring is a way of regulating positive emotions by attempting to maintain,
prolong, or enhance them (Bryant and Veroff, 2007) and has been associated with athletes’
harmonious passion and negatively associated with obsessive passion, and savouring also
predicted lower levels of burnout (Shellenberg et al., 2021). Furthermore, in their efforts to
‘move on’ following setbacks or disappointments, it is possible that athletes may engage in
emotional suppression and avoid processing negative emotions. Emotional avoidance is
associated with greater levels of anxiety and lower perceived efficacy in emotion regulation
ability (Feldner et al., 2003), paradoxically impairing emotional functionality and also
heightening anxious responding to threatening cues (Salters-Pedneault, 2004). Subsequent
research could examine the way alignment with a narrative of forward momentum diminishes
savouring and encourages emotional avoidance and suppression, with the possible consequence
of impaired emotional functioning in the long term.
As the focus of this study was on the exploration of a master biographical narrative of
forward momentum among competitive athletes, further research is warranted to explore
alternative narratives that are created in resistance to a master narrative of forward momentum.
Furthermore, as different types of master narratives are not mutually exclusive (McLean and
Syed, 2015), additional research would be valuable to explore how athletes negotiate and draw
on multiple biographical, structural, and episodic master narratives. For example, women
athletes may draw on a master biographical narrative related to motherhood, while also drawing
33
on a master narrative of forward momentum in competitive sport; recent research on athletes’
experiences of motherhood points to this negotiation of identity (Massey and Whitehead, 2019;
McGannon et al., 2018). Future research exploring master and alternative narratives would be
valuable, particularly among groups of individuals whose personal experiences do not align with
the master narrative. Similarly, athletes may describe career-related stories that reflect a
performance narrative typology (cf. Douglas and Carless, 2015), and athletes may story their
experiences of injury by drawing on narrative plots of redemption or restitution (Frank, 2015);
some evidence of this was noted in the results. Hence, narrative types identified in previous sport
research may be positioned alongside or intersect with a master narrative of forward momentum.
The notion of ‘maintaining forward momentum’ and athletes’ sense that they had to
‘catch up’ on lost progress when injured or when taking a break from training points to the
importance of considering athletes’ sense of time when considering their experienc es in sport.
While there is some research on the idea of temporality in sport (e.g., Allen-Collinson, 2003;
Burlot et al., 2018; Clift et al., 2021; Phoenix et al., 2007), to date there has been relatively little
research in the field of sport psychology that has attended to the temporal aspects of athletes’
sport experiences and careers (Stolarski et al., 2019). Future research building on a narrative of
forward momentum could seek to examine more fully the topic of temporality and athletes’
temporal orientation in framing their sport experiences and their sport careers. Additional
research would also be valuable to examine how a narrative of forward momentum dictates what
constitutes successful retirement experiences, as well as the experiences of retired athletes for
whom the master narrative ceases to have utility – for example, exploring whether losing access
to this narrative upon retirement leaves athletes with little structure or understanding of how to
operate, with no markers for progress and achievement, meaning, or purpose; or whether athletes
34
internalize a narrative of forward momentum and apply it to other life domains (see Agnew and
Drummond, 2014; Cavallerio et al., 2017; Jewett et al., 2019). Furthermore, a narrative of
forward momentum may extend beyond sport and manifest within other stories of achievement-
striving, success, and failure in other spheres of peoples’ lives, such as in academic contexts or
across one’s career. Hence, future research could examine the pervasiveness of a narrative of
forward momentum across various contexts beyond sport.
Clinicians working with competitive athletes, particularly those operating from a
narrative approach (White and Epston, 1990), may find it useful to consider whether and how
athletes draw on a narrative of forward momentum to make sense of their lives and their sport
experiences. Athletes can also explore what it means to ‘resist’ a narrative of forward
momentum, the costs and consequences of doing so, and the ways they internalize and negotiate
with a narrative of forward momentum. Sport psychology practitioners, as well as others
working with athletes (coaches, trainers, athletic therapists, doctors), may also consider the
extent to which they implicitly endorse and maintain a narrative of forward momentum in sport.
In reflecting critically on this narrative, coaches and others might be encouraged to consider the
psychological, emotional, and physical costs and consequences of endorsing this narrative
among athletes (e.g., overtraining, burnout). Practitioners working with athletes may also seek to
find ways they can support athletes’ resistance to a narrative of forward momentum through
provision of opportunities to savour accomplishments, to grieve losses and disappointments, and
by emphasizing the importance of rest and balance in athletes’ lives.
Given the focus of our study, we did not explicitly explore alternative narrative across the
athletes, but our findings can serve as a jumping off point for future work. Multiple
interpretations of stories are possible, and we did identify instances where the athletes’ stories
35
reflected alternative or complementary narratives (e.g., performance or restitution narratives;
Douglas and Carless, 2015). Another consideration was the broad sample of athletes at different
stages of their careers; it would be valuable to explore a narrative of forward momentum in a
more focused population (e.g., among retiring athletes, injured athletes during rehabilitation), as
“analysing individuals who are actively negotiating and resisting a master narrative can help
shed light on the master narrative itself” (McLean and Syed, 2015, p.339).
This study contributes to the literature by elaborating on a narrative of forward
momentum as a biographical master narrative for competitive athletes that serves as an
organizing template for athletes in storying their sport experiences. The results highlight the
maintenance of this narrative by the structure of sport and through the messages circulated
among those involved in sport. The results also draw attention to the notion of a contract which
warrants athletes must invest hard work, effort, and personal responsibility in order to make
progress and move forward, as well as the ways that these investments may or may not pay off
with tangible and also embodied outcomes. A narrative of forward momentum can be a valuable
companion story in providing structure and direction for athletes’ training and for providing
ways of setting goals and coping with setbacks; yet in other cases it may be a dangerous
companion story, leading to dissatisfaction, frustration, and overtraining, burnout, or exhaustion.
36
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