Optimism and resilience: the Golden Path to sportive performance?

Introduction: the importance of the study lies in understanding the relevance of burnout as a detriment to the quality of life and performance of high performance athletes. Objective: Identify and describe the dimensions of resilience and optimism that could act as protective variables against the possibility of suffering burnout. Methodology: The study was conducted with a sample of 194 Uruguayan athletes who participated in the ODESUR 2022 games. Four instruments were used: The Resilience Scale (ER; Ruíz et al., 2012), the Life Orientation Scale-Revised (LOT-R; Scheier, et al., 1994), the Sports Optimism Questionnaire (COD; Batista, 2022) and the Burnout Inventory for Athletes (IBD-R; Garcés et al., 2012). Results: Athletes present a moderate level of resilience, a high optimism profile and a moderate level of pessimism. Regarding Burnout, 65.5% presented symptoms of Emotional Exhaustion, 67% had symptoms of Depersonalization and 62.9% had symptoms of Reduced Personal Accomplishment. The SEM model explained a very high percentage of the variance in emotional exhaustion scores (79.1%) with resilience being the predictor variable, mediated by the protective role of optimism. Discussion: The percentages found are shocking and are very similar to those found in Uruguayan athletes previously evaluated, as well as in other research with elite athletes. Conclusions: The findings allow us to visualize the fundamental role of Resilience and Optimism as protective factors that could reduce the risk of burnout in high performance athletes.