Abstract

Recovery has long been an overlooked aspect of training for sports. Monitoring athletes with the Recovery-Stress Questionnaire for Athletes is a great step toward determining the extent to which an athlete is physically or mentally stressed and formulating strategies for recovery. In short, overtraining, burnout, and decreased performance can be dramatically reduced. The complete questionnaire package, developed by Michael Kellmann, PhD, and K. Wolfgang Kallus, PhD, provides a variety of tools to measure and track an athlete’s recovery, including two complete questionnaires (72- and 56-item forms), manual scoring keys, profile sheets, a user manual that describes questionnaire development and data and profile interpretation, and a computerized scoring database on CD. The Recovery-Stress Questionnaire for Athletes identifies the current recovery-stress states of athletes and provides a complete picture of the extent of stress they are experiencing. The questionnaire is based on the hypothesis that an accumulation of stress in different areas of life, with insufficient opportunity for recovery, leads to a compromised psychophysical state. Stress states are based on 12 non-specific and seven sport-specific scales. These scales draw a precise profile of an athlete’s state, which demonstrates the difference between the Recovery-Stress Questionnaire for Athletes and other popular measurement tools, which measure only current mood states. Evaluation based on the Recovery-Stress Questionnaire for Athletes scales immediately provides valuable information on areas where improvement is needed. This information can be used to modify future behavior. The questionnaire is ideal for applied settings. As an added benefit, purchasers of the Recovery-Stress Questionnaire for Athletes: User Manual are encouraged to photocopy as many copies of the questionnaires as needed for both applied and research purposes. Recovery is vital in the sport training process as well as in everyday life. The Recovery-Stress Questionnaire for Athletes helps users to formulate strategies to enhance recovery, making training more effective. Verl.-Information