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Wanja Wolff publishes together with Chris Englert (TU Dortmund) and Benjamin Pageaux (Université de Montréal) the book chapter "Self-Control in Sports" which has appeared in "Essentials of Exercise and Sport Psychology: An Open Access Textbook". The chapter can be found here.

Abstract: "Imagine yourself walking to the gym in the rain after a long hard day at work. Picture yourself lifting heavy weights, even though you would prefer sitting on the sofa watching your favorite baseball team win a playoff match. Envision a marathon runner who keeps pushing herself during the final miles of a run, trying to override her thoughts of quitting the straining competition. These are just some sports-related examples of situations during which self-control processes enable us to keep striving for a desirable goal and suppress po-tentially tempting action alternatives. In general, “self-control refers to the capacity for alter-ing one’s own responses, especially to bring them into line with standards such as ideals, values, morals, and social expectations, and to support the pursuit of long-term goals” (Baumeister, Vohs, & Tice, 2007, p. 351) . However, self-control is not always applied effec-tively as, for instance, evidenced by the large number of gym dropouts every year (e.g., Eng-lert & Rummel, 2016). In this chapter, we will discuss empirical findings that highlight the importance of self-control for sports-related performance and we will introduce the theoretical accounts that try to explain why self-control sometimes appears to fail. Finally, we will discuss open research questions in order to improve our understanding of how self-control operates and why it is not applied at all times."