Sport Psychology: New Publication

Book chapter: “Goal striving and endurance performance”

This chapter is a collaboration of Chair of Sport Psychology members Julia Schüler and Wanja Wolff with Maik Bieleke (Chair of Social Psychology and Motivation). The chapter is part of the forthcoming book “Endurance performance in sport: Psychological theory and interventions”, edited by Carla Meijen and published by Routledge.

Chapter Summary: “People often struggle with attaining their goals. One important reason for this intention-behavior gap pertains to the difficulties of goal striving: to be successful, people must get started, stay on track and bring their goal pursuits to a successful close. We show the importance of goal striving for endurance activities and describe the self-regulatory strategy of if-then planning (implementation intentions), which is known to facilitate goal striving in several domains. We illustrate when and how implementation intentions work, summarize the literature regarding their facilitative effects on goal attainment, and discuss their potential for enhancing endurance performance.”

This chapter reflects our interest in the self-regulation of human performance and more specifically in how self-regulation is crucial for successful goal-striving (click here to learn more).

The bibliographic information of the chapter: Wolff, W., Bieleke, M., & Schüler, J. (2019). Goal-striving and endurance performance. In C. Meijen (Ed.), Endurance performance in sport: Psychological theory and interventions. Routledge.