Perfectionism: The Double Edged Sword

There are many people in sport, and in particular endurance sports like triathlon and multisport, who you could define as perfectionists. Perhaps you would even consider yourself to be a perfectionist?

It may not necessarily be news to you but recent research has shown that being a perfectionist in triathlon can be a positive thing (Stoeber, Uphill & Hotham, 2009).

 There are also many negatives associated with being a perfectionist and we’ll also look at these. In my experience of working with elite level athletes, perfectionism can be tamed and can be a positive factor to the performance equation but you also need to take into consideration the other side of the sword: the negative.

So what is this negative side to perfectionism? Negative perfectionist factors may drive you to skip your weekly rest day when training as you’ve convinced yourself that by training every day this week you’ll be able to take a few more seconds off your time.

Skipping rest days or training when injured can be bad for your health and can make you susceptible to overtraining. Symptoms of over training include lingering cold or flu symptoms, tiredness, loss of weight or appetite, depression, disturbed sleeping patterns, aching muscles and a temperature which leads to your performance getting worse.

Another aspect to the negative side of perfectionism is labelled by the academics to be “Evaluative Concerns Perfectionism” and this essentially means that you are concerned with making mistakes, have doubts about your actions and you’re concerned about what others think of your performance. Often these people are motivated by a fear of failure: “I don’t want to lose to them”; or they are “not wanting a worse time than the last race”. The fact that they are scared to do badly (compared to previous results or to others) motivates them to train and compete. As a consequence these negative perfectionists set goals that reflect these thoughts. For example, “I don’t want to come outside the top 50 in this race”. These are related to maladaptive responses such as not wanting to show how good you are compared to others. For example, you may start a race at the back of the pack where no one can see you. Or you don’t want to do worse than before so you focus on not stuffing up a leg of the race or bombing out completely. You’re focusing on avoiding poor performances.

The other side of the perfectionist sword is the positive aspect. Contrary to the negative perfectionist’s thoughts, positive perfectionists focus on what the academics call “Personal Standards Perfectionism”. That is they are concerned about striving for perfection whether that is beating others or mastering certain skills or legs of a race.

The key difference here is in the types of goals these positive perfectionists set. They are motivated by the thoughts of success rather than being dragged down by fearful thoughts of failure. Positive perfectionists often set high standards for themselves.

Stoeber et al.’s (2009) research found that when positive perfectionists set these high normative goals (such as finishing in the top 10% of all race contestants) they performed better than those negative perfectionists that set lots of avoidance goals (such as not wanting to finish last). In other words, positive perfectionists set higher goals for themselves and their performance levels were also higher.

Arguably, when you aim to finish higher it motivates you to work, train and race harder. Possibly this positive view is more likely to translate into a successful performance than the negative perfectionist’s avoidance approach. This may in turn be because athletes who are motivated to not fail are less likely to reach their potential as they are constantly focused on the poor performance end of the spectrum rather than the high performance end.

If you have high standards and consider yourself to be a perfectionist are you a positive or negative perfectionist? Are you focused on improving your performance relative to your previous times or beating others? If so I suggest you push the boat out and set yourself achievable but higher goals. Furthermore, if you are a negative perfectionist I challenge you to change your mindset and focus on positively striving for perfection. Stick to your training schedule, make the most out of each session you have and aim for high positively phrased goals such as coming in the top 30 or beating your personal best time.