Study of the Month: The Science Behind Resilience
What is more important: talent or resilience? This meta-analysis sought out to answer this question.
Lucas Salas
8/1/20261 min read
At Xcelsior, we often talk about the importance of being resilient by continuing to work, compete, and believe in yourself even when the results haven’t arrived yet. A recent systematic review and meta-analysis suggests that resilience may also be meaningfully connected to athletic performance.
Researchers analyzed 15 studies involving a combined 4,654 athletes and found a moderately strong positive relationship between psychological resilience and performance. Athletes who demonstrated a greater ability to adapt to pressure, recover from setbacks, and remain focused through adversity also tended to perform at a higher level.
The takeaway is not that mindset can replace preparation, talent, or physical training. Instead, resilience may be another trainable quality that helps athletes get the most out of their preparation. For me, I see the connection between athletic performance and performance at work or the classroom as one and the same. While not backed by this study, it wouldn’t surprise me if similar results were found in the workplace and universities which would make these findings significant to any competitor, regardless of their arena.
Being underrated often means experiencing doubt, limited recognition, and setbacks without allowing them to define you. The competitor who keep responding, adjusting, and moving forward give themselves the opportunity to accomplish more than others expect.
Stay Underrated,
Lucas Salas
Thank you for checking out our newsletter!
This has been an exciting new avenue for us, creating a way to inform and engage our community with segments we find interesting and beneficial to our lives. We hope you enjoyed what we had to offer, and we will be back next month with more. Let us know what segments you liked, if there are others you would want us to include, or even contribute to a post in the future!
Subscribe to our newsletter
A community for the Underrated Competitor.
Xcelsior
Clothing for the underrated competitor, stay underrated.
Support
contact@xcelsiorcollective.com
© 2025. All rights reserved.