Yong-Gwan Song

Objective: Evidence on psychological traits in distance running remains fragmented across constructs, race contexts, and outcome definitions, while previous syntheses have generally addressed mental health, motivation, personality, or sport resilience separately. This review aimed to integrate and critically appraise psychological traits associated with both mental adaptation and performance continuity in long-distance and ultra-endurance runners while mapping concentrations and gaps in the evidence. Methods: This systematic review, reported in accordance with PRISMA 2020, searched PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science on 10 June 2026. Eligible empirical studies examined distance-running populations and associations between psychological traits or trait-like constructs and mental or performance resilience outcomes. Risk of bias was assessed using Joanna Briggs Institute checklists. The evidence was synthesized narratively and mapped by construct and outcome domain. Results: The searches yielded 469 records; after 40 duplicates were removed, 429 records were screened, 89 full-text reports were assessed, and 53 studies were included. Most studies were observational, using cohort or cross-sectional designs; the remainder used qualitative or mixed-methods approaches. Maladaptive pain coping was most consistently associated with poorer pain adaptation and a lower likelihood of race completion. Emotional intelligence and emotion regulation were primarily associated with mood and stress outcomes, whereas motivation, personality, perfectionism, mental toughness, resilience, and self-efficacy showed heterogeneous associations. Critical appraisal identified minor concerns in three studies, moderate concerns in 36, and serious concerns in 14. Conclusion: By jointly mapping mental adaptation and performance continuity outcomes, this review clarifies recurring domain-specific associations and identifies major gaps in the endurance running psychology literature. However, 50 of the 53 included studies had moderate or serious methodological concerns, and the evidence was predominantly observational. The findings should therefore be interpreted as associations rather than causal effects and do not establish that modifying mental toughness or other psychological traits through training improves endurance running performance. Systematic review registration: https://osf.io/mxce4

The present study examined the relationship between teachers’ autonomy support and control interpersonal styles, psychological needs, and engagement. Based on the online survey, participants were 734 college students in China. The results showed that teacher autonomy support was positively associated with psychological need satisfaction, whereas teacher control was positively associated with psychological need frustration. No significant relationship was found between teacher control and psychological need satisfaction. Psychological need satisfaction was positively associated with engagement (behavioral engagement, emotional engagement, cognitive engagement, and agentic engagement). Whereas Psychological need frustration was negatively associated with engagement (behavioral engagement, emotional engagement, and cognitive engagement). In the relationship between teacher interpersonal and engagement, perceived autonomy support was found to have mediating effect, while control was shown to have a partly mediating effect. Therefore, teachers interpersonal can improve students’ engagement (i.e., enthusiasm for class participation through interest, consideration, care, support), and effective communication to satisfy students’ psychological needs, which is important for teachers.

Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is a common and often persistent mental health condition that typically emerges during adolescence and is associated with marked functional impairment. Although cognitive-behavioral therapy and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors remain first-line treatments, many individuals experience incomplete response, poor tolerability, stigma-related concerns, or limited access to care. Against this background, exercise has attracted increasing interest as a low-cost, accessible, and scalable adjunctive intervention, although adherence and accessibility may vary across populations. In this mini-review, we synthesize current evidence on the role of physical activity and structured exercise in the management of SAD. Available findings suggest that higher levels of physical activity are generally associated with lower social anxiety symptoms, while emerging intervention studies indicate that aerobic exercise, climbing, and group-based exercise programs may confer psychological benefit. Exercise may complement mainstream therapies through partially overlapping yet distinct pathways, including enhancement of self-efficacy, resilience, body image, and social engagement, as well as modulation of cognitive bias, neuroplasticity, and stress-related physiological processes. Potential applications in adolescents, individuals with autism spectrum disorder and comorbid social anxiety, and performance-related anxiety contexts also warrant attention. However, the current evidence base remains limited by small samples, heterogeneous interventions, insufficient long-term follow-up, and a lack of large randomized controlled trials in clinically diagnosed SAD, and much of the available evidence derives from non-clinical or subclinical populations. Overall, exercise should be considered a promising adjunct rather than a replacement for established treatments, and future research should prioritize mechanism-informed, precision-based, and implementation-oriented intervention models.

Objectives: This systematic review identifies and synthesizes quantitative evidence regarding whether psychosocial constructs, specifically groupness, social support, self-efficacy, enjoyment, and instructor behavior, are associated with behavioral adherence to adult group fitness classes. Methods: Electronic searches were conducted in PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science. Eligible studies included quantitative analyses of adults in instructor-led group exercise. Risk of bias was appraised using ROBINS-I, and JBI critical appraisal tools, as appropriate to study design. Results: Twenty-one studies met inclusion criteria. Self-efficacy was the most consistently supported domain, with several behavior-specific efficacy measures showing small-to-moderate positive associations with attendance-based adherence, although null findings were also observed when measures were less temporally aligned or when outcomes shifted to post-program continuation. Social-relational and instructor-related constructs showed more context-dependent evidence: social attraction, social cohesion, reliable alliance, group identification, and selected leader behaviors were more consistently favorable than generic social support or broad cohesion measures. Enjoyment and affective response showed the weakest independent evidence, with positive associations mainly when affective constructs were measured close to the attendance decision. Adherence in instructor-led group exercise settings appears to be influenced by perceived capability, social-relational processes, instructor-shaped motivational climate, and affective valuation, although the available evidence is heterogeneous and predominantly observational. Future research should use multilevel longitudinal designs, instructor- and class-level clustering, repeated affective assessment, and causal pathway modeling to test how these mechanisms support repeated attendance and longer-term maintenance.

Teamwork is a crucial process for youth sport teams to accomplish a successful season. Despite that teamwork preparation is considered an influential bridge between environmental factors and individual outcomes, there is a paucity of research investigating team preparation as a mediator. Therefore, the purpose of the study was to examine how team preparation mediates the relationship between peer motivational climate and mental toughness of male youth athletes. A total of 526 male youth soccer players of elite middle and high school, and university soccer teams completed a survey at their sport facility. Multiple regression and mediation analysis were conducted with SPSS and AMOS to examine the associations among peer motivational climate, team preparation, and mental toughness. The results showed significant positive direct associations among peer task motivational climate, team preparation, and mental toughness except for the association between peer task climate and mental toughness, and negative direct association between peer ego motivational climate and team preparation. For mediation analysis, team preparation positively and negatively mediated the relationships between peer task and ego climate, and mental toughness, respectively. These results indicate that when peer groups form a task motivational climate, athletes are likely to prepare for their season collaboratively, and it can be positively related to individuals’ mentality. This underscores the importance of team preparation, and it provides practitioners with prospective insight into how they can design their coaching strategies to benefit both teams and individuals.

Engagement—students’ active involvement in learning activities—enables achievement and is enabled by interpersonal support. In a physical education class, one’s teacher and one’s classmates potentially provide such interpersonal support. The present study focused specifically on agentic engagement (the student’s constructive input into the learning environment) and on peer support (one’s classmates’ effort encouragement, improvement focus, and relatedness support) to propose and test a reciprocal effects model in which agentic engagement and peer support positively facilitated each other over time. In a preregistered, three-wave, within-person survey study, 740 South Korean secondary students (41.6% females; M _age = 15.4) from 24 physical education classes completed the same questionnaire at the beginning, middle, and end of an 18-week semester. We tested for reciprocal effects, using a random-intercept cross-lagged panel model. Peer-directed agentic engagement prospectively predicted subsequent perceived supportive peer climate ( B = 0.32, SE = 0.10, t = 3.29, p = .001), and perceived supportive peer climate prospectively predicted subsequent peer-directed agentic engagement ( B = 0.20, SE = 0.06, t = 3.51, p < .001). These findings suggest a mutually facilitative process in physical education in which a student’s agentic contributions into their peer interactions and their perceptions of peer support during those interactions prospectively, reciprocally, and positively facilitate each other over time.

The aim of this study is to examine body kinematics in tennis straight serve. 5 elite male tennis players (mean age 18.4±3.3 years, mean height 182.3±5.6 cm, mean weight 72.2±7.9 kg) were included in the study. We determined the angle of inclination from the ball to the body and the impact position of the ball during serve movements of young male tennis players at the center and sideline. The collected data on ball impact height, front and back distance of the front foot from ball impact, angle of incidence, and overall inclination using a motion head device (i.e., Dartfish motion program). Repeated measures ANOVA was used to determine the athletes' serve performance. Result: tennis serve skill with player A, B and C, the angle of incidence showed a significant main effect in both performances (p<.05) and training period (p<.001), and the interaction between performance and training period was also significant (p<.01). Tennis serve skill with player D and E, the angle of incidence did not show a main effect in the performance, and the main effect was significant in the training period (p<.001). However, the interaction between performance and training period was not significant. In conclusion, the result showed that young players improved their tennis serve success rates and ball striking heights after training. These findings show that tennis serve training and kinematic analysis can improve tennis serve skills.