Punitive Exercise and Athlete Mental Health

Multilevel Strategies to Support Athlete Safety and Development

Abstract

Punitive exercise (i.e., using physical exercise as a disciplinary consequence) remains a persistent cultural practice across many sport environments despite well-documented physical, psychological, and legal risks. Athletes already experience significant performance-related stress, and associating strength and conditioning (S&C) work with humiliation, failure, or fear introduces an avoidable secondary stressor that undermines long-term engagement with S&C, increases anxiety, and contributes to coping behaviors such as injury masking and deliberate underreporting. Drawing on multilevel perspectives, this practice update synthesizes research, clinical insights, and interdisciplinary guidelines to describe how punitive exercise shapes athlete development at the micro (individual), mezzo (team/organizational), and macro (cultural/policy) levels. The paper incorporates safety recommendations from national sport organizations (e.g., National Athletic Trainers’ Association) and legal examples (e.g., Lee v. Louisiana Board of Trustees) to illustrate the consequences of punitive exercise. The manuscript concludes with applied strategies for relevant sports staff to help athletes re-establish a safe, evidence-informed relationship with conditioning and challenge harmful norms that compromise athlete well-being.