Résumé
Self-compassion has been recognized as a valuable resource for athletes’ well-being, stress reduction, and personal growth in sport contexts (Cormier et al., 2025). Recently, fierce self-compassion—which emphasizes protecting, providing for, and motivating oneself (Neff, 2021)—has attracted the interest of researchers and sport participants, though it remains unexplored with athletes. As such, this study describes high-performance athletes’ understandings and applications of fierce self-compassion in sport by: (1) exploring how athletes conceptualize the construct, and (2) identifying sport situations where it may be relevant to performance and well-being. Participants included 49 varsity athletes (Mage=20.4 years; SD=1.7; 28 women, 21 men) from four teams (volleyball, basketball, swimming, ice hockey) at a Western Canadian university. Athletes participated in a 45-minute educational session introducing fierce self-compassion, followed by focus groups (Ngroups=8; Mlength=39:29 minutes) to discuss their perceptions and experiences of fierce self-compassion in sport. Data were analyzed using interpretive phenomenological analysis to explore athletes’ meaning making of fierce self-compassion. The generated themes (and subthemes) highlight that athletes perceived fierce self-compassion as essential in sport (noting that this was an unnamed yet familiar skill, the embodied nature of fierce self-compassion, and the various benefits of its use), and that it is important to find the ‘sweet spot’ of fierce self-compassion (depending on timing, context, preference, and self-awareness) to attain success in sport. These findings offer initial insights into how athletes actively navigate and integrate fierce self-compassion into their sport experiences, highlighting it as a flexible skill that may support performance and well-being.
