When Emotional Demands Take Their Toll: The Moderating Roles of Sleep Quality and Emotional Resources in Athlete Burnout and Engagement

Emotional demands represent a central component of the Demand-Induced Strain Compensation model adapted for Sport (DISC-S), yet their temporal dynamics across a competitive season and their relationships with athlete well-being remain poorly documented. The present study pursued three objectives: (1) to examine the dynamics of emotional demands across a competitive season, (2) to investigate their effects on athlete burnout and engagement, and (3) to test the moderating roles of emotional resources and sleep parameters (i.e., quality, duration, and efficiency) in these relationships. Forty-two high-level team sport athletes (17 women; Mage = 17.5 years) were followed at three occasions of the same competitive season: first part of the regular season (T1), second part of the regular season (T2), and play-offs (T3), yielding 77 observations. At each occasion, emotional demands and resources were rated daily over seven consecutive days using single items from the DISQ-SPORT, while sleep duration and efficiency were monitored by wrist actigraphy. Burnout, engagement and subjective sleep quality were assessed at the end of each monitoring week using the BAT-SF, the AEQ and the PSQI. Linear mixed-effects models revealed a significant linear increase in emotional demands across the season (p = .036), with no specific elevation during the play-offs relative to the regular season (p = .272). Emotional demands experienced within a given week did not predict burnout or engagement measured at the end of that week, and none of the hypothesised moderation effects reached significance. These findings suggest that emotional demands accumulate gradually rather than peaking at a single phase, and that recovery strategies should be sustained across the whole season rather than concentrated around acute high-demand periods. However, given the sample size and the number of null findings, these results should be regarded as exploratory.