Sports addiction or exercise addiction?

Attila Szabó and Zsolt Demetrovics’s recently published volume attempts to capture the essential differences between sport as a joyful passion (in harmony with a healthy life) and exercise addiction (as a compulsive and compulsory exercise), as well as the relationships between the two.

Based on the behavioural addiction literature, the publication sheds new light on the issue, where it tries to sensitively address the boundaries between passionate sports and the compulsion to exercise, indicating addictions.

The book introduces three dimensions of passion by which it is possible to develop a new interpretative framework in order to understand exercise addiction. Furthermore, it helps to examine the often misinterpretations of various aspects of exercise (whose advocates have always sought a correlation between exercise intensity, frequency, or level of engagement and addiction development). After analysing the beneficial health effects of passionate sports, the authors examine what factors drive athletes toward developing behaviour patterns that are already considered harmful. Therefore, based on the research findings related to behavioural addictions, they also offer several theoretical models and definitions that help determine exercise addiction. However, the authors illustrate it with a number of examples. Simultaneously, the authors demonstrate with many instances that even extremely intensive sports can be healthy and that although passionate athletes may spend a remarkable amount of time and energy practising their preferred sport, they are not deemed addicted.

Passion and Addiction in Sports and Exercise book is helpful for students, researchers, and clinicians interested in sport and exercise psychology, but it is also a good read for sports fans and athletes who are actively competing.

The book can be ordered in a hardcover or e-book version on the publisher's website:

Passion and Addiction in Sports and Exercise

by Attila Szabo and Zsolt Demetrovics

ISBN 9781032003009

Published June 6, 2022 by Routledge