Objective This study examined female college athletes to explore the association between training stress and psychological well-being. It further investigated whether general self-efficacy and psychological resilience mediate this association. Methods A questionnaire survey was administered to 604 female college athletes. The instruments included the Training Distress Scale, the General Self-Efficacy Scale, the Psychological Resilience Scale, and the Psychological Well-Being Scale. PROCESS Model 6 with 5,000 bootstrap resamples was used to test the serial mediation effects. Results Training stress was significantly negatively correlated with psychological well-being (r = −0.356, p 0.001, N = 604). The serial mediation regression analysis showed that training stress significantly and negatively predicted psychological well-being ( β = −0.174, p 0.001, 95% CI −0.244, −0.104). Bootstrap analyses (5,000 resamples) indicated a significant total indirect effect (indirect effect = −0.182, BootSE = 0.025, 95% BootCI −0.232, −0.133), accounting for 51.1% of the total effect. Within the total indirect effect, the specific indirect effect via general self-efficacy was −0.084 (46.2% of the total indirect effect, 95% BootCI −0.125, −0.048), the specific indirect effect via psychological resilience was −0.065 (35.7, 95% BootCI −0.101, −0.035), and the serial indirect effect via general self-efficacy and psychological resilience was −0.033 (18.1, 95% BootCI −0.049, −0.020). Conclusion Training stress significantly undermines psychological well-being in female college athletes. This influence manifests not only as a direct effect but also indirectly through general self-efficacy, psychological resilience, and their chain mediation. Therefore, enhancing general self-efficacy and psychological resilience may be an effective approach to reduce the negative impact of training stress and to promote psychological well-being in female college athletes.
Wang et al. (Wed,) studied this question.