Abstract: Athlete burnout is a process in which individual resources and environmental demands are out of balance,resulting in that athlete appears short psychosomatic strain responses, if without effective recovery for a long time, these stress responses will accumulate constantly and hence develop gradually into a psychosomatic syndrome and a dysfunctional condition characterized by emotional and physical exhaustion, diminished sense of accomplishment as well as sport devaluation. Athlete burnout has not only relations to but also distinctions from overtraining syndrome, stress and depression. So it needs to be treated according to specific conditions. At present, there were a variety of theoretical models towards explaining athlete burnout, including cognitive - af-fective stress model, negative training stress response model, unidimensional identity development and external control model, sports commitment model, and integrated model. Some researchers even apply self - determina-tion theory and achievement goal theory in their study of athlete burnout formation mechanism. In the future, re-searchers can inspect the exogenous factors which affect athlete burnout by using work demands - resources model, explore the psychological resources which can immunize athlete against burnout from the perspective of positive psychology to, and carry out studies on athlete engagement through diachronic tracing and qualitative research.

Key words: Athlete Burnout, Mental Fatigue, Athlete Engagement, Stress, Positive Psychology