Search results for "athletes"

The Italian approach to the dual careers of University student-athletes

2019

In the last decade, the topic of the dual careers of student-athletes has received increasing attention across Europe, both from many scholars in several different fields and from the European Union. In the European Union lexicon, the term ‘dual career’ means that an athlete can combine, without unreasonable personal effort, their sporting career with education and/or work in a flexible way through high-quality training in order to protect their moral, health, educational and professional interests without compromising either objective, with a particular focus on the continued formal education of young athletes. The basic idea behind several dual career programs to aid the student-athlete i…

Sport Science on Women, Women in Sport Science

2019

Coaches’ Perceptions of Athletes’ Psychobiosocial States : The Case of Three Tennis Coach-Athlete Dyads

2018

Considering the limited attention paid to interpersonal aspects of emotions, this study explored coaches’ perceptions of athletes’ performance-related states and how they used this information for its regulation. Using a case study approach, three coach-athlete dyads from competitive tennis took part in one-on-one semi-structured interviews. Individualized profiling of psychobiosocial states was used to assess athletes’ states in most and least successful performances and as a way of data triangulation. Findings indicated that the coaches paid attention to bodily, motor-behavioural, and operational components of a performance state, and used this information to appropriately adapt their res…

Effects of a 10-day high-intensity interval training mesocycle on physical performance in male judo athletes

2020

Judo is an Olympic combat sport where the competition emphasizes several consecutive 20-30 seconds high-intensity efforts interspersed by short recovery periods. High-intensity block training has been found to be an efficient way to develop physical performance, wherein shorter training periods are focused on developing one or two chosen physical abilities. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of a 10-day high-intensity interval training period on the performance in male judo athletes. The study included pre and post-tests as well as a 10-day training intervention. The subjects were 19-28 years old men who had competed at least at the Nordic level during the last year (n…

Monitoring Training and Recovery during a Period of Increased Intensity or Volume in Recreational Endurance Athletes

2021

The purpose of the study was to examine the effects of progressively increased training intensity or volume on the nocturnal heart rate (HR) and heart rate variability (HRV), countermovement jump, perceived recovery, and heart rate-running speed index (HR-RS index). Another aim was to analyze how observed patterns during the training period in these monitoring variables were associated with the changes in endurance performance. Thirty recreationally trained participants performed a 10-week control period of regular training and a 10-week training period of either increased training intensity (INT, n = 13) or volume (VOL, n = 17). Changes in endurance performance were assessed by an incremen…

Career Transitions of eSports Athletes : A Proposal for a Research Framework

2017

eSports has boomed, the number of eSport athletes has grown rapidly, and many teenagers aspire to a have career in eSports. However, eSports athletes' careers involve many problems, such as career-entry difficulties, straining life habits, burnout, premature retirement, and post-career dilemmas. Despite a growing research interest in eSports, a void of knowledge exists regarding eSports athletes' career aspects. To address the gap in research, this paper aims to take an initial step by proposing a framework for eSports athletes' career transitions. The framework combines two approaches from sport psychology and sport literature. The framework can help eSports athletes, coaches, and other st…

Negotiating female judoka identities in Greece : A Foucauldian discourse analysis

2015

Abstract Objectives The objectives of this paper are to trace the discourses through which female Greek judokas articulate their sporting experiences and to explore how they construct their identities through the negotiation of sociocultural beliefs and gender stereotypes. Design This article is based on interview data from a larger ethnographic research with women judo athletes, grounded in a cultural praxis framework. Method Ten semi-structured interviews were conducted during fieldwork in Greece. Interview data were analyzed drawing on a Foucauldian approach to discourse analysis. Results We identified four concepts—biology, gender, femininity, and judo/sport—that were central to unearth…

The Case of Insertional Adductor Tendinopathy of an International-Level 3,000-m Steeplechase Runner

2021

Background: Groin pain is a frequent condition among athletes. One of the causes of groin pain is tendinopathy, a frequently diagnosed medical condition, which can also occur in the adductor muscles. Despite the high prevalence of this medical condition among athletes, it is infrequent to observe tendinopathic groin pain in steeplechase runners. The aim of this case study is to describe the case of an international-level 3,000-m steeplechase runner with groin pain, who was subsequently diagnosed with adductor insertional tendinopathy.Case Presentation: We present the case of an Italian 3,000-m steeplechase and long distance runner, Ala Zoghlami (180 cm, 57 kg), with groin pain, diagnosed as…

Moral Attitudes Predict Cheating and Gamesmanship Behaviors Among Competitive Tennis Players

2017

Background: The present study tested Lee et al.’s (2008) model of moral attitudes and cheating behavior in sports in an Italian sample of young tennis players and extended it to predict behavior in actual match play. In the first phase of the study we proposed that moral, competence and status values would predict prosocial and antisocial moral attitudes directly, and indirectly through athletes’ goal orientations. In the second phase, we hypothesized that moral attitudes would directly predict actual cheating behavior observed during match play.\ud \ud Method: Adolescent competitive tennis players (N = 314, 76.75% males, M age = 14.36 years, SD = 1.50) completed measures of values, goal or…

Health Promotion in Sport Coaching: Coaches and Young Male Athletes’ Evaluations on the Health Promotion Activity of Coaches

2015

Sport coaches have paradoxical attitudes towards addressing health promotion as a part of their coaching practice: health is recognized as an important factor, but not greatly invested in. Overall, the extent to which youth sport coaches take health promotion into account has been unclear. Therefore, it is the intention of this study to clarify this situation. The results show that coaches evaluate their own activity on health promotion as being relatively active, whereas young male athletes' evaluations reveal a wide gap in how they perceived the coaches' activity. Young male athletes perceived their coaches as being substantially more passive in comparison to coaches' self-evaluations. T…