'Leave Your Ego at the Door': A Narrative Investigation into Effective Wingsuit Flying.

Cedric Arijs,Eric Brymer,David Carless,Stiliani Chroni

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01985

Cedric Arijs, Eric Brymer + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01985

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Abstract

In recent years there has been a rapid growth in interest in extreme sports. For the most part research has focused on understanding motivations for participation in extreme sports and very little research has attempted to investigate the psychological structure of effective performance. Those few studies that have attempted to explore this issue have tested models designed for traditional sport on adventure sports. However, extreme sports are not the same as adventure sports or traditional sports. This study employed a narrative approach to investigate experiences of effective performance in the extreme sport of proximity wingsuit flying. An overarching theme we labeled ‘leave your ego at the door,’ emerged based on four sub-themes: (1) know thy self, (2) know thy skills, (3) know the environment now, and (4) tame the ‘inner animal.’ These themes are presented and discussed in relation to performance and discovery narratives identified within elite sport, thereby shedding light on how participants’ experiences of the extreme sport of proximity wingsuit flying differ from dominant stories within traditional sports.

Highlights

Extreme sports are described as sporting activities where a mismanaged mistake or accident would most likely result in death (Brymer and Schweitzer, 2017)
A surprising finding is that the form of pilots’ stories deviate in fundamental ways from the dominant performance narrative in sport where the overriding focus is on achieving performance outcomes
These pilots’ stories follow more closely the contours of the discovery narrative type. This distinction is significant as the wingsuit pilots in this study are achieving high-level or elite performance without adopting or subscribing to the values of the culturally dominant narrative type in elite sport

Summary

Introduction

Extreme sports are described as sporting activities where a mismanaged mistake or accident would most likely result in death (Brymer and Schweitzer, 2017). While extreme sports share some common ground with traditional sports, that of physical movement, they are different in many ways. Extreme sports present different challenges than many traditional sports, which are compounded by the fact that more broadly adventure sport participation rates seem to be outgrowing many traditional sports (Wheaton, 2004; Pain and Pain, 2005; Brymer and Houge Mackenzie, 2016). Though extreme and adventure sports share some larger common ground, that of physical movement taking place in natural environment, they differ in the degree of danger when doing the activity (Brymer et al, 2010; Brymer and Schweitzer, 2017)

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