Abstract
Previous research has considered action and adventure sports using a variety of associated terms and definitions which has led to confusing discourse and contradictory research findings. Traditional narratives have typically considered participation exclusively as the pastime of young people with abnormal characteristics or personalities having unhealthy and pathological tendencies to take risks because of the need for thrill, excitement or an adrenaline ‘rush’. Conversely, recent research has linked even the most extreme forms of action and adventure sports to positive physical and psychological health and well-being outcomes. Here, we argue that traditional frameworks have led to definitions, which, as currently used by researchers, ignore key elements constituting the essential merit of these sports. In this paper, we suggest that this lack of conceptual clarity in understanding cognitions, perception and action in action and adventure sports requires a comprehensive explanatory framework, ecological dynamics which considers person-environment interactions from a multidisciplinary perspective. Action and adventure sports can be fundamentally conceptualized as activities which flourish through creative exploration of novel movement experiences, continuously expanding and evolving beyond predetermined environmental, physical, psychological or sociocultural boundaries. The outcome is the emergence of a rich variety of participation styles and philosophical differences within and across activities. The purpose of this paper is twofold: (a) to point out some limitations of existing research on action and adventure sports; (b) based on key ideas from emerging research and an ecological dynamics approach, to propose a holistic multidisciplinary model for defining and understanding action and adventure sports that may better guide future research and practical implications.
Highlights
Participant rates in action and adventure sports (AAS) are on the rise, surpassing many traditional sports in popularity [1, 2]
We argue that a more comprehensive understanding of AAS participation can be achieved through the ecological dynamics (ED) framework
The ecological dynamics framework provides a rich multidisciplinary platform for comprehensive and nuanced understanding of participation and creative actions of AAS participants, which emerge in all kinds of imaginable and ever-changing environments
Summary
Participant rates in action and adventure sports (AAS) are on the rise, surpassing many traditional sports in popularity [1, 2] In this opinion piece, the term AAS refers to a variety of sports such as snowboarding, surfing, parkour, climbing and BASE jumping. This has imposed a superficial lens on participation, viewed as fundamentally influenced by processes underpinned by risk-taking, promoting a biased perspective where AAS are perceived as a context for taking socially unacceptable, pathological and Immonen et al Sports Medicine - Open (2017) 3:18 unnecessary risks [3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10]. The main narrative of these approaches is that personality traits and socialization processes predispose individuals to participate in risky or life-threatening activities [16]
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