Action In Sport Research Articles

Faith Informing Competitive Youth Athletes in Christian Schooling

ABSTRACTHow do students use religious faith to inform their actions in competitive sport? This qualitative study critically reflects on this question based upon the thinking processes and experiences of 15-year-old participants in sports and, in turn, produces a basic conceptual framework toward the question at hand. Overall, students reported a complex, competitive environment where they integrate, overlook, and avoid their faith as a means to inform their competitive drive in sport. Despite these mixed results and the dangers of aggressive sport, this paper concludes that Christian schools would be unwise to restrict support to only angelic sporting events and instead should, among several suggestions, incorporate insight from health standards, reconsider the use of prayer, and think about improved educational prescriptions.

Effects of Jaw Clenching While Wearing a Customized Bite-Aligning Mouthpiece on Strength in Healthy Young Men.

Recent studies have investigated the ergogenic effects of different types of mouthguards. There is evidence of the benefits of clenching customized mouthpieces on force and power development. The phenomenon called concurrent activation potentiation (CAP) promoted in jaw clenching seems to enhance the muscular strength and power in maximal isometric contractions and powerful actions in sport. Moreover, a bite-aligning mouthpiece may promote a more aligned and powerful clench. The objective of the present study was to investigate the effects of jaw clenching while wearing a customized bite-aligning mouthpiece (MP) on jump ability and isometric maximal strength tests in contrast to 2 other conditions: nonjaw clenching (NON-JAW) and jaw clenching without the mouthpiece (JAW). A within-subjects design was used to assess the jump performance and the maximal isometric force in 28 physically active male subjects. Statistical analyses revealed significantly higher performance in JAW and NON-JAW conditions for handgrip force (HG-peakforce) and all variables of the back-row exercise (BRW) and countermovement vertical jump (CMVJ) (p ≤ 0.05). Significant differences between NON-JAW and JAW were found for HG-peakforce (p ≤ 0.05). These findings suggest that it is advisable to use a customized bite-aligning mouthpiece to improve strength and power performance.

SELF-EFFICACY, EMOTIONAL STATES, AND PERFORMANCE IN CAROM BILLIARDS.

Based on an integrative approach to the study of the emotional-cognitive-motor linkage in sport competition, the purpose was to examine the mediating role of emotion-related (psychobiosocial) states in the relationship between self-efficacy (technical and cognitive) and performance in carom billiards. Forty-five male players of master or intermediate categories, between 30 and 74 years of age (M=51.2, SD=10.8), participated in the study. Measures included scores of technical and cognitive self-efficacy, functional (i.e., facilitative to performance) and dysfunctional (i.e., debilitative to performance) psychobiosocial states, and performance outcome. The assessment took place prior to one game of a national or an international competition. Results showed technical self-efficacy, cognitive self-efficacy, functional states, and performance to be significantly and positively related among them. Functional psychobiosocial states mediated the effect of both technical and cognitive self-efficacy on performance. Overall, the findings supported an integrative approach to the study of the linkage among cognition, emotion, and action in sport.

Moral Thought and Action in Sport and Student Life: A Study of Bracketed Morality

The present study examined differences in moral behavior and judgment in sport and student life. Participants (N = 372) were students at a British university who responded to moral dilemmas pertaining to sport and student life. They indicated the likelihood that they would act antisocially or prosocially and provided judgment ratings of the behaviors described in the dilemmas. Likelihood to act antisocially was higher toward opponents in sport than other students at university, whereas likelihood to behave prosocially was lower toward opponents in sport than other students at university. Finally, antisocial behavior was less likely toward teammates than other students. The sport–university difference in antisocial opponent/student behavior was fully mediated by moral judgment, whereas the difference in prosocial behavior was partially mediated by moral judgment. These findings reveal a more nuanced aspect to bracketed morality that considers in-group loyalty when understanding moral judgment and behavior in and outside of the sport context.

Cognitive representations and cognitive processing of team-specific tactics in soccer.

Two core elements for the coordination of different actions in sport are tactical information and knowledge about tactical situations. The current study describes two experiments to learn about the memory structure and the cognitive processing of tactical information. Experiment 1 investigated the storage and structuring of team-specific tactics in humans’ long-term memory with regard to different expertise levels. Experiment 2 investigated tactical decision-making skills and the corresponding gaze behavior, in presenting participants the identical match situations in a reaction time task. The results showed that more experienced soccer players, in contrast to less experienced soccer players, possess a functionally organized cognitive representation of team-specific tactics in soccer. Moreover, the more experienced soccer players reacted faster in tactical decisions, because they needed less fixations of similar duration as compared to less experienced soccer players. Combined, these experiments offer evidence that a functionally organized memory structure leads to a reaction time and a perceptual advantage in tactical decision-making in soccer. The discussion emphasizes theoretical and applied implications of the current results of the study.

Driving to the “Net”

On October 24, 2012, the New York Islanders of the National Hockey League announced a plan to move from their current stadium in Nassau County to the recently opened Barclays Center in the borough of Brooklyn, marking the end of a decades-long political saga about whether and where to build a new home arena for the club. During this time, the Islanders franchise strove to mobilize support for the ostensible benefits of the stadium development and the importance of the team for the local community and economy. In this article, we offer an analysis of the ways in which such processes were interpreted, supported, and/or resisted by some of its highly invested fans through the act of blog writing. Based on content analysis and interviews, the results suggest that bloggers saw little choice but to support plans that kept the team as close to Nassau County as possible. We use this data to discuss the hegemony of neoliberalism as an organizing principle of professional sport, the agency of fans that negotiate such politics when supporting their club, and the Internet as a platform for communication and potential collective action in sport.

Interdependence, Mutuality, and Collective Action in Sport

In this paper, from the Dr. Earle F. Zeigler Award Lecture presented in Austin, Texas, the author proposes that all persons have an obligation to ensure sport is inclusive and socially just. Works from a variety of disciplines, including religion, sociology, and social psychology, support the thesis. The author calls for collective action among sport management academicians, coalesced around teaching, research, and service to promote change. The final sections address potential counter narratives and provide an overview of the outcomes associated with an inclusive and socially just sport environment.

Understanding perception and action in sport: how can virtual reality technology help?

Although technology can facilitate improvements in performance by allowing us to understand, monitor and evaluate performance, improvements must ultimately come from within the athlete. The first part of this article will focus on understanding how perception and action relate to performance from two different theoretical viewpoints. The first will be predominantly a cognitive or indirect approach that suggests that expertise and decision-making processes are mediated by athletes accruing large knowledge bases that are built up through practice and experience. The second, and alternative approach, will advocate a more ‘direct’ solution, where the athlete learns to ‘tune’ into the relevant information that is embedded in their relationship with the surrounding environment and unfolding action. The second part of the article will attempt to show how emerging virtual reality technology is revealing new evidence that helps us understand elite performance. Possibilities of how new types of training could be developed from this technology will also be discussed.

Readying the head and steadying the heart: a review of cortical and cardiac studies of preparation for action in sport

Expert sport stars reliably execute their skills with remarkable precision and accuracy. To provide an insight into the mechanisms that underpin the superior performance of experts compared to novices, this article critically reviews experiments that have examined cortical activity (i.e., movement related cortical potentials; EEG spectral power) and cardiac activity (i.e., dynamic changes in heart rate) during preparation for action in self-paced aiming sports. It suggests that decelerations in heart rate and task-specific changes in EEG activity during preparation for action can explain superior expert performance. These psychophysiological responses are interpreted in terms of preparatory information processing and response programming, before suggestions for future research into the psychophysiology of preparation for action are outlined.

Theory of identity: the study of the existence of similar socio-environmental actions in the Brazilian electricity sector

According to the theory of identity, an identity means to recognize the group internal similarities and its differences with others. The theme of identity and the analysis of socio-environmental actions are justified by the need to issue corporate sustainability policies that the world requires for the development of society. This study aims to analyze the existence of groups from their identities and whether companies belonging to a particular group tend to perform similar socio-environmental actions. The groups were defined as financial and socio-environmental financial, by focusing on what each company portrayed in its mission, vision and values. The environmental programs and projects were attained in the sustainability reports from companies that follow the GRI guidelines. It was found that companies belonging to the same identity group tend to perform the same types of socio-environmental actions and that projects and actions in culture and sport and health are very similar; however the focus of the actions of each group is different for other indicators.

Zombie-Like or Superconscious? A Phenomenological and Conceptual Analysis of Consciousness in Elite Sport

According to a view defended by Hubert Dreyfus and others, elite athletes are totally absorbed while they are performing, and they act non-deliberately without any representational or conceptual thinking. By using both conceptual clarification and phenomenological description the article criticizes this view and maintains that various forms of conscious thinking and acting plays an important role before, during and after competitive events. The article describes in phenomenological detail how elite athletes use consciousness in their actions in sport; as planning, attention, thinking, decision, and monitoring of performance. Elite athletes do not act as zombies. It is concluded that qualia and phenomenal consciousness are important phenomena in elite sport.

Consent and Right Action in Sport

This paper argues that recent treatments of ethics in sport have accorded too much importance to the promotion and portrayal of a sport’s excellences, and too little to the consent of participants First, I consider and reject a fundamental challenge to the idea that consent should play a central role in determining the morality of action in sport – namely, Sean McAleer’s argument to the effect that consent is incapable of rendering normally impermissible actions permissible in sport. I then offer a preliminary examination of the proper relation in the moral evaluation of action in sport between considerations of consent and ‘internalist’ considerations regarding the nature and purpose of sport. Taking as my starting point J.S. Russell’s treatment of this topic, I argue that consent is the more weighty, and in many cases the more fundamental, value and that when it conflicts with internalist considerations, it is consent that takes moral priority.

Thinking in action: Some insights from cognitive sport psychology

Historically, cognitive researchers have largely ignored the domain of sport in their quest to understand how the mind works. This neglect is due, in part, to the limitations of the information processing paradigm that dominated cognitive psychology in its formative years. With the emergence of the embodiment approach to cognition, however, sport has become a dynamic natural laboratory in which to investigate the relationship between thinking and skilled action. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to explore some insights into the relationship between thinking and action that have emerged from recent research on exceptional performance states (e.g., ‘flow’ and ‘choking’) in athletes. The paper begins by explaining why cognitive psychologists’ traditional indifference to sport has been replaced by a more enthusiastic attitude in recent years. The next section provides some insights into the relationship between thinking and skilled action that have emerged from research on ‘flow’ (or peak performance) and ‘choking’ (or impaired performance) experiences in athletes. The third section of the paper explores some practical issues that arise when athletes seek to exert conscious control over their thoughts in competitive situations. The final part of the paper considers the implications of research on thinking in action in sport for practical attempts to improve thinking skills in domains such as business organizations and schools.

Embodiment and social and environmental action in nature-based sport: spiritual spaces

This paper explores the interrelationship of space, the elements and the embodied experiences of water-based physical activity. It draws upon alternative forms of research and representation to draw out the embodied nature of the experiences in exploring the practices of windsurfing amongst communities of windsurfers. It proposes that ethnography and autoethnography can provide for unique insights into the embodied experiences of the life-worlds of ‘being’ in nature. These inter-related methodologies provide particular insights into understanding when the body, grounded through its senses, makes sense of and interacts with its natural surroundings. It argues that autoethnography may provide methodologies for understanding and analysing connections between personal embodied nature-based experiences, culture and nature. This paper brings into play personal experience in windsurfing and autoethnographies of other nature-based sport to uncover connections between body, affects, emotions and the senses as the body engages with natural elements. It engages with expressions of spirituality, as alternative to ‘flow’, and the speculative notion of kinetic empathy to propose the concept of body pedagogics as analytically useful in exploring social and environmental action in local and global spaces.

ПСИХОЛОГИЧЕСКИЕ ОСОБЕННОСТИ РИСКОВ В СПОРТИВНОЙ ДЕЯТЕЛЬНОСТИ

The article is considered Psychological features of risks, taking of risky decisions and realizing of risky actions in sport. The kinds of risks in sport’s activity are analysed. We propose the classification of risky situations in sport and discuss the examples of realizing of risky actions by sportsmen.

Action and Practice: Approaching Concepts of Sport Science from a Praxeological Perspective / Handeln und Praxis: Eine praxeologische Annäherung an sportwissenschaftliche Konzepte

Summary The article aims at addressing a sport sociological research desideratum: the question of acting in sport. So far, this question has mainly been dealt with in human kinetics and sport psychology. Here, action theories refer to action as a rational-reflective and individual phenomenon whose cognitive and ideational foundations must be given particular attention. Recently, however, the focus has begun to be shifted to embodied, pre-reflective, and relational dimensions of action in these sub-disciplines of sport science. Similar reorientations can be observed in sociology, where the mentalism and individualism inherent in action theories is undermined by practice theories emphasizing the bodily, tacit, and collective properties of practice. Practice theories promise additional advances and insights into practical action in sport insofar as they explicitly take into account dimensions of practice widely abstracted from by approaches of human kinetics and sport psychology. By means of a praxeological reflection of the existing approaches to action in sport, the article identifies their blind spots and presents initial ideas for overcoming them.

Sports sociology in different communities

The sports sociology community has a real opportunity to break out of the academic ghetto, eschew excessively coded and obscure language, and fight to become part of the general discourse...

Trash talking, respect for opponents and good competition

Trash talking, which is the North American term for verbal barbs directed at opponents during a sporting event in order to gain a competitive edge, is widely accepted by athletes and the athletic community as a legitimate part of sport. It is, however, morally indefensible. A simple Kantian injunction against treating opponents merely as objects to be overcome is sufficient to condemn this verbal abuse. Attempts to justify trash talking as a strategic ploy that implies no disrespect are disingenuous in view of the fact that its effectiveness depends on opponents' being offended by it. Nor can we defend trash talking as enhancing the goal of athletic competition, since the ability to verbally abuse opponents and remain impervious to their abuse are extraneous to the athletic excellence that contests are designed to measure. Attempts to deflect criticisms by partially immunizing sport from moral scrutiny are implausible. With few exceptions, we judge actions in sport by the same moral standards that we use in any other context. Moreover, the view that neither trash talking nor other actions in sport are fit subjects for strict moral scrutiny is inconsistent with the often-heard claim that sport promotes moral development.

The Birmingham four: affirmative action in South African women's sport

The Birmingham four: affirmative action in South African women's sport

Managing Gender: Affirmative Action and Organizational Power in Australian, Canadian, and New Zealand Sport

Managing Gender: Affirmative Action and Organizational Power in Australian, Canadian, and New Zealand Sport