If you build it, will they come? Assessing coaches’ perceptions of a sport psychology website

Sport psychology has become widely applied in coaching practices to assist in athletic success. Despite the increased use, there is a lack of evidence-based sport psychology information available to coaches in the form of informal sources. The aim of this study was to conduct a pilot test to explore coaches’ perceptions and use of an evidence-based sport psychology website. Eight coaches participated in semi-structured interviews. Based on engagement, five of the coaches’ data was analyzed using thematic analysis on their experiences and revealed two main themes, website use and website enhancements. The remaining three coaches’ data was analyzed for their reasons for having limited engagement with the website and used to help identify ways it could be enhanced. In general, coaches perceived the website to be a reliable source that offered practical information (e.g. worksheets) that could be used directly with athletes, and was perceived as easy to navigate and to access information. There were, importantly, various improvements suggested for the website including delivery modality and guides for navigating the order for reading the information. This study offers evidence on the value of online resources in providing coaches with informal and evidence-based sport psychology learning opportunities, and also addresses a number of barriers to engagement as insight for website developers.

The Role of Athletic Self-Confidence and Coping Strategies in Predicting the Athletic Success of Trabzon University Athletic students

One of the most important challenges in sports science is the factors that influence the acquisition and maintenance of athletic success. Nowadays, success in sports is not only focused on the quality of an athlete’s performance.The method of this study is descriptive and correlational. The statistical population includes all students from Trabzon University, which are 340 people. Cochran’s sample size estimation formula was used to determine the sample size, and the number of samples was equivalent to 181 individuals selected by the simple random sampling method. The following standard questionnaires were used to collect information. Roberts et al. (1998) Athletic Success Questionnaire, Vealey et al. (1988) Athletic Self-Confidence Questionnaire and Gaudreau & Blondin (2002) Coping Strategies Questionnaire were used for data collection. Data were analysed using SPSS software, version 22. Descriptive statistics were presented as mean and standard deviation for quantitative variables and frequency and relative frequency percentage for qualitative variables. The regression coefficient was used to determine the sources of athletic self-confidence and coping strategies in predicting athletic success.The results show that athletic self-confidence has a significant effect on students’ athletic success (p <0.01, B = 0.54) and that coping strategies have a significant effect on students’ athletic success (p <0.01, B = 0.59).Therefore, it can be concluded that the more athletic self-confidence and coping strategies increase, the greater their athletic success. Encouraging student-athletes to participate in group.

Early sports specialisation and the incidence of lower extremity injuries in youth athletes: current concepts

Year-round intensive, single-sport training beginning at an young age is an increasingly common trend in the youth athlete population. Early sport specialisation may be ineffective for long-term athletic success and contribute to an increased risk of physical injury and burn-out. The medical community has noted that repetitive movement patterns may occur in non-diversified activity and this may contribute to overuse injury in young athletes. Studies have begun to identify an association between early sport specialisation and lower extremity injuries in the youth athlete population that is independent of training volume. Recent literature has suggested that sport diversification, not specialisation, is a better path for athletic success and minimised lower extremity injury risk.

Athletics and attention: Bi-directional influences in the lab and on the field

Selectively attending to some information while ignoring other information is crucial for athletic success. Active participation in athletics is also beneficial when attention is measured in the laboratory. This review examines this bi-directional relationship between athletics and attention. The introduction orients readers to the concept of selective visual attention. In the following section we review the evidence that athletic participation influences performance on laboratory measures of visual attention, including tasks of spatial orienting, spatial shifting, attention distribution, temporal sequencing, and the control of action. In the third section we review how attention measures are influenced by contextual factors that are also known to influence athletic performance. These include behavioral practices like exercise, sleep, and hydration; environmental factors like thermal stress, competition, and distraction; and individual differences in personality, age, and gender. In the next section we situate all this empirical evidence in the evolving theoretical understanding of attention in the cognitive sciences over the past five decades. In doing so, it becomes clear that research on athletics is an important database to consider when developing models of attention. By bringing these literatures together, a stronger theoretical foundation is sought that may contribute positively to research on both optimal athletic performance and framework development in attention.

The Key Role of Sport Policies for the Popularity of Women’s Sports: A Case Study on Women’s Soccer in Germany

Athletic success in women’s sports, in particular in women’s soccer, is strongly linked to macrolevel gender equality within societies. There is also evidence that macrolevel gender equality matters for sport consumption. This study explored the role of mesolevel institutions for the popularity of women’s soccer. The example of reunified Germany illustrates that macrolevel gender equality might be less important for the popularity of women’s sport than mesolevel gender equality, that is, policy priorities adopted by sport associations and other actors involved in sport policymaking. The study comes with practical implications for the future popularity of women’s soccer.