Understanding Action and Adventure Sports Participation : An Ecological Dynamics Perspective
Immonen, T., Brymer, E., Orth, D., Davids, K., Feletti, F., Liukkonen, J., & Jaakkola, T. (2017). Understanding Action and Adventure Sports Participation : An Ecological Dynamics Perspective. Sports Medicine - Open, 3, 18. doi:10.1186/s40798-017-0084-1
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Sports Medicine - OpenAuthors
Date
2017Discipline
LiikuntapedagogiikkaCopyright
© The Author(s), 2017. This is an open access article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International License.
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.
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