RESEARCHING AND PRESENTING

Researching and Presenting Business Information



Researching and Presenting Business Information

Introduction

Participant development is a central aspect of any sports development framework as it is concerned with the activities experienced, the pathways followed and the obstacles encountered by players during their sporting and/or physical activity careers. This review seeks to identify the main findings/principles associated with participant development, the methods used to generate this information, and the strengths and weaknesses of the supporting research. It does so by focusing on three broad areas of inquiry: the biological domain, the psychological domain and the social domain.

At present, the application of such information by practitioners to enhance athletic performance is poor. To date, the best-known model to include such considerations is the Long-Term Athlete Development (LTAD) model. Participant development models must have the flexibility to account for individualised growth rates and by using physical measures, such as peak height velocity and peak weight velocity, the LTAD model advances practitioner understanding to some degree. It uses successful training ethos alongside a greater scientific basis for children and adolescents, and moves away from early specialisation in sport and physical activity to optimise athletic development. The model also acknowledges the need for a balanced training load and competition reflective of the stage of maturation.

Findings

The number of adults in England who play sport at least three times a week has reached 6.93 million, continuing the positive upward trend over the past four years. The new research which Sport England published today shows we are now 115,000 closer to our legacy goal of getting one million people playing more sport by 2012/13. It also shows that over 600,000 more people are playing sport regularly since 2005 when London won the bid to host the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

During the colonial period recreation took many forms, but exercise as an end in itself was not for most people a priority. Society was overwhelmingly rural. Clearing land, plowing—indeed, all agricultural activity—supplied enough exercise for nearly everyone. Another restraining factor in some areas was the injunction against “profaning” the Sabbath, the only time working people had to relax.

Hunting had its recreational aspect, but for most people its primary purpose was utilitarian. As one historian put it, “The master hunted for the fun of it, the servant for the meat of it.” Getting from place to place on horseback was good exercise and could be pleasurable, but it too was mostly of this character. In seventeenth-century Virginia a judge declared that it was “contrary to law for a labourer to make a race” because horse racing was “a sport only for gentlemen” (Krause, 2000).

Children, of course, engaged in all sorts of games and physical activities. “I spent my time,” John Adams recalled in his Autobiography, “driving hoops, playing marbles, playing Quoits, Wrestling, Swimming, Skaiting and above all in shooting.” Square dancing was popular in some regions and foot racing, bowling, and wrestling were other ways adults employed whatever energy they could muster when the day's work was ...