Extreme Sports

An analysis of the emergence and rise of an alternative sport scene using social movement theory. The rise of Freestyle BMX in "Pro-Town, USA" (Greenville, NC) from local kids erecting guerrilla ramp parks on vacant lots to a residential concentration of top pros.

The most common explanations of cognition in sport rely on the idea that mental representation plays a central role in explaining athletic skill (Ericsson 2006, Sutton 2007; Beilock 2008). i Next ensues a straw-man account: sportspersons internally represent in their brain the situations they face. As they perceive changes in their environment, they process pertinent information and determine how to respond. Then, the brain organizes the motor response. We may ask regarding the skills of a white water kayaker going over a 100-foot waterfall, how is this possible? What many philosophers, and cognitive or sports scientists mean is, what mechanisms underlie the activity and are causally responsible for the behavior? It is often thought that an adequate explanation must involve the kayaker having an internal representation of his kayak, paddle, waterfall, and landing. His senses indicate where the waterfall lip is, and the brain, processing this information, directs his body to get in a position to safely hit the water below. Training has imprinted routines that allow for efficient moves in a fluid sequence. Embodied cognition and enactivism proponents argue that cognition does not fundamentally involve representation in this way. Rather, mental representation comes later as part of an acculturated and scaffolded framework. The above representational account, extremely simplified, even simplistic, could be filled in and strengthened with far more detail. Presently we limit ourselves to a contextualizing overview and circumvent enhancements to such accounts (Fodor 1990; Fodor and Pylyshyn 2014). Likewise, we sidestep an in-depth review of critiques of representational theories, as others have engaged in such dispute (Chemero 2009; Hutto and Myin 2013). Our goal is to explore new terrain. The problem to be solved concerns the cognitive engagements of expert performers in risky endeavors. Characterized by intense focus and the ability to react subtly and suitably to unexpected threats, they present challenges because they involve high-level functioning, intentionality, and creative spontaneity. Relying on an enactive stance, and following phenomenological accounts of martial arts masters and sportspersons as well as current empirical research in sport psychology, we argue that mental content or representation – in a traditional sense – is not involved, specifically during intense " full on " moments. To examine this, we develop two ideas. One, we evaluate the extent to which activities that require high levels of performance in dangerous contexts – presently outdoor risk sports and Japanese swordsmanship (kenjutsu) – may require a different sort of explanation, arguing that such cases do not result from processing internal representations. An enactive account mostly in agreement with Hutto and Myin's (2013) radically enactive cognition (REC), a view that considers that basic minds operate without recourse to mental content, is especially suited to this task. Two, we explore how this enactive understanding of cognition in highly skilled performance relates to cultural context in certain cognitive and performing states called flow and mushin (mindful fluid awareness) in the sports and martial worlds respectively. The first section specifies the kinds of sports and martial arts under consideration, and discusses the underlying holistic framework. The second one delves into mental representation, and introduces enactivism in order to set up the version we endorse, REC. Section three centers on REC then, delineating the relationship between cognition and high performance. Section four argues that flow and

Research and public policy has long supported links between traditional sports and well-being. However, adventurous nature sport literature has primarily focused on performance issues and deficit models of risk or sensation-seeking. This standpoint is limited by assumptions that participation is: (a) dependent on personality structures; (b) solely motivated by risk-taking and hedonism; (c) only attractive or accessible to a narrow demographic; and (d) widely perceived as dysfunctional or deviant. In contrast, recent research suggests that adventurous nature sports provide unique benefits due to their context. This paper critically assesses the validity of dominant perspectives against emerging literature to illustrate how nature sports can be conceptualised through a positive psychology lens as well-being activities that facilitate both hedonic and eudaimonic outcomes. The significance of this perspective is that nature sports may become an important consideration when designing health and well-being interventions for both people and the planet.

Research on extreme sports has downplayed the importance of the athletes’ connection to the natural world. This neglect stems, in part, from the assumption that these activities derive their meaning primarily from risk. The authors’ long-term research reveals that the interplay between adventure athletes and the natural world is, in fact, crucial for many participants. This study used hermeneutic and phenomenological analysis of first-hand accounts of these sports and interviews with 15 veteran participants. These included BASE jumpers, big-wave surfers, extreme skiers, waterfall kayakers, extreme mountaineers and solo rope-free climbers. Participants spoke extensively about developing a deep relationship with the natural world akin to an intimate ‘dance’ between actively engaged partners. Our experience-based analysis has found that extreme sports aficionados do not simply view the natural world as a commodity, a stage for risk taking, or vehicle for self-gratification. On the contrary, for veteran adventure athletes the natural world acts as a facilitator to a deeper, more positive understanding of self and its place in the environment. For some, nature was described as omnipresent and ubiquitous, and a source of innate power and personal meaning. The authors explore how these findings may augment the delivery of more ‘ecocentric’ programmes in the outdoor adventure field.

An ever-evolving, developing sport whose community is often hung on the underground marker. Because of its uniqueness and boldness, perhaps that is why it is difficult for members of the older generation to understand. The origins of skateboarding are still unclear to this day: some say it was invented by a California surfer who wanted to practice in windless weather, others say it was the successor to a children’s play that spread in the 1950s. Just like the board, the sport started to develop, it became more and more popular, there are more skateboard parks opened, and by the end of the seventies, hundreds of parks had already been built. According to Pólusné Thiry (2013), extreme sports represent: danger, risk, altitude or high speed, spectacular elements or attractions. Concentrate is on performance, which is a key element of competitive sports (Szakály, 2012). The focus is on the individual, here everyone is competing with themselves, in this respect there is no
human competitor in extreme sports. These claims are undoubtedly characteristics of skateboarding. However, as seen how exactly and in what field this way of life is “subversive” in Hungary (or: subversive at all?), in case of the Hungarian representatives of the subculture the cultural environment, local and national peculiarities (eg low standard of living) , the popularity of right - wing, conservative ideas, a depressing post - socialist atmosphere) are strongly nuanced, both in a negative and sometimes perhaps positive sense. Hungarian social peculiarities have
resulted in a (more internationally) more restrained, less uniform, ambivalent scene in terms of ideological consistency (Gősi, 2018), which, however, is largely free from the shadows of American and Western European scenes: e.g. commercialization, dilution, excessive appearance orientation, sexual freedom, media scandals, severe
atrocities.
Keywords: skateboarding, underground, extrem sport, social judgement

Background and Study Aim: The competition is an unique event which supposes pressure, social and financial stake, in these conditions increasing the athletes’ probability of getting injured. And this probability is higher in the case of new and inexperienced athletes, in which case (mainly), the win-at-all-costs philosophy may lead to less calculated risks. The goal of the current study is recommendation to researchers, coaches of various martial arts (combat sports) disciplines, physical education teachers, and psychologists with a measure of stimulating and instrumental risk. Adapting the S&IRQ will allow for assessing athletes in terms of sports risk

Material and Methods: The Hungarian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Spanish, and English adaptation of Makarowski’s Stimulating and Instrumental Risk Questionnaire (S&IRQ) was made. Two types of risk are discussed: (a) stimulating risk, which focuses on the experience of pleasurable physiological stimulation, and (b) instrumental risk, which is a goal-oriented strategy/tactics. Our study has also a cross-sectional nature, analyzing the results for instrumental and stimulating risk, in the case of eight groups of athletes. The questionnaire’s reliability and validity analyses on martial arts athletes from Hungary (n = 47), Latvia (n = 32), Lithuania (n = 47), English-speaking athletes from other countries (n = 58), Romania, (n = 61), Russia (n = 53), Slovakia (n = 29) and Spain (n = 25) was made. Reliability was measured using the Cronbach’s α internal consistency coefficient, which ranged from 0.69 to 0.83. A confirmatory factor analysis was used to verify the questionnaire’s internal structure.

Results: Results of research using the eight versions of the S&IRQ indicate that the measure possesses good psychometric properties and can be used in international research. Also, single-factor analysis of variance revealed significant differences between the groups of athletes. Romanian athletes achieved the highest mean scores for the stimulating risk scale, while athletes from Spain achieved the lowest results. Considering the instrumental risk, Spanish athletes registered the highest score and athletes from Russia the lowest values.

Conclusions: The S&IRQ can be used in international studies, as part of psychological training by sport psychologists, coaches, martial arts athletes, athletes from various sport disciplines, for their professional and personal development. The appendix includes Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Indian (Martahai and Hindi), Indonesian, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Moldavian, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovak and Spanish versions of the S&IRQ for martial arts athletes, together with the norms for both women and men.

Athletes engaged in high-risk sports (skydiving, hang-gliding, paragliding, microlighting, and rock climbing)will confront significantly higher levels of stress. The purpose of our study is to define the individual psychological characteristics that determine stress resistance inherent in climbers-sportsmenfacing high risks. 60 climbers from the Kyiv branch of the Federation of Mountaineering and Climbing and the climbing section of the National Aviation University (26 women and 34 men, aged 18 to 30 years old, M age = 24, SD = 1.57) are involved in this study. The researchers have used the following tests: Cattell's Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire,Eysenck Personality Inventory, Diagnostics of Stress-Resistance Level ('Forecast'), the "Personality Differential" technique. High and average levels of stress resistance were detected in 42 rock climbers (70%) while most adults involved in non-extreme sports had the average levels of stress resistance. It is shown that climbers perceive a large number of situations as threatening and provoking the anxiety (the self-preservation instinct). High psychological variability and adaptability to external conditions are associated with low levels of neuroticism, high stability, and lability. Increasing the self-esteem of athletes boosts stress resistance. These research results allow us to conclude that the structure of stress resistance of athletes facing high risksis balanced and defined by one's systemic volitional capabilities (strength and stability), self-control behavior (self-esteem) and features of the nervous system which are characterized by susceptibility to external events (neuroticism).