More Than Sport: A social-identity intervention to support transitions out of elite sport.

Elite athletes often make large personal sacrifices to pursue excellence, but there is insufficient support for them when they leave elite sport. Identity loss is central to athletes' transition trajectories and hence the management of identity change is a crucial area for support. The More Than Sport (MTS) program is a novel digital intervention that aims to provide this support-helping athletes manage identity change in the process of leaving elite sport. The present research aims to study elite athletes' experiences with the MTS program and their perceptions of its usefulness in managing the transition away from elite sport. We undertook a qualitative study with athletes (N=25) from three countries (the United Kingdom, Australia and Belgium) using reflexive thematic analysis to explore their experiences of the program and their feedback on program content. We identified three key themes and eight subthemes. The first key theme was Value of the Program, and this was underpinned by four sub-themes that centred on Program importance and novelty, how Positive and confronting experiences afford insight, the Value of developing shared understanding, and Realising the value of social groups. The second key theme was Engagement with Program Elements and here participants commented on Program content and Delivery format. The final key theme was Time and Place for Identity Management Programs which included the sub-themes of Optimal timing and Additional program beneficiaries. Overall, the results highlight the value of MTS specifically, and identity management efforts more broadly, to help elite athletes adjust successfully to life beyond sport.

Play Well Triple P: Developing and Evaluating a Program to Promote Positive Parental Involvement in Junior Sport.

Parents play a central role in children's ongoing participation and enjoyment of sport. Despite compelling evidence that parental behaviour can undermine the quality of children's experiences in sport, little research has examined whether strategies to support parents to engage in positive sports parenting behaviour are effective. In this paper, we report two studies that had the overall aim of developing, implementing and evaluating a program designed to promote positive parental involvement and improve spectator behaviour in junior rugby league in Australia. Study 1 involved the development of a prototype version of the program, named Play Well Triple P, which was qualitatively evaluated through interviews with 19 parents about their satisfaction with the program. In Study 2, we used feedback from Study 1 to refine the program and develop a pilot version, which was then evaluated in a quasi-experimental feasibility study with 101 parents (mean age = 38.42 years; 72% mothers) of junior rugby league players. The pilot version involved one interactive online module and text messages to reinforce content and prompt strategy implementation across the season. Participation in Play Well Triple P was associated with increased positive sports parenting behaviour and reduced controlling and intrusive sports parenting behaviour, with a trend towards reducing over-reactive parenting practices at home. These findings are discussed in relation to the feasibility of implementing a brief and engaging sports parenting intervention in the context of a broader integrated system designed to facilitate ongoing participation of children in sport.

University serial winning coaches' experiences with low performance and maladaptive team culture.

We sought to explore the strategies and behaviours employed by University serial winning coaches during seasons of both low performance and a maladaptive team culture. We interviewed seven University team sport coaches and subsequently analyzed the data using a reflexive thematic analysis (RTA). Results indicated that our coaches generally felt unprepared for the unexpected and challenging season, leading to increased stress and decreased psychological well-being. Coaches experienced frustration, disappointment, and self-doubt, which was either exacerbated or mitigated by their access to social support. Despite the emotional turmoil coaches experienced, they were able to reflect on their actions and take away key lessons, helping them perform well in the future. Findings provide insight into how winning coaches manage and overcome inevitable adverse situations. Moreover, these results provide a deeper understanding of how these highly successful coaches navigate these key challenges that over time can inform policy and practice in coach development. These coaching strategies may help coaches of all levels overcome barriers to success and may be transferable to leaders of all levels across a range of disciplines outside of sport.

"I'm more than my sport": Exploring the dynamic processes of identity change in athletic retirement.

Retirement is one of the most impactful career transitions athletes face. Researchers recognise the role that athletic identity plays in this, but analysis of identity content and change processes is limited. Addressing this gap, we conducted a qualitative study exploring the experience of identity change in 21 competitive and successful elite athletes who had retired from sport. All participated in a one-session psychoeducational program that explored the challenges of transitioning out of sport before being interviewed about their understanding of identity in sport, and their experiences negotiating identity loss and change in retirement. Using reflexive thematic analysis, we identified three themes: (i) the role of identity and self-categorizations in shaping sport performance, (ii) adjusting to identity loss (with subthemes indicating that this experience varied depending on the extent to which a person had multiple or exclusive identities), and (iii) attempts to remoor identity in the transition (with subthemes of searching for a new identity and actively repurposing identity). We interpret these themes through the lens of the Social Identity Model of Identity Change and show that this provides a framework for extending our understanding the complexities of identity change associated with retirement from elite sport.

Understanding mental toughness at a Women's Australian rules football club.

Scholars have argued that mental toughness is a term that represents hypermasculine ideals. This hypermasculinity ideal could be considered relevant in the sport of Australian rules football, which has been played, at the professional level, by male athletes for the majority of its existence. Given the rising popularity of the Australian Football League Women's (AFLW), the present research sought to explore how the term mental toughness was understood at an AFLW club through a cultural sport psychology lens. Interviews were conducted with players (n = 4) and coaches (n = 6) from an AFLW club over the course of a competitive season. Data were transcribed verbatim and thematically analysed, with themes constructed to correspond with different levels of contextual influence. From this analysis, the club values and underlying assumptions, the social truths, and the role models/archetypes that provided a collective understanding of the term were identified. Mental toughness was defined by high-performance values of the men's game, which had implications for female athletes in this environment who are not afforded the same opportunities to fully embody these values. Mental toughness is positioned, in this environment, as an ideal with different meanings for female athletes due to structural factors associated with elite-level competition (e.g., full-time versus part-time professionalism).

Individual vs. Team Sport Failure-Similarities, Differences, and Current Developments.

The construct of "choking under pressure" is concerned with the phenomenon of unexpected, sudden, and significant declines in individual athletes' performances in important situations and has received empirical attention in the field of sport psychology. Although a number of theories about the reasons for the occurrence of choking under pressure exist and several intervention approaches have been developed, underlying mechanisms of choking are still under debate and the effectiveness of existing interventions remains contested. These sudden performance declines also occur in team sport. "Collective sport team collapse," which describes the situation when an entire sport team underperforms significantly within an important competitive situation, has received less empirical attention, in comparison to individual choking research. While there are a few studies that have investigated causes of collective team collapse, understandably, there has been limited empirical investigation of preventative and intervention strategies. Although the two constructs appear to share several similar characteristics and mechanisms, research has not yet examined the conceptual, theoretical, empirical, and practical links between choking under pressure and collective sport team collapse. In this review article, we seek to examine these similarities and differences and identify new ways of thinking about future interventions. Furthermore, current empirical understandings in the field of choking under pressure and collective sport team collapse are presented and the most effective intervention approaches for both constructs are introduced. On the basis of this examination, we modestly make some initial recommendations for sport psychological practitioners and future research.

Social and Cultural Constraints on Football Player Development in Stockholm: Influencing Skill, Learning, and Wellbeing.

In this paper, we consider how youth sport and (talent) development environments have adapted to, and are constrained by, social and cultural forces. Empirical evidence from an 18-month ethnographic case study highlights how social and cultural constraints influence the skill development and psychological wellbeing of young football players. We utilized novel ways of knowing (i.e., epistemologies) coupled to ecological frameworks (e.g., the theory of ecological dynamics and the skilled intentionality framework). A transdisciplinary inquiry was used to demonstrate that the values which athletes embody in sports are constrained by the character of the social institutions (sport club, governing body) and the social order (culture) in which they live. The constraining character of an athlete (talent) development environment is captured using ethnographic methods that illuminate a sociocultural value-directedness toward individual competition. The discussion highlights how an emphasis on individual competition overshadows opportunities (e.g., shared, and nested affordances) for collective collaboration in football. Conceptually, we argue that these findings characterize how a dominating sociocultural constraint may negatively influence the skill development, in game performance, and psychological wellbeing (via performance anxiety) of young football players in Stockholm. Viewing cultures and performance environments as embedded complex adaptive systems, with human development as ecological, it becomes clear that microenvironments and embedded relations underpinning athlete development in high performance sports organizations are deeply susceptible to broad cultural trends toward neoliberalism and competitive individualism. Weaving transdisciplinary lines of inquiry, it is clarified how a value directedness toward individual competition may overshadow collective collaboration, not only amplifying socio-cognitive related issues (anxiety, depression, emotional disturbances) but simultaneously limiting perceptual learning, skill development, team coordination and performance at all levels in a sport organization.

A Coach Development Program: A Guided Online Reflective Practice Intervention Study.

Coaches can influence athlete outcomes, such as performance and personal development; yet, coaches themselves are learners in their own right, who seek to develop their coaching craft. Reflective practice is essential for coaches' development; however, coaches might engage and benefit from reflective practice in myriad ways. This study aimed to evaluate if online reflective journaling (ORJ) enhances the depth of reflection of sports coaches in a 4-week coach development programme (CDP). Participants were a convenience sample of 83 sports coaches from several sports, divided into an intervention group (N = 42) and a control group (N = 41). Data collection used a mixed-methods approach, examining a CDP focused on the coaches' reflective practice. The results revealed that reflection was the only dependent variable that showed significant differences over time. Participation in ORJ showed positive effects on reflection in both groups; however, only the experimental group was statistically significant. For this sample, ORJ was found to help enhance coaches' reflection towards critical reflection. All texts included in pre-, post-, and follow-up tests were coded for trustworthiness purposes. This finding supports the potential of ORJ in nurturing reflective practice, which is considered a core competency in becoming a successful sports coach.

Competitive Situations Requiring Mental Toughness in Women's Australian Rules Football.

In the last decade, mental toughness (MT) researchers have been interested in the behaviours exemplifying MT. Despite this interest, little attention has been paid to the competitive situations these behaviours occur in. Hence, the aim of the current study was to start addressing this gap by comprehensively focusing on the situations requiring MT in sport - specifically, the contextual demands linked to MT in women's Australian rules football. Focus groups and individual semi-structured interviews were conducted at two Australian rules football clubs after each competitive round of the 2020 season. Following analysis of participant responses, three broad situational categories were created, representing the psychological demands required by the player or team to successfully overcome in-game challenges. These categories were: context intelligence, attentional regulation, and emotional regulation. This study identified that situations requiring MT also required a degree of acceptance and commitment - alluding to a potential link between acceptance-commitment therapy (ACT) and MT. Conceptually, this view offers a new perspective on the psychological process of being mentally tough in competition. The link between ACT and MT also offers an avenue for MT development. Recommendations are made for incorporating these identified situations into regular training sessions following affective learning design principles.

Football, Culture, Skill Development and Sport Coaching: Extending Ecological Approaches in Athlete Development Using the Skilled Intentionality Framework.

In this manuscript, we extend ecological approaches and suggest ideas for enhancing athlete development by utilizing the Skilled Intentionality Framework. A broad aim is to illustrate the extent to which social, cultural and historical aspects of life are embodied in the way football is played and the skills young footballers develop during learning. Here, we contend that certain aspects of the world (i.e., environmental properties) are "weighted" with social and cultural significance, "standing out" to be more readily perceived and simultaneously acted upon when playing football. To comprehend how patterns of team coordination and athletic skill embody aspects of culture and context we outline the value-directedness of player-environment intentionality. We demonstrate that the values an individual can express are constrained by the character of the social institutions (i.e., football clubs) and the social order (i.e., form of life) in which people live. In particular, we illuminate the extent to which value-directedness can act as a constraint on the skill development of football players "for good or ill." We achieve this goal by outlining key ecological and relational concepts that help illustrate the extent to which affordances are value-realizing and intentionality is value-directed (exemplified, by footballers performing in a rondo). To enhance coaching practice, we offer: (a) insights into markers of skilled intentionality, and (b), the language of skilled intentions, as well as highlighting (c), an additional principle of Non-linear Pedagogy: Shaping skilled intentions, or more precisely shaping the value-directedness of player-environment intentionality. We contend that, if sport practitioners do not skilfully attend to sociocultural constraints and shape the intentions of players within training environments and games, the social, cultural, and historic constraints of their environment will do so: constantly soliciting some affordances over others and directing skill development.

Making 'us' better: High-quality athlete leadership relates to health and burnout in professional Australian football teams.

Overtraining, exhaustion, and burnout are widely recognized problems amongst elite athletes. The present research addresses this issue by exploring the extent to which high-quality athlete leadership is associated with elite athletes' health and burnout. Participants (120 male athletes from three top-division Australian football teams) were asked to rate the quality of each of their teammates in four different leadership roles (i.e. as task and motivational leaders on the field and as social and external leaders off the field), and also to indicate their identification with their team as well as their self-reported health and burnout. Findings indicated that (a) being seen to be a good athlete leader by other members of the team and (b) having a good athlete leader on the team were both positively associated with better team member health and lower burnout. This relationship was mediated by athletes' identification with their team, suggesting that leaders enhance athletes' health and reduce athlete burnout by creating and maintaining a sense of shared identity in their team. This, in turn, suggests that coaches can foster an optimal team environment by developing the leadership potential of their athlete leaders - in particular, their skills that foster a sense of shared team identification. This is in the interests not only of team performance but also of team members' health and burnout.

Developing Creativity to Enhance Human Potential in Sport: A Wicked Transdisciplinary Challenge.

The challenge of developing creativity to enhance human potential is conceptualized as a multifaceted wicked problem due to the countless interactions between people and environments that constitute human development, athletic skill, and creative moments. To better comprehend the inter-relatedness of ecologies and human behaviors, there have been increasing calls for transdisciplinary approaches and holistic ecological models. In this paper we explore an ecological dynamics rationale for creativity, highlighting the conceptual adjacency of key concepts from transdisciplinarity, dynamic systems theory, ecological psychology and social-cognitive psychology. Our aim is to extend the scope of ecological dynamics and contextualize the application of non-linear pedagogy in sport. Foregrounding the role of sociocultural constraints on creative behaviors, we characterize the athlete-environment system as an ecological niche that arises from, and simultaneously co-creates, a form of life. We elaborate the notion that creative moments, skill and more generally talent in sport, are not traits possessed by individuals alone, but rather can be conceived as properties of the athlete-environment system shaped by changing constraints. This re-conceptualization supports a pedagogical approach predicated on notions of athletes and sports teams as complex adaptive systems. In such systems, continuous non-linear interactions between system components support the exploration of fluent and flexibly creative performance solutions by athletes and sports teams. The implications for practice suggest that cultivating a constellation of constraints can facilitate adaptive exploration of novel affordances (opportunities/invitation for action), fostering creative moments and supporting creative development in athletes. Future models or frameworks for practice contend that pedagogies should emerge from, and evolve in, interaction with the sociocultural context in which practitioners and athletes are embedded.

When You Watch Your Team Fall Apart - Coaches' and Sport Psychologists' Perceptions on Causes of Collective Sport Team Collapse.

Collective team collapse occurs when multiple players of a sport team experience a sudden and extreme underperformance within a game and are unable to return to their initial performance level. The occurrence of such a team collapse event commonly leads to the loss of the game or championship. A recent study investigated athletes' perceptions of the phenomenon and proposed a process model of causes of collective sport team collapse. The main goal of this study was to apply this process model to the data collected from coaches and sport psychologists. A further goal was to explore differences in perceptions of causes of team collapse among athletes, coaches, and sport psychologists of various professional German sport teams. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to investigate seven coaches' and four sport psychologists' perceptions. Following an abductive approach, a deductive content analysis was used to explore if the data supported the process model of collective sport team collapse. Perceived antecedents and critical events causing team collapse were similar among the three participant groups. Coaches and sport psychologists differed from athletes in their perception of emotional, cognitive, and behavioral outcomes of team collapse. Coaches tended to report behavioral factors, such as immobility or the blaming of other players, as critical factors maintaining team collapse. Sport psychologists reported cognitive factors, such as individualization or a lack of accountability between the players, to be relevant for team collapse maintenance. Overall, the data of this study supported the general structure of the process model of collective sport team collapse; however, minor amendments to the temporal cascade of causes of team collapse are introduced. Future research is encouraged to examine this model, to provide guidance to teams, coaches, and sport psychologists in dealing with collective sport team collapse.

A Three-Domain Personality Analysis of a Mentally Tough Athlete.

The current study adopted McAdams' multilayer framework as the basis to develop a psychological portrait of an elite athlete who was identified as being particularly 'mentally tough'. The aim was to use this single case as an exemplar to demonstrate the utility of McAdams' framework for understanding the complexity of sport performers across three domains of personality: dispositional traits, characteristic adaptations, and narrative identity. We operationalised these domains through the development of specific research questions and, subsequently, the collection and integration of the participant's Big Five traits, personal strivings, coping strategies, and response to a life story interview. The results offered a comprehensive insight into the nature of one athlete's personality that, in turn, informed conceptual perspectives of mental toughness in sport psychology literature and qualitatively supported emerging evidence of the validity of a three-layer framework in personality psychology. Specifically, the study's design showed how a holistic approach to personality analysis can lead to a more complete psychological representation of competitors in sport, and people generally. It demonstrated how motivational, sociocultural, and meaning-making aspects of personality can complement a trait profile to achieving a satisfying assessment of the whole person.

The tales athletes tell: Narrative structure and identity in Great British medalists.

Using a life story approach, Hardy and colleagues present a study examining the similarities and differences in the psychosocial development of UK-based elite and super-elite athletes. We found this work to be a highly personal account into the lives of these cohorts, which advances knowledge concerning the psychology and influencing events and circumstances that separate the good from the great performers. We make some suggestions for how to enrich the study's findings and approach, by (1) adopting McAdams' multilayer framework of personality, as an overarching structure for assessing the whole person, and (2) encouraging the authors to explore the narrative structure of the presented life stories and go beyond simply an interpretation of their content.

Is perceived athlete leadership quality related to team effectiveness? A comparison of three professional sports teams.

OBJECTIVES: Researchers have argued that leadership is one of the most important determinants of team effectiveness. The present study examined the extent to which the perceived quality of athlete leadership was related to the effectiveness of elite sports teams. DESIGN: Three professional football teams (N=135) participated in our study during the preparation phase for the Australian 2016 season. METHODS: Players and coaching staff were asked to assess players' leadership quality in four leadership roles (as task, motivational, social, and external leader) via an online survey. The leadership quality in each of these roles was then calculated in a social network analysis by averaging the indegree centralities of the three best leaders in that particular role. Participants also rated their team's performance and its functioning on multiple indicators. RESULTS: As hypothesized, the team with the highest-quality athlete leadership on each of the four leadership roles excelled in all indicators of team effectiveness. More specifically, athletes in this team had a stronger shared sense of the team's purpose, they were more highly committed to realizing the team's goals, and they had a greater confidence in their team's abilities than athletes in the other teams. Moreover, this team demonstrated a higher task-involving and a lower ego-involving climate, and excelled on all measures of performance. CONCLUSIONS: High-quality athlete leadership is positively related to team effectiveness. Given the importance of high-quality athlete leadership, the study highlights the need for well-designed empirically-based leadership development programs.

The concept of mental toughness: tests of dimensionality, nomological network, and traitness.

Mental toughness has received increased scholarly attention in recent years, yet conceptual issues related to its (a) dimensionality, (b) nomological network, and (c) traitness remain unresolved. The series of studies reported in this article were designed to examine these three substantive issues across several achievement contexts, including sport, education, military, and the workplace. Five studies were conducted to examine these research aims-Study 1: N = 30; Study 2: calibration sample (n = 418), tertiary students (n = 500), athletes (n = 427), and employees (n = 550); Study 3: N = 497 employees; Study 4: N = 203 tertiary students; Study 5: N = 115 army candidates. Collectively, the results of these studies revealed that mental toughness may be best conceptualized as a unidimensional rather than a multidimensional concept; plays an important role in performance, goal progress, and thriving despite stress; and can vary and have enduring properties across situations and time. This series of studies provides a foundation for further basic and applied research of mental toughness across various achievement contexts.

Examining discriminant validity issues of the Sport Motivation Scale-6.

The current study was conducted to re-assess the factor structure of the 24-item Sport Motivation Scale-6 (SMS-6; Mallett, Kawabata, Newcombe, Otero-Forero, & Jackson, 2007) with an independent sample. A total of 437 participants completed the SMS-6, and their responses were examined with confirmatory factor analysis and recent exploratory structural equation modelling (Asparouhov & Muthén, 2009). A six-factor confirmatory-factor-analysis model did not fit to the sample data adequately. Through examination of the corresponding exploratory-structural-equation-modelling solution, it was found that two items loaded on non-target factors poorly. This result was replicated by a published data set (Mallett, Kawabata, Newcombe, et al., 2007). The modified confirmatory-factor-analysis model with these two items removed fit to the present study's data satisfactorily and all six factors were adequately diferentiated. These results generally validate the SMS-6 responses. Furthermore, this study demonstrated the usefulness of a comparison of confirmatory-factor-analysis and exploratory-structural-equation-modelling solutions for an accurate interpretation of individual parameters.

Interpreting the Dispositional Flow Scale-2 scores: a pilot study of latent class factor analysis.

The present study examined the extent to which scores on the Dispositional Flow Scale-2 (DFS-2) could differentiate individuals who frequently experience flow characteristics in physical activity from those who do not. A total of 993 participants completed the Japanese version of the DFS-2. Latent class factor analysis (LCFA), which combines the strengths of both latent class analysis and factor analysis, was conducted on the DFS-2 responses. Six classes were identified through a series of LCFAs and the patterns of the item-average scores for the nine flow attributes were found to be parallel among these classes. The top two and bottom two classes (19.3% and 13.4% of the whole sample) were considered the groups who experience flow characteristics frequently and seldom, respectively. These results indicated that individuals who often experience flow attributes in physical activity could be differentiated from those who do not based on their DFS-2 scores.

Assessing coach motivation: the development of the Coach Motivation Questionnaire (CMQ).

The aim of this research was to develop and assess the psychometric properties of the Coach Motivation Questionnaire (CMQ). Study 1 focused on the compilation and pilot testing of potential questionnaire items. Consistent with self-determination theory, items were devised to tap into six forms of motivation: amotivation, external regulation, introjected regulation, identified regulation, integrated regulation, and intrinsic motivation. The purpose of the second study (N = 556) was to empirically examine the psychometric properties of the CMQ. Items were subjected to confirmatory factor analyses to determine the fit of the a priori model. In addition, the validity of the questionnaire was assessed through links with the theoretically related concepts of intrinsic need satisfaction, well-being, and goal orientation. Together with test-retest reliability (Study 3), these results showed preliminary support for the psychometric properties of the CMQ. Finally, using an independent sample (N = 254), the fourth study confirmed the factor structure and supports the use of the CMQ in future coaching research.