Tag Archive for 'Roma'

8 years of Football Together for young with intellectual disabilities

The 8° year of the “Football Together” project is coming to the end. It is a complex project aimed at young people with intellectual disabilities, with special reference to young people with autism. It is a long time in which many of the participants have gone from being teenagers with autism to young adults.

It is a project of AS Roma in collaboration with the Academy of Integrated Football, which aims to promote an innovative methodology of soccer training among these young people, starting from the age of school soccer 6-12 years old to the more game-centered activity in later ages from 13 years old and beyond.

474 youth have been involved in 8 years - Each year the number of youth with intellectual disabilities has increased. Initially the project covered the soccer school age groups, going forward it was enriched by the upper age group we called “Cub Scouts Grow Up,” which now includes youth who have reached the age of majority.

80 are the youth with autism involved in the 2022-23 activity - Currently, the youth are divided into three groups according to age and their motor and psychological skills. The group composed of youth with a severe level of autism are each followed by a single professional (instructor or psychologist). The group of younger youth (6-9) years old and with an average level of functioning carry out group activities and ball games. The group of adolescents over14 of medium to high functioning follow a soccer training program and play soccer games5 among themselves, in an integrated way with players from the AS Roma soccer school and participate in events organized by other clubs or FIGC.

30 were the young people with autism in the first year - Calcio Insieme began in September 2015 with the collaboration of some schools in Rome that promoted among the families of pupils with intellectual disabilities the knowledge of this initiative, organized informational meetings with the staff of Calcio Insieme to begin to build a Community on the territory in which school, family, promoting sports subjects, and staff could feel part of a common project at the center of which are children with intellectual disabilities and in particular those with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

28 hours of staff training - In 2015 the staff participated in a 28-hour Training Course by “Football Together” prior to the start of the activity, which had experts in the various fields of intellectual disability as lecturers and speeches by parents, school workers, and sports clubs. At the beginning of each year the staff is involved in a refresher training.

24 are the practitioners - The staff consists of 10 soccer instructors, 6 sports psychologists, 1logopedist, 3 doctors, 1 school and parent relations manager,1 technical area manager, 1 scientific manager and 1 institutional relations manager.

20 are the schools involved - The young people with intellectual disabilities involved come from 20 schools in the Roman area. A collaborative relationship has been established with each of these schools through the principal, support teacher and families.

9 are the videos to talk about Football Together - 6 short educational videos each lasting a few minutes were made, funded by the presidency of the Lazio Region. 3 more videos were made to present the activity carried out and the results achieved.

7 are the scientific contributions published - 3 are the scientific articles published in international journals. A special issue of the journal “Movement” and an article in the journal of the School of Sport were published. During Covid the activity carried out online with these young people produced a technical book of exercises to be done at home. The activity was presented at the national conference of the Italian Dyspraxia Society, at a seminar held at the Institute of Neuropsychiatry at Sapienza University in Rome, and is an integral part of the Level IV Course for Coaches organized by the School of Sport in Rome.

3 are the summer camps - Summer camps were held to: respond to the needs expressed by families with children with intellectual disabilities, offering weeks of summer camp, free of charge; create a model of summer camp and typical day, based on movement, declined in the different playful-motor and sports expressions; constitute a concrete model of integration thanks to the presence at the summer camp also of siblings or classmates, their peers with typical development. Each week of camp was spread over 5 days for a total of 25 hours per week.

3 are the young people who served as assistant instructors - These young people have turned 18 and have been with us for a number of years, their passion for soccer is well-rounded. They have served as assistant instructors during summer camp weeks. In the future they could put their acquired sports skills to use and make sports their career field, but their intellectual disability is an obstacle. The goal is to break down this obstacle and build an educational pathway to make soccer accessible to these girls and boys also as a possible career field.

2 are the areas investigated: motor-sportive and psycho-social - Different motor-sportive tests were proposed and experimented with before arriving at the final one that uses a 5-level behavioral description of basic motor skills, repeated twice a year, at the beginning of the educational journey and at its end. During interviews with parents, they were asked to fill out behavior fact sheets at the beginning and end of the year to assess their perception of improvement on the psychological and social areas investigated. Similar psychological assessments were conducted by the psychologists of these young people, also examining in the more serious youth the duration of their active engagement during each training session.

Football integrated

Bella mattina di calcio integrato a Roma: 8 club e quasi 100 giovani calciatori e calciatrici. @PMinocchi @FISDIR http://accademiacalciointegrato.org

 

 

 

Tennis: focus on the performance and not on results

The qualifying tournament for the Internazionali di Tennis in Rome continues. It will be important for all players to be more and more focused on their performance, their game, rather than being dominated by the score.

It means:

  1. Being focused on playing the games well without forcing yourself to make the point.
  2. Playing each point without being in a hurry to finish it.
  3. Moving fluidly and decisively in the decisive moments of the game.
  4. Prepare to serve by taking the necessary time to execute it.
  5. At the end of each point, first reduce tension by lengthening the exhalation and then reactivate for the next exchange.
  6. Give yourself brief technical instructions on how to play at that stage of the game.
  7. Always tell each other what to do and never what not to do.
  8. Have your eyes open to your opponent preparing to serve.
  9. Always keep your feet happy and your movement quick.
  10. Remember that up to the last point you can overturn an unfavorable result.

In summary, it means being focused on how you want to play without thinking about the result.

Focus on suburbs of the cities: UISP initiatives

The magazine Redattore Sociale returns to the visit of the Sports Department to the Fulvio Bernardini Uisp Roma sport center, with an interview with Tiziano Pesce, Uisp national president. The latter stressed the “political” importance of this meeting, which shifted the spotlight on the peripheries and on the deep problems that grassroots and neighborhood sports clubs are experiencing. The sport for all, which is played on the territories often peripheral and forgotten by all, represents a bulwark of inclusion and social redemption but today is experiencing a moment of transition and crisis.

“Sport is going to the periphery, and so is sports policy. This is the leap forward that Uisp asks of public decision-makers and politics in the sporting sphere: to consolidate the idea that sport is a right of all citizens, that it is an important aspect of health promotion and education, that it is a vector of social cohesion through the values of inclusion and sociality,” commented Tiziano Pesce. “As Uisp we will continue to strive to try to direct public policies of sport in support of social sport and for all, therefore of the associations and amateur sports clubs in the area – adds Tiziano Pesce – asking for a rebalancing of public resources allocated to sport.” In fact, those allocated to sport for all are largely insufficient, less than 4% of the total. In addition, the pandemic has exacerbated these inequalities and today associations and sports clubs are struggling to resume their activities. “There has been an estrangement of young people and families from sports courses, a series of regulations have compressed basic activities”, says the Uisp president.

The request is for extraordinary interventions in support of sports associations in the area. “We hope that in the next few days the restrictive rules on distances will be mitigated and we can return to an activity that involves a greater number of practitioners, both in the gym and in the pool, the latter being one of those who have suffered the most in terms of restrictions and then under the economic-financial aspect, while respecting the rules anticovid that Uisp has always favored with protocols responding to the Dpcm and decrees that have followed,” concludes Tiziano Pesce.

Also present at the meeting was Michele Scicioli, head of the Government Sports department, who said he was aware of both the value and the hardships that the sports world is facing: “We know that the problems of the sports world have fallen on the social fabric … We know how much grassroots sport has suffered in the last year and a half. The choice of this place is not accidental”. Also present was Simone Menichetti, president of Uisp Roma, who spoke of the great value of sport for all and the struggle to survive for many of the clubs that carry out this mission in the area: “A survey of our affiliated clubs revealed that over 30% have stopped their activities, while more than 25% have even closed, leaving a great void, because sport is a social and aggregative phenomenon. This facility is in a peripheral, popular neighborhood: born over 30 years ago, it has become one of the most used facilities in the area, but now it is experiencing great difficulties, after a year and a half of pandemic and the consequent closures. We must recover the ground that the pandemic has made us lose. And that it has made us lose to grassroots sport, more than to the sport of the great federations”.

The alarm raised by the sports promotion bodies regarding the closure of many activities was raised in an article in La Gazzetta dello Sport dedicated to the BeActive weekend. There was talk of the difficulties of grassroots sports; of the meeting on Friday at the Foro Italico between the Sports Department and three sports promotion organizations including Uisp; of “Pillole di movimento”, the project to encourage sports activities illustrated by Tiziano Pesce, president of Uisp. “One tries to react to difficulties in all ways. Precisely on the occasion of the Foro Italico event, Uisp launched “Pillole di movimento”, supported by the Sports Department. From January, 480 thousand boxes will be distributed in 32 Italian cities, a kind of “movement drug” already tested in the province of Bologna. Inside the box, you can find a special “bugiardino” where there will be a sort of decalogue of the importance of sport and proper lifestyles. But the package will be somehow customized city by city, because there will also be an indication of some addresses where you can practice sport with the possibility of a free trial of one month of membership to the chosen center,” says the article.

(Source: UISP)

Article: Footdall Together

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Marathon runners’ motivation

Carbonaro, G., Cei, A., Ruscello, B, e Quagliarotti, C. (2020). La maratona di Roma: caratteristiche motivazionali e strutturali dei partecipanti. Atletica Studi, 2, 39-52.

A year later, the research report on the participation in the 2019 Rome Marathon, thanks to the organization of the event by Italian Track and Field Federation, is published. The research has investigated the motivational profiles, and some references on the training habits of marathon runners, according to the various age groups. The world of runners is still largely unexplored and this is a stimulus to deepen its characteristics from different points of view.

Marathon runner motivation and coaching

In the next issue of the Journal of Italian Track and Filed Federation.

Workshop: How to improve the sport performance with breathing

Breathing has for too long been considered only as a natural event that the individual performs mechanically to ensure survival. Today the sport recognizes the breath a different relevance, to promote relaxation, to recover from stress during the race, to increase concentration and activation of the athletes in the most different situations of their activities. From training to competition, from physical to technical and psychological preparation, deep breathing and spontaneous breathing are useful to improve the effectiveness of the athletes’ commitment. Therefore, according to the requests of the different sports, it is possible to insert breathing training modalities. This theoretical-practical workshop aims to bring together experts in the different areas of sports science and athletes in introducing this practice within the usual training activities and competition routines.

The seminar will be held by Alberto Cei and Mike Maric, on February 19, at the Centro di Preparazione Olimpica Giulio Onesti, Largo G.Onesti 1, Rome. Program and registration

 

Manuel Bortuzzo show again his optimism after the tragedy

Manuel Bortuzzo, young talent of Italian swimming, injured on 3 February by a gunshot in the Axa district of Rome, tells how his life has changed. “How do I see myself in 10 years? I hope to stand up. To look forward you don’t have to look back, my life is always the same. There is a logistical problem but I am the same as always. I could beat my head and not be myself anymore”

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