inside excellent life
New sport season, new challenges
For all: let’s read more, let’s read much more, don’t settle for what we know
Stay incredulous of what little we know
Don’t think we’ve studied already too much
Let’s be amazed with the new concepts and data coming from science
The sport and physical activity sector needs to step up its game if it wants to help increase the number of disabled people taking part in activities.
New research shows that the sector could play a key role in getting disabled more active – but that it needs to improve awareness and access to facilities and services.
Sport for young people with intellectual disabilities, children and adolescents, especially with autism spectrum syndrome is a difficult wall to break down. There are too many dogmatic thoughts blocking the opportunity for the development in this age group, which is critical for the approach that can to provide at their life not only in these years but also for the future as adults.
Sedentary and overweight are the most common outcomes faced by these young people and their families. In Italian school system the young with disabilities are 216,013, equal to 2.4% of the entire population (close to 9 million students).
Of these, 68% are young people with intellectual disabilities.
How many of them practice sports or physical activity continuously? Unfortunately we do not know and this is already a rather serious fact that highlights the limited interest in sport. How many sports organizations are carrying out programs for these young people? Even on this point, information is very scarce and families have not places where to ask about this.
We could continue with many other questions, which at the moment did not find an answer.
Finally, the scientific data, not only in Italy, even internationally are reduced. Rather, it’s better to follow the motto: “sport is good, do it”. Little is known about the training programs carried out, about the characteristics of the professionals involved, there are no longitudinal studies.
In Italy, Even the recent book on “Good practices in autism” published by the Psychologist Register certainly interesting for the aspects related to diagnosis and relationships between School, Families and Services, ignores sports as a system of empowerment of young people with ASD. It is a pity that they did not inquire about this issue, because sport is instead an essential piece for the development of young people with ASD.
International Journal of Sport Psychology has dedicated a special issue on the subject and anyone interested can request it from the publisher Luigi Pozzi.
The idea that sport is a fundamental activity to develop the motor and psychosocial skills of people with intellectual disabilities is becoming increasingly widespread and it is important to start practicing it since childhood.
Furthermore, sport involvement should permit the integration between young people with intellectual disabilities and peers with typical development, improve people’s overall well-being and allow families to live positive experiences and feel part of a community, the sports community, which values their children regardless of their difficulties.
Realizing these goals requires:
In short, we need to get out of the concept of “doing good” and get in the mentality of “doing it well”. We must be aware that attributing to external problems the difficulty of “doing good” (poor economic resources, poor preparation of the operators, taking as a basic idea that doing something is better than doing nothing) is just an excuse to hide our difficulties to achieve an effective service.
On the contrary, some rules direct the quality of a project:
“Physical fitness is not only one of the most important keys to a healthy body, it is the basis of dynamic and creative intellectual activity.”
John F. Kennedy
American Psychological Association, Sport Psychology Division organizes first FREE webinar of 2019.
Please join us on March 19 12PM-1PM EST or 5:00 PM – 6:00 PM CET for the webinar on Consulting with Athletes with Disabilities! Great panelists and a great topic!
Registration:
https://register.gotowebinar.com/REGISTER/4936894466465835522
A growing demand for sport psychologists
With the issues of mental health, violence and activism in sports on the rise, more athletes and teams are seeking the expertise of sport psychologists
By Kirsten Weir the article of American Psychological Association
Looking for out-of-print #IJSP articles? Feel free to approach us. A small cost of 5 euro (for the years 1970-2007) and 10 euro (since 2008) is chargeable. Write to the publisher: edizioni_pozzi@tin.it
Stephen D. R. Harridge and Norman R. Lazarus, Physiology, 32: 152–161, 2017.
At the anatomical level, muscle loss in older people is associated with atrophy of fast-contracting, type II muscle fibers. Indeed, it has been suggested that type II fiber atrophy might completely explain the loss of muscle bulk in later life. However, a prevailing view is that skeletal muscle loss also relates to a loss of muscle fibers secondary to a loss of motor units. Partial re-innervation of abandoned fibers is believed to occur, resulting in an increased size of remaining motor units, with knock-on effects for fine motor control. This hypothesis is supported with histological evidence of fiber-type grouping and through electromyo- graphic estimates of motor unit number.
Whereas evidence of streaming of Z line and rod formation, and angulated fibers further point to dysregulation of skeletal muscle in later life (81). Studies of mas- ter athletes paint a very different picture (as illustrated in FIGURE 3), which once more challenges the assertion that these changes can be explained by an inherent aging process and are inevitable consequences of getting older.
Figure 3. MRIs taken across the mid region of the thigh. Images taken across the mid region of the thigh, showing a sarcopenic muscle (middle) from a sedentary individual with reduced contractile mass, more subcutaneous fat, and infiltration of fat and connective tissue. By contrast, the muscles of a similarly aged master triathlete (bottom) shows little difference to that of a younger athlete (top).
