Notes: Physical Activity Experiences (Sectioned)

Page 1: Nature of Physical Activity Experience

  • Our physical activity experience consists of our history of participation, training, practice, or observation of any particular physical activity.
  • It differs from subjective physical activity experiences, which involve our reactions, feelings, and thoughts about physical activity.
  • Experience of physical activity includes:
    • any activity that includes training, observation of practice, and person observation
    • intelligence-based physical activity
    • ethically and aesthetically based physical activity
    • flexibility and adaptability of physical activity
    • ability to improve performance through planned experience
    • social environment: parents, peers, teachers and coaches
    • personal circumstances
  • Key Point: A unique capacity for performing physical activity is one of the major features that contribute to the distinctive character of the human race.
  • Factors that Influence Kinds of Experience in Physical Activity:
    • Subjective experience of physical activity: individual reaction to events, feelings, or other stimuli
  • Physical Activity as a Signature of Humanity
    • Key Point: The people closest to you—including your parents, peers, coaches, and teachers—influence the kinds and amounts of experience you have with a particular physical activity, especially when you are young.
    • Key Point: Although we possess a unique facility for performing, planning, and implementing physical activity experiences in order to improve our performance, most of us are not inclined to explore this potential to the fullest.

Page 2: External and Internal Factors Shaping Experience

  • Key Point: Often, our physical activity experiences—and consequently, those activities in which we develop proficiency—are determined by factors that lay somewhat outside of our control, such as climate, regional culture, and financial considerations.
    • Other factors: geography, regional culture, and economics
  • Key Point: Beyond the key factors in our social and ecological environments, our decisions about physical activity are also affected by factors such as self-perception, competence in a given activity, and characteristics of the activity itself.
  • Ways in Which Experience can Affect Physical Activity:
    • Learning, practice, and skill
    • Key Point: The type of physical activity experience that brings about changes in skill is called practice. The relatively permanent effect of practice on performance is called learning.
    • Training, conditioning, and physical performance capacity
    • Key Point: Physical activity experiences known as training are used to develop such performance qualities as muscle strength and endurance, cardiorespiratory endurance, or flexibility. The state of having developed these qualities is known as conditioning.
    • Practice versus training
    • Key Point: Generally, engaging in practice without training, or engaging in training without practice, is an incomplete formula for developing excellence in sport.
  • Experience in physical activity and physical fitness:
    • Motor performance fitness
    • Health-related fitness
    • Physical fitness defined

Page 3: Components of Fitness and the Interaction of Genetics and Experience

  • Key Point: The term fitness activities refers to training experiences that improve our general capacity to perform daily activities and help prevent disease processes associated with low levels of physical activity.
  • Identifying Critical Components of Physical Activity Experiences:
    • Task analysis focusing on quality of experience
    • Determining skill components critical to learning:
    • Motor skill taxonomies
    • Open skill–close skill continuum
    • Key Point: Skills can be located on an open–closed continuum. In closed skills, performers must adapt their movements to fixed and highly predictable environments. In open skills, performers must adapt to changing and highly unpredictable environments.
    • Determining practice experiences critical to improving skills
    • Determining experiences appropriate for training:
    • Expert ratings
    • Kinesiology research
    • Key Point: The critical performance components underlying a physical activity can be ranked by asking experts to rate their relative importance. Kinesiology research is beginning to validate (or invalidate) such task analyses with data.
  • Hereditary and Experience:
    • Abilities as building blocks for experience
    • Key Point: Ultimately, how well we are able to perform an activity is determined by our physical activity experiences and by our abilities, which are influenced by genetics.
    • Interaction of experience and abilities:
    • Influence of genetic factors
    • Influence of practice and training
  • Key Point: The limits of learning and conditioning are determined by both physical activity experiences and inherited abilities. We control only experience; therefore, the best strategy for achieving excellence is to seek the best physical activity experiences.

Page 4: The Subjective Experience of Physical Activity

  • Subjective Experience of Physical Activity: The entire range of emotions and cognitions, dispositions, knowledge, and meanings that we derive from physical activity rather than the actual performance itself (activity experience).
  • Key Point: The realm of subjective experience involves the interior and sometimes mysterious aspect of our lives, in which we collect, recall, and reflect on the feelings and meanings that physical activity evokes for us.
  • Key Point: Physical activity experiences are subjective and unique.
    • One of the main reasons we seek out physical activity is that it supplies us with unique forms of human experience unavailable to us in other areas of everyday life.
    • Subjective experiences in physical activity is often overlooked
    • Physical activity best when personally meaningful
  • Why Subjective Experiences are Important to Kinesiology Professionals:
    • The nature of subjective experiences
    • Immediate subjective experiences
  • Key Point: All physical activity is accompanied by sensations that we can convert to perceptions, emotions, and knowledge. To fully experience a physical activity, we must be open to the emotional and cognitive impressions that it evokes.

Page 5: Components and Expression of Subjective Experience

  • Components of Subjective Experience:
    • Sensations and perceptions
    • Emotions
    • Key Point: Physical activity is always accompanied by internal and external sensations of human movement. These sensations can be organized into perceptions, which can give rise to emotions that we associate with particular physical activities.
    • Knowledge as an element of subjective experience:
    • Rational knowledge
    • Intuitive knowledge
    • Psychoanalytic self-knowledge
    • Mystical knowledge
    • Socratic self-knowledge
  • Key Point: The performance of physical activities can be a source of knowledge about our motivations for engaging in activity, about different dimensions of reality, and about our personal performance capabilities.
  • Talking about Subjective Experiences:
    • Key Point: It is difficult to find the words to communicate our subjective experiences in sport and exercise. Doing so matters, however, because it helps us understand the meanings that we create in physical activity.
  • Factors Affecting our Enjoyment of Physical Activity:
    • Factors related to the activity:
    • Evenly matched challenges
    • Clear goals and feedback
    • Key Point: We are more likely to enjoy a physical activity when its challenges match our abilities, when it has clear goals and is followed by feedback, and when it is arranged in a competitive framework.
    • Factors related to the performer:
    • Disposition (temporary or situational)
    • Perceived competency
    • Absorption
    • Perceived control
    • Attitudes
    • Physical activity as a social experience
    • Physical activity for health and fitness
    • Physical activity as the pursuit of vertigo
    • Physical activity as an aesthetic experience
    • Physical activity as a cathartic experience
    • Physical activity as an ascetic experience
  • Key Point: Temporary dispositions affect our enjoyment of physical activity. Enjoyment tends to increase when we feel competent in an activity, become absorbed or lost in it, and feel that we control our bodies and the environment.
  • Key Point: People who find enjoyment in the aesthetic experience of physical activity may engage in gymnastics, diving, skating, and other movement forms that emphasize grace and beauty of motion.
  • Key Point: Participating in sport and exercise does not purge us of hostility or aggression, but it may calm, relax, and refresh us.

Page 6: Social and Aesthetic Aspects of Enjoyment

  • Key Point: Participating in exercise or sport can be painful and can lead to uncomfortable subjective experiences. Yet participants do not always interpret these sensations negatively; indeed, the discomfort may be a source of attraction or achievement.
  • Factors related to the social context:
    • Physical activity alone versus with others
    • Physical activity and the environment
    • Physical activity and the sense of freedom
  • Key Point: We never perform physical activities in a vacuum, and the social context that surrounds them can affect our sense of enjoyment.

Page 7: Watching Sport as a Subjective Experience

  • Ways of watching sports:
    • Vicarious participation: Key Point: Vicarious participation in sport occurs when spectators engage emotionally with a team or athlete or imagine themselves performing the same activities as the athlete or team they are watching.
    • Disinterested sport spectating
  • Factors that affect enjoyment of watching sports:
    • Gaming knowledge
    • Feelings toward competing teams and players
    • Human drama of sport competition
  • Key Point: Possessing comprehensive knowledge of the sport’s players, rules, and competitive strategies adds to our enjoyment of watching it, as do the feelings that we harbor toward the participating teams.