Applied sports science depends on effective collaboration in order have an impact. The work often requires more than one person, and seeing the work through takes effort across a sports organization. None of it is easy but it gets easier if it’s fun.
The role of fun is evolving in team sports. It had been a chicken and egg situation where the question of which comes first, winning or fun, is up for debate. But it’s starting look like the positive benefits of prioritizing fun are piling up, see Jonah Keri’s article on the CBS Sports website. (The New York Times covered the subject in late-June with a profile of Cubs’ manager Joe Maddon.) There is also mounting anecdotal evidence that a locker room full of strangers is less conducive to winning.
It remains to be seen if fun will be incorporated into the larger discussion of athlete well-being that is also emerging.
You have U.S. universities researching the comprehensive health of student athletes. Sports clinicians researching the psychological factors for injury rehabilitation. Teams (UCLA) are hiring coaches who specialize in mental conditioning and players (Josh Huff) are seeking out sports psychologists to improve on-field performance.
It’s early for understanding the relationship between athletes’ well-being and their performance. Studies are still in the process of establishing that sleep has a positive effect on an athlete’s well-being. Basketball player Larry Sanders gets headlines when he announces that he might resume his NBA career, but only if the situation is healthy for him, whatever that means. And an athlete like Isaiah Woods admits to struggling with anxiety and depression throughout his University of Washington college football career.
Overall there’s an emerging consensus that athlete health has a mental health component, even if the fundamental truth that sports should be fun sometimes still gets lost.
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