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The experiences of athletes who relocate from their home country have recently been in the centre of attention in sport psychology. The present study examined how migrant athletes construct meanings of a new reality and negotiate their life choices within a matrix of relationships and various cultural narratives of sport, career, and family life. We explore the stories of two transnational athletes in very different settings: a professional athlete moving from Western Africa to Scandinavia, and an amateur elite athlete accompanying his professional migrant partner moving from a Scandinavian country to a cosmopolitan Asian capital. Both athletes participated in in-depth life story interviews spanning three sessions, which enabled them to connect the past, present, and future in subjectively meaningful ways. Athletes' migration narratives were explored through the prism of the relational cultural paradigm, and then analysed with respect to three temporal phases of Cultural Transition Model: pre-transition; acute cultural adaptation; and sociocultural adaptation. For both participants, relational contexts were crucial for the successful navigation of cultural transition and transformation of meaning in sport practices. Both athletes constructed their transitions within transnational space, where cultural adaptation was an open-ended process involving multiple belongings and anticipated future mobilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 15-month ethnography reported here investigated the culturally and contextually relevant lifestyle concerns for which national-level youth cricketers seek support and the personal meanings ascribed to them. Players discussed lifestyle challenges and support, with five themes emerging: (a) players appreciating lifestyle support, (b) adapting to the new environment, (c) managing competing demands, (d) educational choices and professional contracts, and (e) identity negotiation in critical moments. The challenges impacted players' sense of self, well-being, and ultimately performance. The findings suggest lifestyle practitioners should support players through counseling approaches, strong player relationships, and environment immersion with a view to impacting performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Distance running has long been a popular leisure activity in many affluent countries, and it has recently become a fashionable sport in China. However, research into leisure running has mostly been confined to participants in the Global North. The present study explores runners’ stories from Shanghai with a focus on psychological turning points – that is, subjectively important events that may change life trajectories and sense of self – within running careers. Thirty runners (14 women) participated in an interview using a life story approach. Turning point events were coded into six categories: relationship, transition in education/work, commitment, achievement, vulnerability and discovery. Stories were analysed for narrative themes and contexts, specifically in relation to running subculture and discourses surrounding gender and class. The findings highlight the relational achievement of a runner identity within the running subculture, emphasising ‘right’ attitude, persistence, and achievement. Simultaneously, the runner identity emerges as a signifier of a ‘modern’, middle class individual, who pursues self-development and credits oneself for accomplishments. Enthusiasm could, however, lead to injuries that challenged running identities. Runners in Shanghai share much of the narrative landscapes of running culture in the Global North, but also draw upon local narrative resources in runner identity construction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the extensive research into coaches’ roles in supporting athletic development and motivation for sport, few studies have examined coaches’ attitudes and practices towards athletes’ dual careers. The present study extends European research into athletes’ dual careers by examining Finnish ice hockey coaches’ attitudes and practices surrounding players’ education. Ten male coaches aged 27–52 participated in semi-structured interviews. The data were analysed with an existential-narrative theoretical framework and with thematic and structural narrative analysis. Three composite vignettes were created entitled ‘supporting athletic development and players in reaching their own goals’, ‘enjoyment and physically active lifestyle’ and ‘developing good persons’. The analysis revealed that although all coaches embraced the official rhetoric where school is a priority over ice hockey, most of them had few practical examples of how this view had informed their coaching practice. It is concluded that young players may be easily lured into dreams of professionalism, whereas coaches’ dominant narrative of education as a back-up may be ineffective to spark athletes’ interest and engagement with education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study was to examine how amateur, serious distance runners negotiate their running practices upon transnational migration to China. Despite the extensive body of research into expatriate experiences and adaptation, serious leisure as a site where meaning-making occurs has not been studied in existing research. Through interviews with five female and two male expatriates, we studied the ways in which Western runners brought meaning to the transition experience and negotiated meanings and bodily practices associated with running. Through narrative analysis, we identified three core narratives of migration (possibility, necessity and growing up) and two emergent narratives (community and running to feel like oneself) about shifting meaning in running. We conclude with implications for future research in serious leisure and migration studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study is situated within an existential--narrative theoretical framework to examine the impact of career-threatening injury on professional ice hockey players' well-being and career construction. Professional ice hockey culture is construed as a privileged space characterised by hegemonic masculinity, fierce competition as well as high-risk behaviours often resulting in sports injuries. In this paper, we analyse two players' life stories with a particular focus on injury as a boundary situation involving social and temporal breakdown and re-evaluation of meaning of sporting life projects. Emergent narratives surrounding existential themes of loss of meaning and loneliness in the face of injury were analysed in connection with players' search for authenticity and realignment with self-concept. Each player developed resistant narratives to the dominant ethos of professional sport in order to restore well-being and sense of self. The relational aspects of injury are highlighted in practical recommendations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to examine theoretical understandings of athletic career and career termination from an existential-narrative perspective. Our critical analysis suggests that career models and many research texts have an implicit understanding of sport as a profession and propose a normative end to the career when athletes no longer improve their results. Being framed by Western cultural narratives of ageing as decline, the aforementioned career models disregard athletes’ subjective careers and their agency in bringing meaning to experiences of ageing and decline in athletic performance. While the main focus of this paper is on theoretical analysis, some empirical findings from our recent life story research are offered to illustrate alternative narratives that male endurance athletes carve out from their experiences of ageing and performance decline in the Nordic context. We conclude that current theorising of athletic career disregards the subjective career of the athlete and might not reflect careers especially in non-professional and veteran sports. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite being an established approach in the parent discipline of psychology, existential psychology remains largely absent from sport psychology research and applied practice. The aim of this paper is to address this gap and outline an existential psychological approach for sport psychology. In the first part of the article, we present the philosophical underpinnings of existential psychology and situate it within the dominant approaches in sport psychology. In addition, we explore some of the key concepts of existential psychology including meaning, authenticity, anxiety, loneliness, death and boundary situations. In the second part of the article, we draw from literature on existential therapies and the second author's extensive applied work in professional soccer to outline the basic principles of existential counselling. Finally, we consider future directions for research and applied practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this meta-study is to provide a critical synthesis of qualitative research on athletic identity in sport psychology. A total of 108 empirical studies were identified, including 63 quantitative studies, 40 qualitative studies, and five mixed methods studies. Qualitative and mixed methods studies were reviewed with the meta-study method, which involves a meta-analysis in terms of theoretical perspectives, methodologies, and findings. In our discussion we focus on evaluating and critiquing the current status of qualitative research on athletic identity and outlining recommendations for improving methodological rigor. It is concluded that both quantitative and qualitative studies need to be more explicit about their philosophical underpinnings and better grounded in psychological identity theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examined the effects of coaching style, motivation style, and moral disengagement on prosocial and antisocial behavior among Chinese athletes. Participants were 203 athletes (36.9% women; Mage = 19.0, SD = 2.6 years) from the Fujian Provincial Sports Team. Structural equation modeling analysis results revealed that the autonomy-supportive coaching style had an indirect and positive effect on prosocial behavior through the mediation of autonomous motivation. Further, the controlling coaching style had an indirect and positive effect on antisocial behavior through the mediation of controlled motivation and moral disengagement. The findings indicate that as coaching style influences prosocial and antisocial behavior among Chinese athletes, it should be targeted when interventions aimed at reducing their immoral behavior are developed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People's subjective sense of meaning in life is a flourishing research topic in psychology but remains underexplored in sport psychology. This study uses a person-oriented method to shed light on meaning in the lives of elite athletes (i.e., latent profile analysis) to identify distinct profiles of sources of meaning in life, and compare the extent to which these profiles differ in relation to athletic identity, life satisfaction, and self-esteem. A sample of 593 Swiss elite athletes (50.4% women, 49.6% men; M age  = 24.78 years, SD = 4.93) participated in the study. The Meaning and Purpose Scales (MAPS) were used to assess athletes' perceptions of meaningfulness, crisis of meaning, and sources of meaning. Athletes demonstrated higher overall meaningfulness, lower crisis of meaning, and prioritized different sources of meaning compared to the general population. Latent profile analysis revealed three distinct meaning profiles: (1) athletes with multiple meanings (n = 351), (2) athletes with low meaning (n = 126), and (3) faith-based athletes (n = 110). Notably, the athletes in the first and last profile exhibited higher life satisfaction and self-esteem. The identified profiles demonstrate that athletes differ both in the degree and the types of meaning in life. The findings align with studies outside of sport that suggest that meaning in life, in addition to being an end-value in itself, is also related to enhanced life satisfaction and self-esteem. Personalized meaning-focused interventions can be valuable for applied practice with elite athletes., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.)

Athletes' stories about their experiences in elite sport inevitably evoke the notion of meaning, a concept, which has appeared in many shapes and forms within sport psychology. Qualitative scholarship, for example, has generated a large literature base on the meaning of experience (i.e., implicit meaning) in elite sport. However, the experience of meaning(fulness) (i.e., existential meaning) has received less scholarly attention and has rarely been the explicit study object. To assist theorizing and the empirical investigation of meaning and purpose in elite sport in these early stages, we take stock of the emerging body of literature in sport psychology. The article has three parts: Firstly, we distinguish between implicit and existential meaning to delineate our study object. Secondly, we introduce psychological theory to show how existential meaning can be conceptualized (e.g., dimensions, sources, crisis of meaning). Thirdly, we analyzed 23 studies in a narrative review approach to understand how meaning (n = 17) and purpose (n = 6) in elite sport have been understood, and what we know about these concepts empirically. The current scholarship revealed itself heterogenous in terms of study designs, methodologies, theoretical frameworks, and conceptualizations of meaning and purpose. Findings are discussed in eight overarching themes (e.g., moments when meaning and purpose are questioned; as mechanism and indicator of growth following adversity) to map the reviewed literature comprehensibly and to provide a foundation for applied work. The article concludes by highlighting unresolved issues and proposing future directions for studying and applying existential meaning in elite sport., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.)