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Background: The Mass Participation Sporting Events (MPSE) have multiplied throughout the 20th century, consolidating themselves as an important socio-cultural phenomenon in the contemporary society. In this sense, the gymnastics festivals have been an integral part of the gymnastics community since the last two decades of the 19th century and even currently represent a prominent venue for promoting sports participation. Purpose: This study analyses participants' motivation to join the XVI World Gymnaestrada (WG) held in Dornbirn (Austria) in 2019, one of the most important international non-competitive gymnastics festivals. Materials and methods: Using a quantitative approach, the Goal Content for Exercise Questionnaire (GCEQ) was applied to 1024 participants (813 females and 211 males), aged 18 to 85 years, and statistically analysed using a multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA). Gender, age group, and amount of WG participation were treated as between-subject factors, while the GCEQ factors (Social Affiliation, Image, Health Management, Social Recognition, and Skill Development) were used as dependent variables. Results: Social Affiliation is the most important motivational factor, followed by Skill Development and Health Management. Motivational factors varied according to the age group and the number of participations in the WG. Conclusions: The most relevant motivational factors for participating in this event are intrinsic factors, which corroborates WG's non-competitive nature and reveals different interests to join this gymnastics festival. In addition, more frequent WG participation increases the importance of Social Affiliation. These data reveal the importance of non-competitive sporting events and long-term participation, especially for fostering social relationships between participants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A team's cognitions of interpersonally coordinated actions are a crucial component for successful team performance. Here, we present an approach to practice team action by way of imagery and examine its impact on team cognitions in long-term memory. We investigated the impact of a 4-week team action imagery intervention on futsal players' mental representations of team-level tactics. Skilled futsal players were assigned to either an imagery training group or a no imagery training control group. Participants in the imagery training group practiced four team-level tactics by imagining team actions in specific game situations for three times a week. Results revealed that the imagery training group's representations were more similar to that of an expert representation after the intervention compared with the control group. This study indicates that team action imagery training can have a significant impact on players' tactical skill representations and thus order formation in long-term memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An observer's perception of motion aesthetics strongly relies on the interplay between aspects of the motion stimuli, the sensory and motor expertise of the observer, and the context in which the stimuli are perceived. However, whether a fit in observers' and performers' sensory and motor expertise can boost aesthetic motion perception when observing complex motor skills, is still to be investigated. Thus, it was hypothesized that a fit between observers' and performers' sensory and motor expertise could boost aesthetic motion perception of complex motor skills. Expert and intermediate freerunners performed three different freerunning skills. Observers with varying levels of expertise were asked to indicate their perception of motion aesthetics when observing video sequences of expert and intermediate freerunning skill performances. Results indicate that a fit between observers' and performers' sensory and motor expertise levels does not boost aesthetic motion perception. In contrast, motor skill performances of expert freerunners are perceived as more aesthetically than intermediate freerunning performances from all three observer groups: expert freerunning observers, intermediate freerunning observers, and laypeople. Instead of a fit between the performer's and the observer's sensory and motor expertise, it is argued that object-driven parameters of a complex motor skill performance seem to be related to a rather universal embodied aesthetic motion perception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sport participation might have very different goals, especially for non-competitive events. This study analyses the motivation of participants to join in the XV World Gymnaestrada in Helsinki in 2015, which is considered one of the largest international non-competitive gymnastics festival worldwide. Methods: The Goal Content for Exercise Questionnaire (GCEQ) was applied to 86 adults (56 female/30 male) and analyzed statistically. In addition, 24 short interviews were conducted and the data were analyzed by a Content Analysis. Results: "Social Affiliation" and "Skill Development" seem to be the principal motivations. Both are more important for women than for men. "Social Recognition" was also of particular relevance for the participants. Finally, the number of WG participations shows the same tendency in motivation for beginners and very experienced participants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most research concerning the kinematic analysis of gymnastics skills only deals with selected variables, thereby often ignoring the holistic nature of the analyzed skills. Therefore, the goal of this study was to develop an innovative approach to analyze the front handspring on vault. To gain comprehensive insight into the aforementioned motor skill, different skill prototypes should be detected and their variant and invariant characteristics should be investigated. The digitized video sequences of 60 handspring trials from ten female gymnasts were used for kinematic analysis. Time courses of six joints were analyzed by means of a hierarchical cluster analysis. In addition, the coefficients of variation were calculated. Results revealed that four distinct prototypical movement patterns could be identified for the handspring on vault in female nearexpert gymnasts. The movement patterns within each prototype are thereby more similar to each other than the movement patterns between the four prototypes. The four different prototypes can be distinguished by certain variant and invariant characteristics, that become obvious when inspecting the time courses of the hip and shoulder angles, as well as the time course of the coefficient of variation. In light of the training process in gymnastics, the study provides further evidence for strongly considering gymnasts' individual movement patterns when it comes to motor skill acquisition and optimization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Problem Statement - In physical education, teachers use instructions to support the learning of motor skills (Wulf, Höß, & Prinz, 1998). Expertise in performing motor skills is characterized by forming and adapting relevant mental representations that are stored hierarchically structured in long-term memory (Land, Volchenkov, Bläsing, & Schack, 2013; Schack & Mechsner, 2006). Scientific findings reveal differences between experts' and novices' mental representation structures in the comparison of different skill levels (Bläsing, Tenenbaum, & Schack, 2009), as a consequence a close relationship between mental representation structure and skill performance is presumed, and a development of mental representation structures over the course of learning could be highlighted (Frank, Land, & Schack, 2016). Purpose- Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the differences in the effects of two types of instructions (specific vs. general) on pupils' development of mental representation structures and their performance of a cartwheel. Approach- Sixteen pupils were assigned to one of two conditions: specific or general instructions on the performance of a gymnastics skill (cartwheel). Participants in the intervention group received specific instructions, based on their mental representation structure of the cartwheel, whereas participants in the control group received general instructions. Results- Results revealed that specific instructions based on pupils' mental representation of a gymnastics skill have a positive impact on their mental representation structure as well as on their motor performance. Conclusions- It can be concluded that the knowledge about learners' structure of mental representations could constitute an effective means of developing specific instructions for enhancing motor performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]