Browsing by Subject "telinevoimistelu"

Artistic gymnastics is a demanding skill based sport in which intensive training must be started at a very young age. Multiple skills are required in artistic gymnastics and these skills are practiced from an early childhood on. During one's career, a competitive gymnast goes through the so-called athlete's path from childhood to decision phase and, finally, to top phase. During this period a gymnast has to make a decision whether to concentrate on gymnastics or to focus on one's studies and choose to enjoy sports in a different way. Particularly a lack of time might be a big stress factor if no special arrangements are made by the school for a flexible combination of school and sport. The aim of the present study is to describe what kind of support young gymnasts receive in order to combine school and sport. In addition, this study tries to investigate which factors lie behind creating steady and pleasant weekday routines for young gymnasts. The data of this MA thesis consists of interviews of eight young gymnasts attending lower secondary schools. All of the participants are of different ages, attend different kinds of schools, and come different parts of Finland. The data was analyzed using qualitative content analysis. The data was analyzed and categorized according to the different school types the gymnasts attend. All of the interviewed gymnasts feel that the support they are getting at the time of the interview is sufficient for combining school and sport. Different forms of support are including the morning practices in the school timetable, getting transportation from morning practice to school and a possibility to enjoy an affordable breakfast at the school, teachers accepting missing classes for sport and remedial education if needed in difficult subjects. In order to develop combining school and sport, the gymnasts suggest educating teachers about the demands of top sport, school classes specialized for gymnasts and replacing some subjects with sport. The results show that the most important supporters are parents, friends, and the coaches. Friends from the same team seem to be meaningful. Parents' investment of both money and time helped to manage the weekday routines.