Coaching life skills to young athletes in sport participation contexts

Abstract

This chapter is dedicated to analyze sports participation as an alternative to traditional sports for young athletes. Sports participation is directed for individuals interested in benefiting from formal training that stimulates the pleasure and challenges of sports, stimulates learning and developing of life/sports skills, stimulates the benefits of being physically active, and that are not necessary interested in sports for competition purpose. Despite the interest of generalizing sports activity, there are few findings about the relevance of developing sports participation training programs as an alternative of organized sports for youth and recreational sports for adults. In this chapter, we propose the organization of sports participation programs by considering the framework of life skills as a possibility to set the purpose and activities of participation sports. In order to fulfill this goal, we must first present the definition of sports participation, then we will discuss the relation between sports and life skills. Finally, we present a theoretical proposal of life skills applied to sports participation, presenting as framework the example of youth sports. We finish the chapter by reflecting on conditions that can stimulate social recognition of sport programs as a useful proposal to youth athletes.