This book reports on cutting-edge digital technologies and their applications in physical activity and sport. Gathering selected chapters from the 1st International Conference on Technology in Physical Activity and Sport, held virtually on November 24-27, 2020, from Seville, Spain, it offers a practice-oriented and evidence-based perspective on how technologies can be used for evaluation and control of different parameter relating to sport, physical activity, and health. It covers how digital technologies can be applied for training and monitoring purposes, and for improving athlete’s performance, how they influence sport habits in different populations, demonstrating their growing influence in sport businesses (such as fitness centers) and management, and provides new findings on the connection between physical activity and human health, suggesting some interesting directions for future studies. With a good balance of laboratory research and information relevant for professional trainers, this book will provide bioengineers, sport scientists, and physiotherapists with timely information and a multidisciplinary perspective on the use of digital technologies to improve fitness, wellbeing and health in different population groups.

Perspectives in Physical Education presents a summary of some of the important forces influencing the development of graduate study and research at universities; the origins of professional training for teachers of physical education; and the origins of a scientific or quasi-academic discipline of physical education. The book then discusses the first graduate study programs in physical education and the developments in graduate education. The dimensions of a profession; the research productivity in physical education; and the research laboratory in physical education are also considered. The book further tackles the scientific method in perspective; the unscientific problems in the development of a scientific model; and the establishment of priorities in research. People who teach and those who take courses in research methods, scientific foundations, seminars dealing with professional problems and curriculum issues, or independent research will find the text useful.

Physical inactivity is a key determinant of health across the lifespan. A lack of activity increases the risk of heart disease, colon and breast cancer, diabetes mellitus, hypertension, osteoporosis, anxiety and depression and others diseases. Emerging literature has suggested that in terms of mortality, the global population health burden of physical inactivity approaches that of cigarette smoking. The prevalence and substantial disease risk associated with physical inactivity has been described as a pandemic. The prevalence, health impact, and evidence of changeability all have resulted in calls for action to increase physical activity across the lifespan. In response to the need to find ways to make physical activity a health priority for youth, the Institute of Medicine's Committee on Physical Activity and Physical Education in the School Environment was formed. Its purpose was to review the current status of physical activity and physical education in the school environment, including before, during, and after school, and examine the influences of physical activity and physical education on the short and long term physical, cognitive and brain, and psychosocial health and development of children and adolescents. Educating the Student Body makes recommendations about approaches for strengthening and improving programs and policies for physical activity and physical education in the school environment. This report lays out a set of guiding principles to guide its work on these tasks. These included: recognizing the benefits of instilling life-long physical activity habits in children; the value of using systems thinking in improving physical activity and physical education in the school environment; the recognition of current disparities in opportunities and the need to achieve equity in physical activity and physical education; the importance of considering all types of school environments; the need to take into consideration the diversity of students as recommendations are developed. This report will be of interest to local and national policymakers, school officials, teachers, and the education community, researchers, professional organizations, and parents interested in physical activity, physical education, and health for school-aged children and adolescents.

The development of both elite, high performance sport and mass participation, grassroots-level sport are central concerns for governments and sports governing bodies. This important new study is the first to closely examine the challenges and opportunities for sports development in the United States, a global sporting giant with a unique, market-driven sporting landscape. Presenting an innovative model of integrated sports development, the book explores the inter-relationship between elite and mass sport across history, drawing on comparative international examples from Australia to the former USSR and Eastern bloc countries. At the heart of the book is an in-depth empirical study of three (traditional and emerging) sports in the US – tennis, soccer and rugby – that offer important lessons on the development of elite sport, methods for increasing participation, and the establishment of new sports in new markets. No other book has attempted to model sports development in the United States in such depth before. Therefore this should be essential reading for all students, researchers, administrators or policy-makers with an interest in sports development, sports management, sports policy, or comparative, international sport studies.

This book presents the proceedings of the 9th Asian South Pacific Association of Sport Psychology International Congress (ASPASP) 2022, Kuching, Malaysia, which entails the different sporting innovation themes, namely, Applied Sport and Social Psychology, Health and Exercise, Motor Control and Learning, Counselling and Clinical Psychology, Biomechanics, Data Mining and Machine Learning in Sports amongst others. It presents the state-of-the-art technological advancements towards the aforesaid themes and provides a platform to shape the future direction of sport science, specifically in the field sports and exercise psychology. ​

Regular physical activity is proven to help prevent and treat noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) such as heart disease stroke diabetes and breast and colon cancer. It also helps to prevent hypertension overweight and obesity and can improve mental health quality of life and well-being. In addition to the multiple health benefits of physical activity societies that are more active can generate additional returns on investment including a reduced use of fossil fuels cleaner air and less congested safer roads. These outcomes are interconnected with achieving the shared goals political priorities and ambition of the Sustainable Development Agenda 2030. The new WHO global action plan to promote physical activity responds to the requests by countries for updated guidance and a framework of effective and feasible policy actions to increase physical activity at all levels. It also responds to requests for global leadership and stronger regional and national coordination and the need for a whole-of-society response to achieve a paradigm shift in both supporting and valuing all people being regularly active according to ability and across the life course. The action plan was developed through a worldwide consultation process involving governments and key stakeholders across multiple sectors including health sports transport urban design civil society academia and the private sector.

Continuous professional development is of great importance if one is to develop quality professional work. This book contains some of the latest research advances related to the field of Physical Education and Sports. In today's globalized world, continuous and permanent education is necessary and essential to complement the initial training and previous experience. In this book, you can find a wide range of works focused on innovative teaching methodologies and psychological variables to take into account to improve classes and training. These studies on the most forward-looking technological advances in physical activity and sports are useful for those who seek to be up-to-date on this type of research. In addition, these studies will be useful to consult regarding current lifestyle, the creation of healthy habits, the promotion of physical activity in one’s free time, and the importance of leading an active life.

Addressing the worldwide crisis of inadequate physical education (PE) programs requires immediate attention. Despite the advocacy of international organizations like UNESCO and WHO, there still needs to be a significant gap in understanding the effectiveness of PE initiatives globally. Cultural, socio-economic, and policy differences further complicate evaluating and improving these programs. More comprehensive research is needed to promote academic achievement, well-being, and overall health. This is where Global Innovations in Physical Education and Health comes in, a groundbreaking solution poised to revolutionize PE on a global scale. This innovative book serves as a beacon of hope by exploring diverse teaching strategies and creative methods worldwide. Bridging critical research gaps empowers policymakers, educators, researchers, administrators, and health professionals with actionable insights to enhance the quality and inclusivity of PE programs. With its comprehensive coverage of topics such as adaptive PE, nutritional education, and global health initiatives, this book provides a roadmap for transforming PE into a catalyst for holistic health and lifelong well-being.

2020 Choice​ Outstanding Academic Title The moving body—pervasively occupied by fitness activities, intense training and dieting regimes, recreational practices, and high-profile sporting mega-events—holds a vital function in contemporary society. As the body moves—as it performs, sweats, runs, and jumps—it sets in motion an intricate web of scientific rationalities, spatial arrangements, corporate imperatives, and identity politics (i.e. politics of gender, race, social class, etc.). It represents vitality in its productive and physiological capacities, it drives a complex economy of experiences and products, and it is a meaningful site of cultural identities and politics. Contributors to Sport, Physical Culture, and the Moving Body work from a simple premise: as it moves, the material body matters. Adding to the burgeoning fields of sport studies and body studies, the works featured here draw upon the traditions of feminist theory, posthumanism, actor network theory, and new materialism to reposition the physical, moving body as crucial to the cultural, political, environmental, and economic systems that it constitutes and within which is constituted. Once assembled, the book presents a study of bodies in motion—made to move in contexts where technique, performance, speed, strength, and vitality not only define the conduct therein, but provide the very reason for the body’s being within those economies and environments. In so doing, the contributors look to how the body moving for and about rational systems of science, medicine, markets, and geopolity shapes the social and material world in important and unexpected ways. In Sport, Physical Culture, and the Moving Body, contributors explore the extent to which the body, when moving about both ostensibly active body spaces (i.e., the gymnasium, the ball field, exercise laboratory, the track or running trail, the beach, or the sport stadium) and those places less often connected to physical activity (i.e. the home, the street, the classroom, the automobile), is bounded to technologies of life and living; and to the political arrangements that seek to capitalize upon such frames of biological vitality. To do so, the authors problematize the rise of active body science (i.e. kinesiology, sport and exercise sciences, performance biotechnology) and the effects these scientific interventions have on embodied, lived experience. Contributors to Sport, Physical Culture, and the Moving Body will be engaging a range of new and emerging theoretical perspectives, including new materialist, political ecology, developmental systems theory, and new material feminist approaches, to examine the actors and assemblages of movement-based material, political, and economic production. In so doing, contributors will vividly and powerfully illustrate the extent to which a focus on the fleshed body and its material conditions can bring forth new insights or ontological and epistemological innovation to the sociology of sport and physical activity. They will also explore the agency of the body as and amongst things. Such a performative materialist approach explicates how complex assemblages of sport and physical activity—bringing into association everything from muscle fibers and dietary proteins to stadium concrete or regional aquifers—are not only meaningful, but ecological. By focusing on the confluence of agentive materialities, disciplinary technologies, vibrant assemblages, speculative realities, and vital performativities, Sport, Physical Culture, and the Moving Body promises to offer a groundbreaking departure from representationalist tendencies and orthodoxies brought about by the cultural turn in sport and physical cultural studies. It brings the moving body and its physics back into focus: recentering moving flesh and bones as locus of social order, environmental change, and the global political economy.

Today's society demands to train children and adolescents who develop in an environment based on respect and the promotion of educational values. This aspect is especially relevant to promoting physical activity and its relationship with healthy habits, such as the consumption of unprocessed foods, the reduction of a sedentary lifestyle and the improvement of adherence to sports. In this sense, the World Health Organization warns that the current rates of overweight and obesity are very high and that we must combat them. From formal education, you can help improve healthy habits with educational programs and especially in Physical Education, a subject where the work of physical, social and cognitive well-being has special relevance. Since the 20th century, studies and research that have aimed to combat unhealthy habits in educational centres and sports schools have increased. Not only by promoting physical activity within the school, but above all by seeking to generate adherence towards the future of students and athletes.