EDGE – European Anti-Doping Generation Project No

EDGE – European Anti-doping Generation Project No. 579899 – EPP – 1 – 2016 – 1 – IT – SPO - SSCP

INDEX

ABSTRACT ...... 2

INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND ...... 3

S.P.E.E.R – SPORT IN PEERS ...... 4

“FAILING FORWARD – TRAINING COURSE FOR SPORT INSTRUCTORS” ...... 6

CONCLUSION AND RECCOMENDATIONS ...... 8

"The European Commission support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents which reflects the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein." 1

ABSTRACT

EDGE – standing for European Anti-Doping Generation – aims to promote a sport culture based on fair play and ethical behaviors. As a consequence, it also aims at discouraging any degenerative form of sport that can put young athletes at risk.

The project involves organizations coming from the following countries: Italy (Co.ge.s); Latvia (Sport State Medicine Centre); Bulgaria (Bulgarian Sports Development Association) and Austria (ASKO). These partners will work with a group of 20 young athletes (15-19 years old) and 20 coaches in each country.

The project aimed wants to bring novelty to the antidoping approach, working on values based education rather than prohibition, using peer education methods that promoting sport competence over sports performance.

E.D.GE. seeked to fulfill this idea by reaching the following objectives:

 promoting a sport culture against degenerative forms of sport – particularly, doping among young athletes  encouraging ethical behaviors in sport  encouraging young athletes to embrace sport values  involving 80 young athletes in a training path that will help them taking responsible sport choices  creating an education path for 80 coaches so that they could promote ethical behaviours in sport among their trainees

To achieve these objectives every partner will do activities at both a national and international level. National activities will involve workshops with athletes and coaches and each country will carry out these activities autonomously. International activities, instead, will involve all those activities carried out together with the other organizations, such as the booklet and the Manifesto against drug-use.

INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND

Doping has recently become a rampant phenomenon, more and more warring even at a social level. In fact, it is no more just a fact about professional athletes but it expanded and now involves even the youngest inside the sport population.

More and more minors become doping victims. The age range at risk has gradually dropped to affect children and teenagers from 8 to 17 years old. Doping among youngsters is a problem that the whole society faces in that it implies important moral implications.

At an individual level, among the causes pushing young athletes to use doping substances the fear of failure certainly plays an important role. Therefore, these young men and women feel forced to achieve success in sport at any cost. The search for psychophysical perfection also has a role. At a social level, on the other hand, we should consider the pressure coming from training companions and other people inside the sport or family environment.

In order to fight the doping phenomenon it is important to focus more on education and prevention, rather than prohibition and repression. At an individual level, prevention could be done by helping young athletes to develop and strengthen those transversal skills that inhibit the main causes for the spread of doping. For instance, stimulating these young men and women's self-esteem and their acceptance of the limits is a key against the fear of failure. At a social level, prevention could be done by suggesting positive and realistic reference models promoting a culture focused on health more than performance.

S.P.E.E.R – SPORT IN PEERS

This part of the project was the one dedicated to the young athletes. It mainly focused on stress- management and the main goal was to increase the level of responsibility of young athletes by increasing their psychological readiness when facing the difficulties in sports. To achieve this goal, eight meetings were held. The meetings were divided into two parts:

 First part - the young athletes involved taught each other their own sports. Every meeting dealt with a different sport. After the activity they were asked to discuss about it. The discussions started from their feedback, focused on the sensations and emotions felt during their activities. They mentioned frustration due to lack of knowledge of the sport and feeling less competent than others, yet they mentioned also very much positive emotions like excitement, willing to know and experience, joy. The discussions also provided the room to talk more about the emotion spectrum and mindfulness or getting aware of the emotions. If the activities were games, for the subjects involved it was anyway sometimes difficult to reach the goals set by peers at first. In addition, the athletes reported that it was very interesting for them to become the "trainer" of their sport, which allowed them to recalibrate their vision of their sport to make it more enjoyable to others. The activities could start starting fromwith an ice-breaker.

 Second part: some transversal skills particularly useful in sport were explored and developed/strengthened. As for the choice of the skills to be dealing with, it derived from the feedback received from the guys during the previous part, that is from their needs. Some of the skills explored were: self-awareness, team-awareness, stress-management, concentration and nutrition. As for team-awareness, for example, the guys worked on trust games.

The meetings were held by professional trainers or athletes or psychologists. They used different methods to work with the guys, for example:

 Roleplay to identify themselves in a team's roles: the problem situations in role plays tackled acute sport injury, elevated anger level when facing the inadequate decision from the referee, a misunderstanding between the athlete and his coach, the ethical decision making regarding the prohibited substance use.  A treasure hunt with quizzes.  Guesswork to deepen teamwork.  The sensory exercises have been made to increase the awareness of one's physique, followed by short meditations to bring the mind closer to the body.

 Exercises to work on self-esteem: working with peer report, sharing experiences, playing the game where each of the participants has to listen to positive rumors of himself provided by the others.  Among the various methods employed, it was considered useful to use a Focus Group with the support of a professional athlete who has brought his life experience focusing on the difficulty rather than on the achievements, to make the young athletes understand how their way of seeing a problem can change the solution and how managing some defeats can also lead to future victories.  Relaxation techniques such as autogenic training, breathing techniques, muscle relaxation, visualisation and mindfulness have been taught to educate the ability to calm down and focus on a goal.  In order to promote knowledge of doping’s dangers, a meeting where, through a game, the athletes gave their information about the substances, to foster the knowledge of the subject at all through peer comparison. It has been chosen to avoid the frontal teaching mode that could have affected a child's active participation mode.  During the meetings also the topics of nutrition and trauma were considered important. The participants learned how to care what they eat, and they understood how nutrition could be a tool to optimize training and performance as well. They also were introduced with the psychological aspects of eating disorders and disturbed eating habits in sport, different addictions as well as psychological reasoning for sports injury trauma and rehabilitation.

At the end of each meeting, there was always a moment of reflection on the overall experience of the day to summarize the content that emerged and to collect feedback about the likes of the activity by trainers and athletes.

“FAILING FORWARD TRAINING COURSE FOR SPORT INSTRUCTORS”

This part of the project was the one dedicated to the trainers. It focused on stress-management and frustration-management and also on how to turn mistakes into stepping stones for success. The objective was to get to know more about the multiform influence of psychological factors on the trainings and competitions. The activities focused on the skills of managing the frustrations of young athletes and the translation of mistakes into success stories, both of their own and young athletes. To achieve this goal the four meetings were organized.

During the meetings the sport instructors, supported by an expert, were guided through the psychological preparation issues. They tackled, discussed and learnt more about different psychological factors which play a serious role in achieving one’s goals in sport, like the attitude of the athlete to the sport and trainings, communication skills, motivation, consistency of these goals, what causes the anxiety before the competition. The personality traits of athletes were discussed and defined to be able to predict the behaviour of the athlete.

The coaches learnt techniques such as guided imagery, self-talk, autogenic training, breathing techniques, muscle relaxation, water drinking techniques, visualisation to be able to use and teach their athletes on these techniques afterwards.

 First meeting - participants were divided into small groups and, through Cooperative Learning, produced a brainstorming about the difficulties arising from being a trainer for youngsters. The different issues raised were discussed together and finally the trainers tried to find a possible solution to them. Trainers found this particularly useful in that it allowed them to work on other trainers' difficult situations, listen to different view points on them and then view back to their own experiences, considering them in a more objective way.

 Second meeting - by using a more classic approach, participants were asked to watch some advertisements about sport and then use the ideas emerged as a starting point to discuss about sport figures and the role of trainers.

 Third & fourth meeting - through a Focus Group, the trainers discussed about how to support young athletes during their sport and personal growth path. The focus during these last two meetings was the management of failure and the frustration deriving from it, nutrition, trauma, team building, turning mistakes into stepping stories for success.

Overall the instructors admitted that it was very useful to discuss the other's situations and experiences, giving different views and listening to those of other coaches, then view back to their own experience following the toughts in the previous speech. It is therefore useful to have the ability to momentarily break away from their experience to be able to analyse the events objectively, far from the emotionality transmitted by their students, to provide the rookie with the best support possible. They also mentioned that the theoretical background of sports psychology is very useful and necessary.

CONCLUSION AND RECCOMENDATIONS

We believe that the best way to reduce the phenomenon of Doping, especially among young athletes, is preventing the use of such substances by inhibiting the emergence of a desire for fruition, or by giving youngsters such resources that allow them to meet their needs without taking substances.

In order to achieve this goal, it is important to provide athletes with a network of services that can, in need, refer them to professionals able to support them during their sport journey.

It is also very important to give instructors such tools to develop athletes' cross-skills, such as self- awareness, team-awareness, stress-management and the ability to cope with failure and learn from it. This would make trainers real trainers, able to reinforce their trainees' resilience and thus reducing the risk they resorted to doping.

This project, along with services in the area, is a good tool to start working on this topic, although it is necessary that the infrastructures give their contribution to train both instructors and athletes.

 “The important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win, but to take part; the important thing in life is not triumph, but the struggle; the essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well. To spread these principles is to build up a strong and more valiant and, above all, more scrupulous and more generous humanity” (Pierre de Coubertin) - Bulgarian Manifesto

 "The only person who should be happy about your results is YOU!" - Latvian Manifesto

 "To find a way out of failures you first have to look at the good points. Then you just need to stay focused, always focused. Fight!" (Lara Gut) - Austrian Manifesto

 "Accepting failure and learning from it is a way to succeed" - Italian Manifesto

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