Feletti - Extreme Sports Medicine

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Over the past 40 years, the popularity of extreme sports has grown exponentially. This phenomenon coincided with a significant shift in sport and leisure participation choices; participation rates in extreme or adventure sports far outstripped the growth rates of many traditional sporting activities in recent decades [], this phenomenon should not be considered a flash in the pan, but rather a significant shift in participation choices resulting from peoples search for enhanced meaning in their lives through novel outlets. From this perspective, extreme sports provide an antidote to manicured existences constrained by artificial regulations that serve disconnect people from their human potential.

Academic literature remains fragmented regarding the psychological experience(s) of extreme sport participants. This is due in part to a lack of common terminology and operational definitions. Whilst the term extreme sport is well known, there is still confusion about what constitutes an extreme sport. For example, terms such as whiz sports, free sports, adventure sports, lifestyle sports, alternative sports, action sports and aggro sports are often used interchangeably with extreme sports to describe the same type of activity. At times the term extreme sport has been used to refer to nontraditional competitive youth sports, such as skateboarding and BMX. At other times it has been used to refer to activities requiring little skill or expert knowledge, such as commercial rafting and bungee jumping. In some contexts, the term extreme sport is a synonym for a variety of adventure experiences such as mountaineering, climbing, skiing and kayaking. Moreover, there is debate concerning whether extreme sports are necessarily solo activities or if they can include team-oriented pursuits such as paintball and white-water rafting.

The ramifications of this conceptual cross-pollination include the development of imprecise definitions, models and theories that do not fully reflect the lived experience of diverse participants. For example, researchers might extrapolate results from a study on bungee jumping to explain the psychological nature of those who participate in BASE (buildings, antennae, space, earth) jumping, thus assuming that BASE jumping and bungee jumping fall at different places along the same continuum. Similarly, a study of young skydivers that identifies thrill seeking as a primary motivation might incorrectly extrapolate that all skydivers participate to experience thrills.

In this chapter, we define extreme sports as independent adventure activities where a mismanaged mistake or accident is most likely to result in death [].

Until recently, prevailing assumptions presented by researchers and theorists presupposed that people undertaking extreme sports were abnormal individuals that had a death wish, were motivated strictly by the desire for thrills and risk-taking and/or were wired differently to the general population. Participants were generally portrayed as selfish young adults, generally males, fascinated with the individuality, risk and danger of [extreme] sports []. These assumptions have even led some theorists to assume that extreme sport participation is akin to drug addiction or other socially deviant behaviour.

The increase and differentiation in extreme sport participation also gave rise to psychological theories and models seeking to explain these seemingly paradoxical pursuits. Some of the dominant theories that are still used to address extreme sport motivations include sensation seeking []. The following sections briefly outline and critique these theoretical assumptions.