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Adherence to an injury prevention program in male amateur football players is affected by players’ age, experience and perceptions

Objectives Adherence to injury prevention programmes in football remains low, which is thought to drastically reduce the effects of injury prevention programmes. Reasons why (medical) staff and players implement injury prevention programmes, have been investigated, but player’s characteristics and perceptions about these programmes might influence their adherence. Therefore, this study investigated the relationships between player’s characteristics and adherence and between player’s perceptions and adherence following an implemented injury prevention programme. Methods Data from 98 of 221 football players from the intervention group of a cluster randomised controlled trial concerning hamstring injury prevention were analysed. Results Adherence was better among older and more experienced football players, and players considered the programme more useful, less intense, more functional and less time-consuming. Previous hamstring injuries, educational level, the programme’s difficulty and intention to continue the exercises were not significantly associated with adherence. Conclusion These player’s characteristics and perceptions should be considered when implementing injury prevention programmes.

Leading collaborative innovation in schools

Educational innovations often tend to fail, mainly because teachers and school principals do not feel involved or are not allowed to have a say. Angela de Jong's dissertation shows the importance of school principals and teachers leading 'collaborative innovation' together. Collaborative innovation requires a collaborative, distributed approach involving both horizontal and vertical working relationships in a school. Her research shows that teams with more distributed leadership have a more collaborative 'spirit' to improve education. Team members move beyond formal (leadership) roles, and work more collectively on school-wide educational improvement from intrinsic motivation. De Jong further shows that school principals seek a balance in steering and providing space. She distinguished three leadership patterns: Team Player, Key Player, Facilitator. Team players in particular are important for more collaborative innovation in a school. They balance between providing professional space to teachers (who look beyond their own classroom) and steering for strategy, frameworks, boundaries, and vision. This research took place in schools working with the program of Foundation leerKRACHT, a program implemented by more than a thousand schools (primary, secondary, and vocational education). The study recommends, towards school principals and teachers, and also towards trainers, policymakers, and school board members, to reflect more explicitly on their roles in collaborative innovation and talk about those roles.

The coach and the professional soccer player

To prevent the social worker being jammed between the economic and rationalized logic of managers and politicians on the one hand, and the life world of the people on the other, he needs to develop a healthy identity. The social constructive view can help to overcome the identity crisis the social professional is in. It offers a model to analyze the conflict a social professional has to deal with, and forces the social worker to make a clear and moral choice for the life world of his clients. This view seems also suitable to develop an indigenous body of practice theory for social work. The presence theory, the family group work and constructive social work demonstrates the possibilities. To regain confidence from both the people and the politicians, the rationalized system of planning and control has to be replaced by the trust model. To develop this model we have to find ways to justify the money used in this sector.

Het ontwerp van gezondheidsgamebeloningen voor preadolescenten

The design of health game rewards for preadolescents Videogames are a promising strategy for child health interventions, but their impact can vary depending on the game mechanics used. This study investigated achievement-based ‘rewards’ and their design among preadolescents (8-12 years) to assess their effect and explain how they work. In a 2 (game reward achievement system: social vs. personal) x 2 (game reward context: in-game vs. out-game) between-subjects design, 178 children were randomly assigned to one of four conditions. Findings indicated that a ‘personal’ achievement system (showing one’s own high scores) led to more attention and less frustration than a ‘social’ achievement system (showing also high scores of others) which, in turn, increased children’s motivation to make healthy food choices. Furthermore, ‘out’-game rewards (tangible stickers allocated outside the game environment) were liked more than ‘in’-game rewards (virtual stickers allocated in the game environment), leading to greater satisfaction and, in turn, a higher motivation to make healthy food choices.

Motivation Unraveled

Benjaminse, A, Nijmeijer, EM, Gokeler, A, Broekhaar, DC, and Cortes, N. Motivation unraveled: giving choice to football players to improve anterior cruciate ligament injury prevention. J Strength Cond Res 38(12): e735–e743, 2024—Providing athletes some control over a training session facilitates motor skill acquisition. This is a promising concept to use in anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury prevention, as the key for risk reduction is to improve quality of movement. The goal of this study was to better understand why improved motor learning occurred when football players had the opportunity to choose when to receive feedback when practicing sidestep cutting (SSC) movements. Healthy male recreational football players (n 5 22, 22.9 6 1.7 years, 185.5 6 7.2 cm, 79.3 6 9.2 kg) were included and assigned to the self-control (SC) or the yoked (YK) group. The players performed anticipated and unanticipated SSC. They received video instructions and were instructed to “copy the movement of the model to the best of their ability.” During the training blocks, the SC group could ask for feedback, whereas the YK group could not. Cutting movement assessment scores (CMAS) were measured to test quality of movement and the Intrinsic Motivation Inventory was administered to measure constructs of motivation. In the anticipated condition, SC group showed better scores in immediate post and the retention test compared with pretest (p, 0.001), whereas the YK group showed worse scores in the retention test compared with immediate posttest (p 5 0.001). Perceived competence (p 5 0.017) and self-efficacy (p 5 0.032) were consistent factors that correlated with improved CMAS in the SC group. This has given us innovative insights into underlying mechanisms optimizing the quality of movement, necessary to improve current ACL injury prevention approaches.

From images to stories: exploring player-driven narratives in games.