As sports have become more competitive over recent years researchers and trainers have been searching for new and innovative ways of improving performance. Ironically, an area as mundane as what an athlete eats can have profound effects on fitness, health and ultimately, performance in competition. Sports have also gained widespread acceptance in the therapeutic management of athletes with disorders associated with nutritional status. In addition, exercise has been one of the tools used for studying the control of metabolism, creating a wealth of scientific information that needs to be placed in the context of sports medicine and science. Nutrition in Sport provides an exhaustive review of the biochemistry and physiology of eating. The text is divided into three sections and commences with a discussion of the essential elements of diet, including sections on carbohydrates, proteins, fats, vitamins and trace elements, and drugs associated with nutrition. It also discusses athletes requiring special consideration, including vegetarians and diabetics. The second section considers the practical aspects of sports nutrition and discusses weight control (essential for sports with weight categories and athletes with eating disorders), the travelling athlete (where travel either disrupts established feeding patterns or introduces new hazards), environmental aspects of nutrition (including altitude and heat), and the role of sports nutritional products.
Short-listed for the North American Society for Sport History Book Award 2003. Alcohol is never far from sporting events. Although popular thinking on the effects of drinking has changed considerably over time, throughout history sport and alcohol have been intimately linked. The Victorians, for example, believed that beer helped to build stamina, whereas today any serious athlete must abstain from the demon drink. Yet despite current prohibitions and the widespread acceptance of alcohols deleterious effects, the uneasy alliance of sport with alcohol remains culturally entrenched. It is common for sporting celebrities to struggle with alcoholism, and teams are often encouraged to bond by drinking together. Indeed, many of todays major sporting sponsors are breweries and manufacturers of alcoholic drinks. From hooliganism to commerce, from advertising and sponsorship to health and fitness, if there is one thing that brings athletes, fans and financial backers together it must be beer. This cultural history of drinking and sport examines the roles masculinity, class and regional identity play in alcohol consumption at a broad range of matches, races, courses and competitions. Offering a fresh perspective on the culture and commerce of sporting events, this book will be essential reading for cultural historians, anthropologists and sociologists, and anyone interested in sport.
This volume is a collection of works from both expert and emerging scholars with an empirical focus on case studies and ‘real-world’ examples in the sociological study of sport and alcohol that would appeal to a global audience. Implications drawn from the chapters in the book will offer new insights and critiques on the sport-alcohol nexus.
Is your daily run starting to drag you down? Has running become a chore rather than the delight it once was? Then The Happy Runner is the answer for you. Authors David and Megan Roche believe that you can’t reach your running potential without consistency and joyful daily adventures that lead to long-term health and happiness. Guided by their personal experiences and coaching expertise, they point out the mental and emotional factors that will help you learn exactly how to become a happy runner and achieve your personal best.
This unique book provides a practical framework for and coverage of a broad range of mental health concerns applicable to the care of athletes, including depression, suicide, mood disorders, substance abuse and risk-taking behaviors. To this end, it presents content relevant to the care of athletes, including doping and the use of performance-enhancing drugs, the mental health impact of concussion, bullying and hazing, the impact of social media and exercise addiction, among other pertinent topics. Current basic and translational research on behavioral health and the relationship of brain to behavior are reviewed, and current treatment approaches, both pharmacological and non-pharmacological (including mindfulness training), are considered. This practical resource targets the stigma of mental in athletes in order to overcome barriers to care by presenting a definitive perspective of current concepts in the mental health care of athletes, provided by experts in the field and targeting sports medicine providers, mental health providers and primary care physicians involved in the direct care of recreational and competitive athletes at all levels.
As ongoing high-profile drug scandals have demonstrated, sports organisations rarely have a coherent strategy to manage the role and relationship their sport has with different types of drugs (from alcohol to supplements to prescription drugs to doping). This important and timely book argues that drug control-led integrity management of sport is more than an ideological battle around doping. The relationship sport has with the drugs industry has become a much broader management problem. The breadth of the problem compels stakeholders in sport (including athletes, coaches, fans, public servants and sports managers) to understand better the issues in pursuit of effective strategies and responses. Drawing on cutting-edge management theory, this book explores the dilemma of drugs in sport. It introduces the policy and business contexts that have shaped responses to this issue and examines its significance to sport and integrity management, including human resource management, marketing, and risk management. It discusses practical management concerns, such as working with scientists and anti-doping organisations, and offers clear recommendations for the future management of sports integrity. The first book to offer a complete framework for a drugs management strategy for sport, Managing Drugs in Sport is essential reading for all advanced students, researchers and practitioners working in sport management, sport business, sport policy, sport governance and business ethics.
This Handbook provides a broad and comprehensive overview of psychological research on alcohol consumption. It explores the psychological theories underpinning alcohol use and misuse, discusses the interventions that can be designed around these theories, and offers key insight into future developments within the field. A range of international experts assess the unique factors that contribute to alcohol-related behaviour as differentiated from other health-related behaviours. They cover the theory and context of alcohol consumption, including possible implications of personality type, motivation and self-regulation, and cultural and demographic factors. After reviewing the evidence for psychological theories and predictors as accounts for alcohol consumption, the book goes on to focus on external influences on consumption and interventions for reducing alcohol consumption, including those based on purchasing and consumption behaviour, technologies such as personalised feedback apps, and social and media phenomena such as “Dry January” and “Hello Sunday Morning”. It brings together cutting-edge contemporary research on alcohol consumption in childhood and adolescence, including topics such as managing offers or drinks, “pre-drinking”, online identities, how children develop their beliefs about alcohol and how adolescents discuss alcohol with their parents. The book also offers a rounded presentation of the tensions involved in debates around the psychological impacts of alcohol use, discussing its role in helping people to socialise and unwind; as well as recognising the possible negative impacts on health, education and relationships. This book will be of interest to academics, policymakers, public health officials, practitioners, charities and other stakeholders interested in understanding how alcohol affects people psychologically. This book will also be a key resource for students and researchers from across the social sciences.
Beer and Circus presents a no-holds-barred examination of the troubled relationship between college sports and higher education from a leading authority on the subject. Murray Sperber turns common perceptions about big-time college athletics inside out. He shows, for instance, that contrary to popular belief the money coming in to universities from sports programs never makes it to academic departments and rarely even covers the expense of maintaining athletic programs. The bigger and more prominent the sports program, the more money it siphons away from academics. Sperber chronicles the growth of the university system, the development of undergraduate subcultures, and the rising importance of sports. He reveals television's ever more blatant corporate sponsorship conflicts and describes a peculiar phenomenon he calls the "Flutie Factor"--the surge in enrollments that always follows a school's appearance on national television, a response that has little to do with academic concerns. Sperber's profound re-evaluation of college sports comes straight out of today's headlines and opens our eyes to a generation of students caught in a web of greed and corruption, deprived of the education they deserve. Sperber presents a devastating critique, not only of higher education but of national culture and values. Beer and Circus is a must-read for all students and parents, educators and policy makers.