5 | 153 Career, family, and sport participation: a simultaneous exhibition? extent as when they or those who practise sport individually. But compared to doing individual sport activities, informal group activities function much better as a “big stick” to get and keep going, since people in the group act like sport activity anchors. We saw this in some narrative fragments presented in section describing the willingness to participate, to illustrate the social value of sport participation in general and the effects of social support and motivation from others, and it is exemplified in the next fragments as well: “With running, you can survive on your own for a long time, but at a certain point you need someone or something to motivate you. So I joined [name informal group], which is a group of neighbors who run, cycle and walk together. That is a lot of fun. It gave me an extra boost!” (Nina) “I run together with a friend who lives close to me, providing flexibility, like fitness. But we sustain our sport participation, by texting each other weekly to find out when it suits best and pick two moments that we go for a run together.” (Lisanne) For some participants, practising sport during the transition to adulthood necessitated lowering the frequency and/or duration of their sport activities: “I think the first 2 months [after becoming a father] I did not practise sport at all. Then slowly, since he was 8/9 months old I think, I found some space to exercise once or twice a week. And now my son is one year old, it is possible to practise sport three times a week. Before I became a father it was at least 4 or 5 times a week. And the intensity was much higher, in the sense that it was much easier to be busy with sport for 2/3 hours every time, whereas nowadays I want to be back after an hour to do other things.” (Mark) Another pattern we found is the choice and need for sport activities that can be easily or intelligently combined with or linked to the new event-related activities and responsibilities. For example, joining student sport activities and using student sport facilities, going to the gym right after you are done with class, your homework or work, doing sport activities alone or in informal groups whenever it suits best, practising sport with you child, while your child is practising sport as well, or while your child is being cared for by the partner or by a childminder at or near the sport accommodation. The participants’
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjY0ODMw