1st Edition

Teaching and Coaching Lifestyle Sports Research and Practice

Edited By Thomas M. Leeder, Lee C. Beaumont Copyright 2025
218 Pages 6 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

218 Pages 6 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

218 Pages 6 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

Lifestyle sports have witnessed unprecedented growth in recent years, with it being accepted that these activities can contribute significantly to national sport and physical activity agendas, appeal to contemporary youth culture, and provide an alternative to mainstream achievement sports within school physical education. However, this popularity has led to increased professionalisation and... Read more

Section 1: Introducing lifestyle sports

 

1.     Teaching and Coaching Lifestyle Sports: A Primer

Thomas M. Leeder and Lee C. Beaumont

 

Section 2: Physical education and lifestyle sports

 

2.     Youth Sports Participation and Lifestyle Sports in England and Norway: Exploring the Implications for Physical Education

Ken Green and Patrick Foss Johansen

 

3.     Taking It Out of PE: Transfer of Mountain Biking in Physical Education to Extra-curricular Contexts

Tristan L. Wallhead, Kelly L. Simonton, Tamara Abu-Ramadan, and Cynthia Hartung

 

4.     Teaching and Learning Movement Capability in Physical Education: Learning from Freeskiers

Gunn Nyberg

 

5.     Physical Education – Lifestyle Sport, Neoliberalism, and Childhoods

Richard Blair

 

6.     Using Lifestyle Sports to Create a ‘Meaningful’ Physical Education Experience

Jordan Wintle, Liz Durden-Myers, and Kiara Lewis

 

7.     Embedding Lifestyle Sports into a 21st Century Physical Education Curriculum: A Motivational Perspective and Challenges of Integration

Victoria E. Warburton and Lee C. Beaumont

 

Section 3: Sport Coaching and Lifestyle Sports

 

8.     High-performance Coach Learning and Development in Lifestyle Sports: Looking at the Surfing Context

Vinicius Zeilmann Brasil, Eva Ellmer, and François Rodrigue

 

9.     The Impact of Professionalisation and Structured Coaching Programmes in Skateboarding and Freestyle BMX: A Socio-cultural Analysis

Ben Gould

 

10.  Understanding Parkour as a Donor Sport for Athlete Learning and Development

Ben W. Strafford, Keith Davids, Jamie S. North, and Joseph A. Stone

 

11.  “Orienteering is a way of life”: Learning from and for Lifestyle Sports Coaching

Thomas M. Leeder and Lee C. Beaumont

 

12.  Self-, Peer-, and Performance Coaching: Observations from BMX in Australia

Eva Ellmer

 

13.  Flexibility, Adaptability, and Creativity: A Culture for the Lifestyle Sports Coach

Loel Collins and Eric Brymer

 

Section 4: Conclusion

 

14.  Concluding Thoughts on Teaching and Coaching Lifestyle Sports: Steps Forward for Research and Practice

Thomas M. Leeder and Lee C. Beaumont

 

Biography

Thomas M. Leeder is a Lecturer in Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy in the School of Education and Lifelong Learning at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK. His research interests primarily focus on the professional learning and development of physical education teachers and sport coaches, via the use of qualitative research methods and sociological frameworks.

Lee C. Beaumont is an Associate Professor in Physical Education in the School of Education and Lifelong Learning at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK. His research interests lie in the area of physical education and sport pedagogy, with a particular emphasis on health-related policy and practice within physical education, the promotion of healthy active lifestyles in young people, sport coaching, outdoor education, and lifestyle sports.

"The editors quote one definition of “lifestyle sports” as “a range of participatory, informal, and thrill-seeking urban and rural sporting activities that are qualitatively different to traditional, rule-bound, competitive, and institutionalised sport” (p. 3). Examples include surfing, snowboarding, parkour, skateboarding, bicycle motocross (BMX), climbing, orienteering, and mountain biking. The popularity of these formerly fringe sports has grown, and some have been included in recent Olympics. As they become more formally accepted, it has become increasingly necessary to institutionalize their parameters. After a solid introductory chapter, the editors organize this collection into two tracks: six chapters on teaching lifestyle sports in a physical education curriculum and six chapters on coaching. The editors contribute one coaching chapter on orienteering. The other contributing authors are on the faculty at various international universities, and the chapters range from research studies to theoretical discussions of lifestyle sports. In the final chapter, the editors provide good summaries of the previous chapters and make suggestions for future research. Their enthusiasm for this topic is apparent, and this book should be a welcome addition to sports research."

--J. A. Badics, Eastern Michigan University