Flow is lightness, simplicity of movements, harmony of the body and mind… In its essence, flow is characterized by complete absorption in what one does, and a resulting loss in one's sense of space and time. Flow sport is important for the individual because the athlete enjoys in achieving his goals and that offers him better quality of movement. For the athlete to achieve flow it is important thet his skill level is balanced with the challenges offerd in sport. If the challenge is on a higher or lower level than athletes skills, the filings of apathy, boredom or anxiety may occur. Athlete in flow feels that he moves almost automatically, the feeling of flow in movement.
Field of flow in sport is not jet well researched, so in this thesis we researched concept of flow in students of Faculty of Sport in Ljubljana. We wanted to determine the effect of different variables such as gender, age, type of sport (team / individual), and rank of sport (elite /recreational) on experiencing flow.
112 athletes participated in this study, of which there were 67 males and 56 females. To test the participants we used FSS-2 and DFS-2 questionnaire, which was developed specifically for use in sport and physical activity settings. Each questionnaire comprises 36 questions relating to the nine dimensions of the flow state experience which are: challenge and skill balance, merging of action and awareness, clear goals, unambiguous feedback, concentration on the task, sense of control, loss of self-consciousness, distortion of the sense of time and autotelic experience.
The data was then statistically analised with SPSS program. The end results have shown that there is no statistically relevant differences in experiencing flow between males and females, as well there are no relevant differences between team and individual sport, or between elite athletes and recreational athletes. But the results revealed signifficant correlation between age and global flow factor.
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