The importance of active participation in sport is more and more emphasized in public. It is especially important for people with physical impairments as it may serve for rehabilitation purposes. It also has many other positive outcomes, such as socialising with friends, a better physical shape and an opportunity to achieve good results in competing. People with physical impairments are facing different obstacles, such as lack of organized training, lack of coaching staff and of proper equipment.
The theoretical part of the thesis defines findings in the field of sport for physically impaired athletes and presents in detail boccia - indoor bowling for the disabled, a sport that is well suited for people with severe physical impairments.
In the research part we tried to determine the motives for physically impaired to participate in boccia and its current importance to them. Furthermore, we tried to find out which difficulties occurred at the beginning of their sport participation and which emerged later, during their active involvement. We were also interested to find out who introduced boccia to them and what are their training habits like. The research included 31 active boccia players from Slovenia and Croatia.
The results of the research have shown that people with physical impairments participate in boccia for socialising. Active involvement in boccia is especially important because it gives them an opportunity to socialise with other competitors. The most commonly cited obstacle they were facing at the beginning, was a lack of organized training, and the most commonly listed obstacle during their active participation was a lack of economic resource.
Boccia was most often introduced to the physically impaired by another boccia player (48,4%). All players warm up for at least two minutes before a match, and 83,9% of players warm up at a training session. We also discovered that only a small number of players drink fluids during a match (38,7%).
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