If you’ve been a little bleary eyed in the last week due to some early morning starts, watching all the Paris 2024 Paralympic action, you are not alone! It’s been an inspiring and exciting week of action on the TV, made even more special knowing there are some incredible local, Sunshine Coast based athletes taking part and representing Australia! How lucky are we to live around such amazing role models and opportunity!
Sport in Australia is such an integral part of our culture, whether we take part at a competitive, social or participation-based level – we can enjoy sport for so many aspects and watching the Paralympics and feeling inspired by an athletes success, their grit and determination or their journey along the way is no different! We know that being a part of a community sporting activity, teaches us about so much more than just the physical skill / activity we take part in – that’s the added bonus!
For our children in the community with disability, it’s about finding opportunities for them to be involved + have fun with physical activity. Recently our team attended the Australasian Academy of Cerebral Palsy + Developmental Medicine Conference (AusACPDM) and heard more of the amazing work from Dr Sarah Reedman, in relation to this area – specifically some of her work around the Participate CP Trials that are being undertaken through the University of Queensland / QLD CP and Rehabilitation Research Centre. If you love your research, you can read more about this here https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5629713/
Dr Sarah talks about the Basic Psychological Needs Theory (BPNT) and factors that underpin all of our human needs + motivation to participate in things such as physical activity. These include:
- Competence – does what we intend to do, actually happen? This gives us self efficacy / feelings of success. We want to set kids up for success in physical activity!
- Autonomy – having a sense of control over what we engage in + making choices. We want kids choosing to take part!
- Relatedness – meaningful relationships with others and feeling part of our community. We want kids having connections and feeling part of a group!
Dr Sarah also talks about the difference between an Activity and Participation. For example, an activity might be learning a skill in a clinic setting around kicking a ball. However, participation might be joining our local All Abilities soccer team (shameless plug here for an amazing team! https://www.facebook.com/share/p/scVGqJ7WSCwboAGz/)
The research tells us, that when we Participate, our abilities at an Activity level improve………..all while having FUN + meeting those basic human needs of Competence, Autonomy + Relatedness.
So, lets find some group based, physical activity opportunities for our kids to help get them active – the goal isn’t actually about whether they end up at the Paralympics, but everything that sport gives us in between!
Sunshine Coast Frame Running and 2032?!?!
Check out our Run Club video below + how we have linked with Dr Sarah Reedman and her Run4Health research study, to support these opportunities for our kids on the Sunshine Coast! If you are interested in taking part in either our group or the research based Run4Health, don’t hesitate to contact our Admin team or check out this link for the upcoming Sunshine Coast based intake of Run4Health, which is for children aged 7 years and above. https://qcprrc.centre.uq.edu.au/project/run4health-cp