PhD, Associate Professor T.E. Koval¹
PhD, Associate Professor L.V. Yarchikovskaya¹
Associate Professor L.S. Rozanova¹
PhD, Associate Professor A.S. Sidorenko^1
1St. Petersburg State University, St. Petersburg

Keywords: Nordic walking, Sports for All, open remote sport festival, experience.

Introduction. The core purpose of the Sports for All movement is to provide due conditions to encourage people of all ages and social groups to do physical exercises and sports. The accessible environment formation in context of the Sports for All movement plays an increasingly important role and ensures both the full and partial functioning of the entire health system at the national level. Thus, there is a need for the accessible environment formation in context of the Sports for All movement, which, on the one hand, would make it possible to pursue personal opportunities, needs and interests of various groups of people, and on the other, would be forward-looking and oriented towards a more massive involvement of people in health-improving classes.

Modern health-improving technologies suggest using various traditional and alternative methods and systems of people’s health promotion, a huge selection of multi-purpose physical training programs that are quite popular nowadays. Moreover, Nordic walking, as one of the directions of mass physical culture with adjustable load, is undoubtedly high on the list of fitness activities.

However, the theoretical analysis of recent publications indicates an acute underdevelopment of new methodological approaches to the formation of accessible environment in context of the Sports for All movement [1].

It should also be noted that the drive for massive participation is limited by certain obstacles, among which is the lack of motivation for physical self-improvement, since modern society simply does not need continuous physical loads [2].

It is proposed to use open Russian remote festivals in context of the Sports for All as one of the new methodological approaches to solving the mentioned problems.

Objective of the study was to generalize the positive experience in open remote sports festivals in the sphere of popularization and promotion of a healthy lifestyle.

Methods and structure of the study. The preliminary longstanding work with the Russian Nordic walking clubs (Moscow, Murmansk, St. Petersburg, Ufa, Togliatti, etc.) revealed information on the main problems with organization of accessible environment in context of the Sports for All movement in the cities and towns where these clubs are located. Thus, the survey conducted in the listed cities from January 2015 through November 2016 enabled to obtain the following generalized results. The surveyed respondents involved in recreational physical culture mentioned the following problems with the accessible environment formation in context of Sports for All: the lack of a financial base - 15.5%; the absence of a Federal program aimed to develop an accessible Sports for All environment - 10.5%; the lack of effective mass sport development management - 9%; emphasis on the construction of specialized sports complexes, training bases that would not be available to public - 8.6%; the need to create an accessible system for conducting competitions and an information base on these competitions, involving the maximum number of residents of the Russian Federation - 6.7%.

One of the solutions to the problem of organization of the accessible Sports for All environment was a new approach in the form of preparation and staging of the mass open Russian remote Nordic walking festival among the clubs of the Russian Federation "100 kilometers from Christmas to Christmas". The festival was held from December 2016 through January 2017.

This national project within the framework of "Sports for All" was initiated by the Department of Physical Culture and Sports of St. Petersburg State University (SSU), and the hands-on implementer and arranger was the SSU club "Nordiki of St.PSU"[3]. The initiative of the Russian remote festival was supported by the interregional public organization "Nordic Walking Federation" (NWF), who proposed to use the approved health programs of NWF developed for the population with different levels of physical fitness.

The regional sports social organization “St. Petersburg Federation of Mountaineering and Climbing” and the Russian club “Russian School of Nordic Walking” supported the realization of the new national project.

Despite being deceptively simple the idea of ​​the project: to cover 100 km, without going far from home, in 13 days from Christmas according to the Gregorian calendar (December, 25, 2016) up to Christmas according to the Julian calendar (January, 7, 2017), choosing your own direction and distance of the daily routes in kilometers, the project concept had a deep social and ideological orientation.

The main focus during the festival was on the formation of the accessible environment for recreation activities, promotion of healthy lifestyles, fostering respect for the national cultural heritage, finding new ways to organize leisure activities for Russians, holding a one-time large-scale national event in context of "Sports for All".

The competitions were held in two main categories: "sports" and "recreational - local lore", which made it possible to create conditions with adjustable physical load, as well as take into account the participants’ physical fitness and age-specific characteristics.

The sports teams were to cover 100 km in 13 days using the Nordic walking technique (with sticks) at the maximum average speed.

The teams of recreational and local lore orientation were to develop and overcome a series of unique local lore routes of at least 50km total length.

The festival lasted from December 25, 2016, through January 7, 2017, and was held throughout the Russian Federation. The winners were decided based on the reports drawn by the festival participants themselves, by a panel of judges made of professional athletes, experts in the field of medicine, history, geography, local history, from various settlements of our country.

The project involved 56 teams from 27 cities and towns of the Russian Federation. The total number of participants - more than 500 people, were the residents of: Moscow, St. Petersburg, Arkhangelsk, Gomel, Gatchina, Irkutsk, Penza, Simferopol, Samara, Tver, Murmansk, Tula, Togliatti, Luga, Ufa, Petrozavodsk, Rostov-on-Don, Smolensk, Sestroretsk, Tomsk, Kemerovo , Yakhromy, Balashikha, Leninskaya Iskra settlement in the Kirov region.

Results and discussion. After the festival, 100% of the participants emphasized the availability of the environment for recreation activities. 95% of the participants highly estimated the motivation to perform tasks related to a moderate, but compulsory daily physical activity. 94.2% indicated a high level of emotional satisfaction after finishing the developed distances. 86.5% of the participants mentioned the positive effect of the preliminary held webinars on the walking with sticks technique and load intensity control. 99.5% of the participants gave high rates of their general condition when covering the festival distances, where the intensity of physical load for all participants of the festival was regulated by the pulse zone from 100 to 150 bpm.

96.4% of the participants were interested in the health-improving local lore routes, developed by the participants themselves.

Conclusions. The experience above has shown that the open Russian remote festivals may be viewed as an effective means for the accessible environment formation in context of the global Sports for All movement – in application to the unstructured mass moderately intensive exercises; with the events recommended for further promotion and popularization.

References

1. Baranov V.A. «Sport dlya vsekh» kak sotsiokulturny proekt ["Sport for all" as a sociocultural project]. Materialy VII Mezhdunarodny nauchny kongress «SPORT, CHELOVEK, ZDOROVYE» [Proc. VII Intern. Scie. Congress "SPORT, MAN, HEALTH"]. October 27-29, 2015. St. Petersburg Olimp-SPb publ., 2015, pp. 22-24.
2. Lubysheva L.I. Konversiya vysokikh sportivnykh tekhnologiy kak metodologicheskiy printsip proektirovaniya sportizirovannogo fizicheskogo vospitaniya i «Sporta dlya vsekh» [Conversion of high sports technologies as a methodological principle of sportizated physical education and "Sport for all" design]. Materialy VII Mezhdunarodny nauchny kongress « SPORT, CHELOVEK, ZDOROVYE» [Proc. VII Intern. Scie. Congress "SPORT, MAN, HEALTH"]. October 27-29, 2015. St. Petersburg: Olimp-SPb publ., 2015, pp. 29-31.
3. Koval T.E., Yarchikovskaya L.V., Oshina O.V. Ispolzovanie kombinirovannogo podkhoda v tekhnologii proektirovaniya ozdorovitelnykh programm [Use of Combined Approach in Health Program Design Technology]. Teoriya i praktika fizicheskoy kultury, 2015, no. 2, pp. 98-100.

Corresponding author: khubbiev@gmail.com

Abstract

Subject to the study was the new practical approach to the accessible environment formation in context of the global Sports for All movement. The approach is proposed to be tested on mass open Russian and foreign remote festivals. The study gives an account of the First Russian Remote Nordic Walking Festival with a special emphasis on its sporting and socio-cultural benefits.

The authors came to conclusion that the mass open Russian remote festivals may be viewed as an effective means for the accessible environment formation in context of the global Sports for All movement – in application to the unstructured mass moderately intensive physical activity; with the events recommended for further promotion and popularization.