Associate Professor, PhD K.E. Lukichev¹
Dr. Med. E.R. Yashina^1
1All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Physical Culture and Sport, Moscow

Keywords: mass sports, physical culture, motivation, training process, mobile devices, encouragement, sporting activity.

Background. The national development model under implementation implies due reliance on the key relevant advantage of our national economy that, first of all, cannot be depreciated under external pressures and, second, increasingly valuable due to the forecast global development trends of the XXI century. This advantage is the national human resource. In this context, an increasing priority is given, within the frame of the traditional national sport development policies, to the national physical culture and mass sports as the most promising development vector pivotal for the people’s physical development, fitness and health improvement agenda.

The active growth of the innovative technologies in our country may be viewed as a driving force of the movement associated with challenging reforms and progress in many economic sectors, social domain, national physical culture and sport sector and sport science. It is a global trend today to implement the best elite sport technologies in the national systems of physical education and mass sports, and the trend is on the rise due to the fast growth of the market of high/ innovative technologies that are getting more and more accessible and affordable with time. It should also be noted that the people’s physical development levels have been on a sagging trend for the last decades largely due to the falling interest in the traditional physical culture and sport practices. Active physical processes are being increasingly removed from the everyday life with the falling need for a direct and intense physical labour which was so widespread only a century ago. The problems of growing inactivity may be solved, among other things, by new forms of physical training processes designed to meet the prime motor needs of modern people that are so extensively served by the household high-tech equipment and appliances but still feel the growing need for highly emotional motor effects and responses.

Objective of the study was to analyse the present situation and promises of the innovative technologies being applied to motivate people for habitual physical culture and mass sports.

Study results and discussion. The modern habits associated with increasingly common and popular mobile electronic gadgets applicable for many things including gaming purposes are encouraged by the industry providing more and more sophisticated game products. At this juncture the industry is in active search of the electronic game environments to further simplify the users’ interaction with the software by a variety of controls other than common buttons and touch screens including different innovative technologies designed to transfer the user’s bodily movements in the control signals to steer the game process on the gadget.

It should be noted that the numbers of mobile electronic devices applied by people have been on the rise for the last few years. Only for the 3 quarters of 2016, for instance, they were estimated to total 20.8 million units marking a 71% growth to the same period of the last year despite some general slowdown on the sales markets. By the year of 2020 people are forecast to have some 214 million mobile gadgets in their everyday use.

It should be also mentioned in this context that the very idea of the electronic gadgets being applied for the physical development purposes is not new in fact. Computer components were added to the advanced training simulators since the very first days when such systems came to the market albeit the computers were used mostly for the training load accounting purposes. Later on the application software designers were required to offer tools to obtain qualitative rates of physical performance in the training process or upon its completion, including accounts of the errors made in the process. With time the relevant software tools, in addition to the above capacities, gave the means to monitor and vary the resistance levels of the training simulator units. Furthermore, computerised training systems were equipped with a variety of biotechnical control mechanisms geared to read and analyse the data flows from the remote sensor units measuring heart rate, blood pressure etc.

 Computer units in training simulators also made it possible to correct technical errors and store large data arrays for comparative purposes, including the performance ratings of a few trainees practicing on similar exercise systems at the same time. The comparative data could be used by each of them to rate own performance versus that of the peers/ competitors.

A new generation of training simulators coming to the market and giving the means to visualize the training process missions and execution rates on screens and thereby control the process made a breakthrough in the physical education and sports systems. The new equipment and tools allowed programming of the training process scenarios using, when applicable, a variety of computer game situations with the user-computer interaction being controlled by human motor actions as such.

The next stage in the computerised training simulator systems development was the appearance of user’s movement controlled computer games that were developed based on the idea of the traditional game process control tools like buttons and joysticks being replaced by an active user-computer interface equipped with spatial and strength controls of different specifications that were offered in forms of contact mats, sensors on the active elements of the exercise systems, variable resistors on the same elements etc.

The modern sensors are so sophisticated that effectively give the means to design the game console mounted controllers making it possible for the users to easily interact with the game environments free of special game controller units, with the game process being controlled by verbal commands, body postures, movements, selectable standardized objects or drawings. With the growing demand for and sales of the systems, they are getting more and more affordable and, hence, the broader strata of population may apply them for a variety of sporting and advanced training purposes.

There are a few global trends that may increasingly support the popular motivations for the habitual physical culture and mass sports that may be listed as follows:

1. Individual sport profile that may be described as a databank designed to store individual information including the physical activity and health related data downloadable for processing to a smartphone from relevant mobile/ remote units or medical equipment. The relevant functionality is normally inbuilt by manufacturers in virtually every device designed to obtain data on human physical activity. The data may include individual heart rates, weight, lost calories, blood pressure, sleep phases, blood sugar/ cholesterol etc. The data arrays and analyses provides a basis for the efficient nutrition and physical training process management schedules focused on the anticipated results.

2. Supplemented/ virtual reality that may be described as a special technology that applies the reality-improving layers modelled on a computer and added to the existing reality. A case in point may be provided by the Pokеmon Go application for smartphones offered as a free multiuser mobile role game where the user is required to find locations in a supplemented reality, the Pokеmon series products being developed and marketed by Niantic for iOS and Android-using systems. The players are applying the mobile systems equipped with GPS function to find, fight with, capture, and train virtual creatures that emerge on the screen as if they were really existing in the same world with the player. The game requires from the player to be highly physically active in the real world to obtain extra bonuses in the game.

3. Gaming that is an efficient tool for the user being motivated for physical culture and sports based on the past physical activity rewarding and further activity encouragement mechanisms including, for instance, different discounts, motivating preferences and/or sporting goods. One of the examples of this tool application was the action by the Moscow Metropolitan when the passengers were offered a free ticket in exchange for 30 squats.

4. Personification meaning the system offering a sort of virtual credits to the people that hold and use the physical activity tracking gadgets. This mechanism has been particularly promoted via the social networks like Facebook, VKontakte, Twitter, Odnoklassniki etc., with the idea of due reward for physical activity being a core motivation for the users. Special application preinstalled on a smartphone, for instance, may score bonus points for the walking distance per day, the bonuses being monetised in a special shop or by the partner companies. The social networks may also accrue consolidated rating points that may be published by the users on their home pages and shared with friends and subscribers.

5. Remote education in the physical culture and sport domain. It is the professional competency building process commonly known to be one of the key factors to secure the professional career, the relevant competences being advanced, among other things, by persistent qualification-improvement efforts. It should be noted, however, that this domain is traditionally ranked among the weakest points of the existing sport education system.

6. Social network building process, including the efforts to engage broad masses of people (with a special emphasis on the middle- and senior-age people) in the physical training and sport practices and, possibly, competitions designed by the relevant application tools. Social networks are beneficial, among other things, in terms of the feedback capacity including counts of the popular tags in the sport domain; and this functionality makes the social networks one of the most promising activity formats to promote ideas of habitual physical culture and healthy lifestyles.

7. Commonly accessible database processing and forecasting tools. Analyses of the large-scale data arrays are mostly required for the feedback analysing to asses efficiency of the process management policies implemented in the physical culture and sport sector. In addition, the analysis gives the means to forecast proceeds from the relevant sport events, rental services and a variety of other services. The tool may be particularly beneficial for advertising businesses that can receive a feedback from the target customers. The database analyses makes it possible to rate the players’ success within the frame of the preset process parameters, generate the relevant process recommendations and exercise the follow-up process control.

It should be noted that a variety of training process design and monitoring systems are winning an increasing popularity nowadays. Their core objective is to obtain the individual performance data of the trainees and use them to design optimal training programs and rate potential resources. The relevant applied innovative technologies are geared to: plan and distribute the resources, including the human resource of coaches and other relevant specialists and service resources of relevant sport facilities; fix and rate athletic performance test data; fix test/ training workload scopes and intensities; collect, process and provide the process physiological/ biomechanical system performance and other relevant data of the athletes; keep online monitoring of physiological rates and external process rates of the trainees; and generate test reports for relevant data user groups: coaches, trainees, sport physicians etc.

Conclusion. The national government should give a top priority to the innovative technologies in the physical culture and sport sector to encourage habitual healthy lifestyles being adopted by broad masses of people. Analyses of the current situation in the national physical culture and sport sector show that the key problem of the system is the sagging people’s physical development, physical fitness and health levels and, consequently, heavy economic losses due to underproduction of the gross domestic product as a result of high sickness rates, early disabilities, high death toll and the shortening period of active labour. The promising innovation technologies will be advanced in the national physical culture and sports sector and be ranked among the top priority objectives of the governmental policies to motivate population for mass physical culture, sports and healthy lifestyles.

References

1. RF Government Decree "On the Russian Federation Ministry of Sport" (with the "Regulations on the Ministry of Sport") of 19.06.2012 no. 607]. Collection of the RF legislation, 25.06.2012, no. 26, Art. 3525.
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4. RF Government Order "On approval of Physical Culture and Sports Development Strategy in the Russian Federation for the period up to 2020" of 07.08.2009 no. 1101-r. Meeting of the legislation of the Russian Federation, 17.08.2009, no. 33, st. 4110.
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Corresponding author: vniifk@yandex.ru

Abstract

The national physical culture and mass sports have always been designed to establish due environments to facilitate physical, spiritual and ethical progress of the communities and provide them with every opportunity to freely enjoy physical training and sports. The article makes an analysis of the present situation and promises of the innovative technologies being applied to motivate people for habitual physical culture and mass sports. The analyses made it possible to highlight the key problem of the system that is the sagging people’s physical development, physical fitness and health levels and, consequently, heavy economic losses due to underproduction of the gross domestic product as a result of the high sickness rates, early disabilities, high death toll and the shortening period of active labour. Innovation technologies will be advanced in the national physical culture and sports sector and be ranked among the top priority objectives of the governmental policies to motivate population for mass physical culture, sports and healthy lifestyles.