Explanatory perspectives of enjoyment during deliberate practice sessions for competitive swimmers of varying levels of expertise.

The Ericsson framework (1996) for the acquisition of expertise describes deliberate practice as the most relevant training for the improvement of performance within a domain of expertise. The framework describes deliberate practice as highly relevant, highly effortful forms of training that are inherently non-enjoyable. Subsequent studies seeking to apply the framework in the domain of sport (Starkes et al., 1996; Helsen et al., 1998; Young & Salmela, 1998) found that many subjects described highly relevant, highly effortful forms of practice to be enjoyable. Following the findings of previous deliberate practice studies in the sport setting, this study sought to seek out swimmers who were currently training and who described deliberate practice as being enjoyable and to discover the sources of this pleasure. A questionnaire was administered to 237 male and female competitive swimmers from three different performance groups to identify how they rated swimming specific deliberate practice activities regarding the relative relevance, effort, concentration and enjoyment of each. Subsequently, 18 subjects who had rated deliberate practice as enjoyable, were interviewed regarding the nature of their enjoyment of the deliberate practice. (Abstract shortened by UMI.