The Notion of “Activity” in the Analysis of Athletic Skills and Performances in Elite Athletes

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This paper discusses the principal characteristics of “activity” in the study of the performances of elite athletes. According to this approach, performance is much more than a behavior that can be easily studied through experimental and laboratory design. Instead, it can be seen as the expression of the athlete’s manner of interacting with the situation. The relevance of studying elite athletes’ performances as specific and active processes of interaction is described using naturalistic observations and comparisons of studies. The activity of elite athletes is then considered as a situational arrangement in the sense of a cultural modification of a given situation achieved by exchanging information in meaningful situations. This suggests that all athletes’ performances could be analyzed by their activity conceived as building “unique worlds” that could be built by the identification of units of meanings. This conception of activity furnishes a theoretical framework for understanding how psychological processes are involved in elite sport performances by taking into account athletes’ experience.