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. 2022 Mar 26;8(1):41.
doi: 10.1186/s40798-022-00432-z.

Integrative Proposals of Sports Monitoring: Subjective Outperforms Objective Monitoring

Lluc Montull  1   2 , Agne Slapšinskaitė-Dackevičienė  1   3 , John Kiely  4 , Robert Hristovski  5 , Natàlia Balagué  6
Affiliations

Integrative Proposals of Sports Monitoring: Subjective Outperforms Objective Monitoring

Lluc Montull et al. Sports Med Open. .

Erratum in

Abstract

Current trends in sports monitoring are characterized by the massive collection of tech-based biomechanical, physiological and performance data, integrated through mathematical algorithms. However, the application of algorithms, predicated on mechanistic assumptions of how athletes operate, cannot capture, assess and adequately promote athletes' health and performance. The objective of this paper is to reorient the current integrative proposals of sports monitoring by re-conceptualizing athletes as complex adaptive systems (CAS). CAS contain higher-order perceptual units that provide continuous and multilevel integrated information about performer-environment interactions. Such integrative properties offer exceptional possibilities of subjective monitoring for outperforming any objective monitoring system. Future research should investigate how to enhance this human potential to contribute further to athletes' health and performance. This line of argument is not intended to advocate for the elimination of objective assessments, but to highlight the integrative possibilities of subjective monitoring.

Keywords: Awareness; Complex adaptive systems; Health; Performance; Self-regulation; Technology.

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Conflict of interest statement

Lluc Montull, Agne Slapšinskaitė-Dackevičienė, John Kiely, Robert Hristovski and Natàlia Balagué declare that they have no conflicts of interest relevant to the content of this article.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Integrative proposals of objective and subjective monitoring. Objective monitoring: "integration achieved by algorithmic treatment of a collection of independent variables". Subjective monitoring: "integration achieved by experiential dimensional reduction (i.e., information compression) of multilevel organism–environment interactions acting at multiple timescales". Adapted from Balagué et al. [22], with permission
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Relations between slow-changing and fast-changing constraints influencing subjective perception. Adapted from Balagué et al. (89), with permission
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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