ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Sports Act. Living
Sec. Sport, Leisure, Tourism, and Events
Volume 7 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fspor.2025.1483898
This article is part of the Research TopicSport and Active Living: Nature Challenge vis-à-vis Inter-human competitionView all 4 articles
"I'm not too old to lift": Exploring Lifelong Involvement in Olympic Weightlifting Through the Serious Leisure Perspective
Provisionally accepted
- University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada
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AbstractIntroduction: This study explores the lifelong involvement of older adults in Olympic weightlifting (OW) with the aim of understanding the factors that motivate them to initiate and sustain participation across their lifespan, as well as the challenges they face and the benefits they experience. Methods: Semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with 22 participants (18 males, 4 females), aged 50–89, who had over 30 years of training experience in OW. The interviews lasted 40–58 minutes and were conducted face-to-face or via video call. The data was framed through Stebbins ’serious leisure perspective with an inductive thematic analysis to identify themes.Results and discussion: Five themes and four subthemes were identified that shape participants’ enduring involvement in OW: lifelong passion and commitment to OW (subthemes: perseverance and serious leisure career development), rigorous training regimens, injury experiences and recovery, self-improvement and personal growth, and social and community building (subthemes: community and camaraderie, coaching and mentorship for athlete development and legacy). These themes reveal the deep dedication, resilience, and strong sense of community that mark participants’ enduring involvement in this sport. The results suggest that OW can be utilized as a valuable sport for healthy aging, personal growth, and building supportive networks, which can inform approaches in health promotion, fitness programming, and sport development across different age groups. Funding statementThe author(s) declared that no financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.Ethics statementsStudies involving animal subjectsGenerated Statement: No animal studies are presented in this manuscript.Studies involving human subjectsGenerated Statement: The studies involving humans were approved by University of Ottawa, Research Ethics Boards (REB). The studies were conducted in accordance with the local legislation and institutional requirements. The participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study.Inclusion of identifiable human dataGenerated Statement: Written informed consent was obtained from the individual(s) for the publication of any potentially identifiable images or data included in this article.Data availability statementGenerated Statement: The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.
Keywords: Sport, leisure, tourism, and Events Aida Stratas: Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, investigation, methodology
Received: 20 Aug 2024; Accepted: 14 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Gravelle, Stratas and Karlis. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: François Gravelle, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada
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