The trajectories and developmental experiences of twin high-performance athletes in life skill development

Abstract

Life skills development across developmental stages has been considered a complex endeavor. Research is needed to understand how family environments may influence athletes’ life skills development through sport experiences. Nonetheless, we are not aware of any studies to date that have explored how shared family environment of twins influence their life skills development. This study used Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis to examine twin professional athletes’ experiences in learning life skills in development, elite youth, and high-performance sport contexts. The findings show the twins’ coaches lacked an explicit approach to life skills development, but through support from their father, the twins still perceived that their coaches had an indirect effect on their personal development. This study also highlights how negative experiences in high performance sport played a role in positive life skill development, which is a novel finding from this study. Their father's support and their shared family environment were considered key and enabled the athletes to learn life skills from both negative and positive experiences in sport. It is fair to state that the twins had privileged support (i.e., father) which may not be accessible to many athletes across a range of contexts.