Abstract:

The present study aims to analyze some problems faced by active athletes during Covid-19 isolation period. A total of 1176 active athletes in different sports branches in Turkey, i.e. athletics, basketball, boxing, football, handball, gymnastics, judo, water polo, taekwondo, tennis, volleyball and swimming, participated in the present study voluntarily. A qualitative research method was used for data analysis. In addition, a survey form consisting of 5 open-ended questions was used by researchers as a data collection tool. SPSS 22.0 was used for the analysis of the data obtained from the survey. The findings demonstrated that during Covid-19 isolation period, 66.2% of the athletes were affected negatively in terms of their trainings (f=779), while 33.8% of them were not affected negatively (f=397). As for non-national athletes, it was found that 73.7% of them were affected negatively, while 26.3% of them were not affected. In addition, 74.7% of the athletes stated that their performances declined during Covid-19 isolation period (f=878), while 25.3% of them did not report any performance declines (f=298). It can be thus inferred that many athletes’ performances were affected negatively and thus declined remarkably during Covid-19 isolation period. Thus, Covid-19 isolation led to an unusual limitation of movement for athletes and caused them to face a number of physical, physiological and psychological problems because they were forced to continue trainings at home and with their own equipment, which eventually resulted in a performance decline.

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