Although the “Action Socialization Experience” (ASE) has been used as a team building training program in sports teams, few studies have explored its significance for elite teams from the coaches’ perspective. This study conducted semi-structured interviews with four football coaches who had implemented ASE as a team building program in professional or national teams, aiming to analyze how their intention to adopt ASE developed and how they made sense of the experience.

Using the Modified Grounded Theory Approach (M-GTA), the analysis revealed that the coaches’ intentions were shaped by their own foundational experiences and awareness of team challenges, their expectations for promoting communication between teammates and personal growth through ASE, and their recognition that changes in team atmosphere and individual development contributed to competitive performance.

Importantly, from the perspective of top-level coaches, ASE was valued as an experiential activity that involved physical and psychological challenges in an extraordinary environment outside the routine of competitive sports. ASE was found to foster receptive interpersonal relationships that encouraged open expression of opinions and a willingness to engage in challenges—an especially meaningful outcomes in elite sports teams, where expressing upward influence can be particularly difficult. Participation in ASE, which consists of non-routine activities unrelated to athletic performance, allowed athletes to temporarily detach from the rigid hierarchies typical of elite sports and to develop more egalitarian forms of interaction. The extraordinary and unfamiliar nature of these experiences was seen to promote enhanced communication, the development of receptive relational dynamics, and the expression of individual identity. Taking together, these outcomes have the potential to strengthen team cohesion and, ultimately, contribute to improved athletic performance.

This study conducted a survey targeting participants in nature-based experiential activities as part of a single-parent family support program. It aimed to investigate whether nature-based experiential activities effectively foster children’s self-esteem and mothers’ parenting resilience and whether the effects differ between single-parent and two-parent families. The survey included children who participated in nature-based experiential activities in 2023 and their guardians, as well as children who did not participate as the control group. Both were classified as single-parent and two-parent families. The effects of nature-based experiential activities and differences according to family structure were determined using a three-factor analysis of variance (group [nature experience group vs. control group] × time [pre vs. post] × family structure [single-parent vs. two-parent family]). Factors whose normality could not be assumed were analyzed using nonparametric tests. Additionally, the correlation between parenting resilience and children’s self-esteem was also analyzed. Results showed the following: 1) nature-based experiential activities improved children’s self-esteem and mothers’ parenting resilience, 2) effects on the “self-evaluation and self-acceptance” factor were greater in children from single-parent families, 3) effects on the “social support” factors were greater in mothers from single-parent families, and 4) mothers’ parenting resilience positively correlated with children’s self-esteem.