With the continuous development of social economy, people’s disposable income has gradually increased, and leisure
activities have gradually become more abundant. Leisure sports projects have become an indispensable part of the citizens’ leisure
time. In order to reveal the research progress of leisure sports in China in the past 23 years,Citespace5.0 bibliometric analysis
software was used to analyze the domestic and outdoor characteristics of leisure sports research in China from the 1998-2020
leisure sports literature collected in CSSCI database. The study of leisure sports in China provides a new perspective and direction.
The study found that the overall development of leisure sports in China is good; the cooperation network between authors and institutions has taken shape. There are problems such as insufficient depth of disciplinary research, less interdisciplinary research
results, lack of attention to cutting-edge issues, and single research paradigm.