Emotions, identity and power in video-based feedback sessions: Tales from women’s professional football

Abstract

While video-based feedback has become an increasingly salient feature of practice in high performance sport, it has received relatively little attention in the coaching literature. Data for this study were generated through a process of collaborative critical reflection and cyclical, in-depth interviews with elite female footballers. Using fictional narratives as a mode of representation, we highlight the emotional, embodied, and relational features of two athletes’ experiences of video-based feedback. Burkitt’s (1999, 2014) writings addressing (complex) emotions and social relations are used as the primary sense-making framework. Consequently, the analysis is grounded in the interconnections between sensate, corporeal experience, and the power relations and interdependencies in which high performance athletes are enmeshed.