There’s more to coaching than the context: a Bourdieusian account of an embodied athlete
Author
Barker, Edmund
Bailey, Jake
Date
2016-01-07Acceptance date
2015-11-09
Type
Article
Publisher
Taylor & Francis
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
A growing body of work focuses on coach and athlete agency within the complex, social field of coaching. Little attention, however, has been given to athletes’ life histories and how these might influence their engagement with the coaching process. The purpose of this paper is to examine how key and cumulative events in Faye’s (all names are pseudonym) life influenced her engagement in distance running and with the coach with whom she worked. The findings highlight that, whilst Faye’s preferences were not entirely stable, she was predisposed towards a specific type of coach, in this instance, Dave. Dave promoted working conditions that encouraged athletes to see their bodies-as-machines, to follow his orders, and not to take short-cuts. Although, on the surface, Faye ‘bought into’ Dave’s coaching, the dialectical interactions between the established set of working conditions and Faye’s embodiment raise a number of questions pertinent to coaching scholars and practitioners.
Journal/conference proceeding
Sports Coaching Review;
Citation
Barker, E. and Bailey, J. (2016) 'There’s more to coaching than the context: a Bourdieusian account of an embodied athlete', Sports Coaching Review, 4(1), pp.41-57
Description
Copy not available from this repository.
Collections
- Sport Research Groups [1096]
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