Astrid Schubring

Moving into and out of high-performance sport: the cultural learning of an artistic gymnast

Background: High-performance sport has been described as a formative environment through which athletes learn sporting skills but also develop athletic selves. Within this process, career movements related to selection for and de-selection from representative teams constitute critical moments. Further, retirement from sport can be problematic as the athletic self becomes ‘obsolete’. This dilemma is acute in sports that demand an early entry, extreme time investments and a high risk of retirement before adulthood. Womens artistic gymnastics (WAG) is such a sport. Purpose and scope: This article considers an artistic gymnasts (Marie) experiences of movement into and out of this sport. Maries construction and reconstruction of her athletic self when she entered gymnastics at the age of six, relocated to a different city in order to train with the national team at the age of 15, and retired from the sport one year later receives particular attention. Method and theoretical perspective: An in-depth biographical interview was conducted with Marie. Further, the first authors personal knowledge of this gymnasts career experiences was used for contextualisation. The analysis of data involved the identification of learning outcomes during her time in high-performance WAG and post-retirement. Storied accounts surrounding the key learning experiences were compiled. In order to understand Maries learning, cultural perspective of learning developed by education scholars and the respective metaphors of ‘learning as becoming’ and ‘horizons for action’ and ‘horizons of learning’ are employed. Findings: Maries choice of relocating to train with the national team involved her assuming a temporary orientation towards the requirements of the high-performance WAG context she entered. To achieve this, Marie suppressed the dispositions she had brought to this setting and adjusted her training philosophy, relationship with her coach, diet and socialising. Further, despite Marie intending to only momentarily adjust to the practices of the high-performance context, her learning was deep. Upon retiring from gymnastics, she could not leave the high-performance gymnastics self behind. The subsequent process to adjust to life without gymnastics was difficult and testing, and could only be realised with professional treatment. Conclusion: Learning in sport is not limited to athletic skills. Athletes’ selves are formed in interaction with sporting contexts and actors. This embodiment can become durable and cause significant conflict when moving out of sport. To handle life without sport, adjustment may be challenging and lengthy. Recommendations: Sporting cultures should allow for more interactive learning and athlete diversity. Coaching practices that allow athletes to voice difficulties should be provided. Athletes should be encouraged to reflect upon their sporting experiences and upon leaving high-performance sport, should be (professionally) supported.

“Gymnasts Are Like Wine, They Get Better With Age”: Becoming and Developing Adult Women’s Artistic Gymnasts

ABSTRACT Women’s artistic gymnastics is commonly understood to require early entrance and intense training during childhood. Most gymnasts retire before reaching adulthood. In recent years, the gymnast population at the highest level has “aged.” In this article, we adopt a socio-pedagogical perspective to explore the training contexts, pubertal development, and associated learning 10 older elite gymnasts reported. We develop a cultural perspective of gymnast development and show that transitioning through puberty allowed the gymnasts to extend their careers. Support from their coaches and parents, self-reflective time, and genetic predispositions facilitated the transitioning. Through this, gymnasts gained control over self, body, relationships, and performance. In conclusion, we provide implications for gymnast development practice.

The Role of Setting in the Field: The Positioning of Older Bodies in the Field of Elite Women’s Gymnastics:

The last decade has seen an increase in the age of elite women’s gymnasts. This article examines the older gymnastic body within the field of elite women’s gymnastics, and how gymnasts, over the age of 20, and their coaches and judges, reconstruct the field in interview accounts. While participants contested the value of differently aged and sized bodies, they also made distinctions between the capitals that were valuable in different settings such as the competition setting, a gymnast’s usual training setting or a national training camp. In order to account for these differences, we combine the work of Pierre Bourdieu with that of Erving Goffman. We argue that Goffman’s emphasis on setting adds a level of specificity to Bourdieu’s claim that fields always exist as sites of struggle through providing a way to differentiate between different value systems that may co-exist within the same field.

Coming of age: coaches transforming the pixie-style model of coaching in women’s artistic gymnastics

Abstract Coaches and coach educators have recognised the difficulty of creating changes to traditional coaching practice. In this article, we draw on interviews with five successful coaches who, we argue, engaged in actively changing their gymnastics coaching practice through promoting alternative “games of truth” which challenged the authoritarian women’s gymnastics coaching model. This alternative truth game included a focus on energy levels (over thinness) and a belief that older gymnasts can learn new skills and be successful, which led to adaptations of their coaching. We demonstrate how coaches’ experiences of coaching older gymnasts and their observations of successful gymnasts’ older ages and powerful physiques produced critical reflections of their former views, which led to the recognition of alternative truths. This article illustrates the possibility of coaches changing their coaching practices, although we found that coaches were motivated by success rather than athlete empowerment.

Health-related gender boundary crossing in youth elite sport

Abstract Gender has been found to play an important role in moderating health outcomes and behaviours. However, strong similarities in male and female athletes’ handling of pain and injury have been noted. The dominance of health practices associated with ‘orthodox masculinity’ references elite sport’s risky body culture. Drawing on the concept of ‘gender boundary crossing’, we question how athletes negotiate orthodox masculine health practices and body–self relationships in the process of socialization. Our analysis draws on qualitative interviews with male and female athletes aged 14–19 performing at the national level in German youth elite sport. Our findings indicate that while practices of pain ignorance and instrumental body relations dominate among female and male adolescent athletes, some develop less orthodox practices such as caring for the body and avoiding health risks. Critical events and alternative social networks were found to promote this health-related gender boundary crossing in elite sport.

Producing success: a critical analysis of athlete development governance in six countries

ABSTRACT This paper aims to analyse and compare athlete development governance in Australia, Finland, Germany, New Zealand, Sweden and Switzerland. We adopt a Foucauldian framework to theorise athlete development governance as shaped by and based on distinct ‘government mentalities’ and ‘modes of governance’. Qualitative procedures were used to collect and analyse 58 documents related to the 6 countries’ athlete development governance and to conduct 14 informal interviews with national elite sport system experts. Our results confirm other scholars’ findings that sport governance is moving towards managerialist government mentalities. Specific modes of governance that are being implemented to systematise athlete development include targeted forms of funding and the modelling of athlete development. However, the results also highlight how athlete development governance is a site of negotiation, arising from (a) historical events, (b) sociopolitical contexts, (c) financial conditions, (d) government mentalities and (e) sport science knowledge. Our examination demonstrates how these factors not only problematise athlete development governance but also allow for distinctive local athlete development government discursivities and/or sport-specific adjustments such as less result-driven and more holistic interpretations of athlete development. We conclude by outlining implications intended to support stakeholders’ (e.g. coaches’, sport directors’) engagement in conceptualising, implementing and/or revising athlete development frameworks.

Body dissatisfaction in women's artistic gymnastics: A longitudinal study of psychosocial indicators.

ABSTRACT Body dissatisfaction is prevalent in women’s artistic gymnastics (WAG). Cross-sectional research points to social and individual risk factors, however it does not account for potential changes in body dissatisfaction during an athletic season. This study aimed to determine how gymnasts’ body dissatisfaction, risk factors for eating disorders, media internalisation, perfectionism and mood state change during pre-competition, competition and post-competition seasons and to identify how these psychosocial indicators impact on body dissatisfaction during the athletic year. The sample consisted of 20 Brazilian elite women’s artistic gymnasts aged 10–16 years. Data were obtained from a 9-month study using: Body Shape Questionnaire (BSQ); Eating Attitude Test-26; Sociocultural Attitudes Towards Appearance Questionnaire-3 (SATAQ-3); Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale (MPS); Brunel Mood Scale (BRUMS) and triceps and subscapular skinfolds. Body dissatisfaction was higher during the competition season and disordered eating, perfectionism and vigour values were higher in the pre-competition season. Disordered eating has been found as the strongest predictor of body dissatisfaction during all seasons, and mood state partly contributed to body dissatisfaction in the competitive season. Stakeholders should understand that body dissatisfaction and the prevalence of disordered eating may change over time.