Jim Denison

Sports’ disciplinary legacy and the challenge of ‘coaching differently’

ABSTRACT Be empowering. Be athlete-centered. Be autonomy supportive. These are three related topics currently being promoted by sport psychologists and sport pedagogists in an effort to recognize athletes’ unique qualities and developmental differences and make coaching more holistic and coaches more considerate. This has led us to ask, how likely are such initiatives to lead to coaches putting their athletes at the center of the coaching process given that coaches’ practices have largely been formed through relations of power that subordinate and objectify athletes’ bodies through the regular application of a range of disciplinary techniques and instruments [e.g. Barker-Ruchti, N., & Tinning, R. (2010). Foucault in leotards: Corporeal discipline in womens artistic gymnastics. Sociology of Sport Journal, 27, 229–250; Heikkala, J. (1993). Discipline and excel: Techniques of the self and body and the logic of competing. Sociology of Sport Journal, 10, 397–412; Gearity, B., & Mills, J. P. (2012). Discipline and punish in the weight room. Sports Coaching Review, 1, 124–134]? In other words, to try to develop athlete-centered coaches capable of coaching in ways that will empower their athletes without also problematizing the discursive formation of coaches’ practices concerns us [Denison, J., & Mills, J. P. (2014). Planning for distance running: Coaching with Foucault. Sports Coaching Review, 3, 1–16]. Put differently: how can athlete empowerment initiatives be anything more than rhetoric within a disciplinary framework that normalizes maximum coach control? It is this question that we intend to explore in this paper. More specifically, as Foucauldians, we will argue that coaching with greater consideration for athletes’ unique qualities and developmental differences needs to entail coaching in a less disciplinary way and with an awareness and appreciation of the many unseen effects that disciplinary power can have on coaches’ practices and athletes’ bodies.

Social theory and narrative research: a point of view

In this short essay, I explore in a narrative style the following question: do narrative analyses of sport and exercise need to engage more fully with social theory in order to become more forceful in their arguments? More specifically, to have real impact, and to achieve what we are especially trained to do as qualitative social scientists, should our research narratives examine more explicitly—less showing and more telling—the complex relations of power that circulate in and around our topics? It is my aim in this commentary to stake out a position for narrative research that goes beyond modernist representational traditions in order to problematize our understanding of ourselves and others as active moving bodies.

Planning for distance running: coaching with Foucault

Coaching and sport scholars working from a Foucauldian perspective (e.g. Barker-Ruchti & Tinning, 2010; Denison, 2007; Heikkala, 1993; Johns & Johns, 2000) have demonstrated how overly controlling and disciplining training practices can objectify athletes’ bodies and, as a result, limit and constrain their development. In this paper, we draw on Michel Foucaults (1995) analysis of anatomo-political power, or disciplinary power, to illustrate how distance running coaches could begin to problematize the effects that the use of various disciplinary techniques and instruments can have on athletes’ bodies through their everyday planning practices.

Understanding the Change Process: Valuing What it is That Coaches Do: A Commentrary

INTRODUCTION In her article, Tania Cassidy argues persuasively for an understanding of effective coaching that recognises coaching as a highly complex process that carries with it a great deal of responsibility. More specifically, Cassidy tackles the big question that all social scientists face, but many avoid: how to create change? Often the easy choice for researchers looking to build and extend their publication record is to steer clear of any sort of real change agenda and instead document the need for change through critique. Change is messy and studying it even more so. Praxis, interventions, applications...it is difficult to affect people and their practices, which is why Cassidy’s call for a focus on research that effects change is so important.

Perspectives on Coaching Pace Skill in Distance Running: A Commentary

INTRODUCTION Bradley Young’s paper presents an insightful challenge to the dominant conception of coaching distance runners, whereby training a runner to race is best done as a repetitive practice, e.g., repeating intervals at a specific pace. This widely held belief dates back to early experiments in interval training conducted by Woldemar Gerschler and Dr. Hans Reindell of the University of Freiburg in Germany in the late 1930’s.

How power moves: A Foucauldian analysis of (in)effective coaching:

Knowing how to coach effectively is one ever-present truth across all sports and yet our previous research based on the work of Michel Foucault has illustrated how the effectiveness of endurance running coaches’ everyday coaching practices is limited by their use of various disciplinary techniques. Missing from these analyses was any consideration of Foucault’s conceptualization of how modern power works through the disciplinary instruments or the confession to progress coaches’ practices. To address this gap in this paper, we present data from interviews and observations with 15 male high-performance endurance running coaches in the United Kingdom and the United States to examine how the exercise of disciplinary instruments along with the confession affects endurance running coaches’ understanding of how to coach. In our analysis we show how discipline’s instruments and the confession operate in ways that significantly restrict and limit endurance running coaches’ efforts to develop their athletes and progress their practices. In order to develop effective coaches it is therefore essential that coaches become aware of how power operates in and around their coaching environment.

Challenge and relief : a Foucauldian disciplinary analysis of retirement from professional association football in the United Kingdom

The aim of this study was to consider the retirement experiences of British male professional association footballers by utilising Foucault’s analysis of discipline discussed in Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Specifically, we drew upon Foucault to consider how, through the various techniques and instruments of discipline, the professional football context produces ‘docile footballing bodies’ and how this might influence a player’s experiences in retirement. We gathered our empirical material using a Foucauldian-informed interview framework with 25 former professional male football players between the ages of 21 and 34. Our analysis suggested that retirement from football was both a challenge and a relief for our participants, and that their extended period of time within football’s strong disciplinary apparatus significantly influenced how they experienced their retirement.

Educator-Coach as Stranger

The recent allegations of widespread child abuse at Penn State add to the already lengthy and never ending litany of scandals and problems associated within and around intercollegiate athletics. We begin this article by briefly situating these abuses within their socio-historical context and the complex power relations of intercollegiate athletics. We surmise that the economic, social, and moral problems associated with intercollegiate athletics (including Penn State) are nothing new, although they are currently receiving greater attention and scrutiny from scholars and the media. While criticizing intercollegiate athletics consistent inability to align itself with educational values and govern its coaches is worthwhile, its constituents comprise a tiny fraction of all sporting participants. We argue that a more prudent way forward for sport, at all levels, is through coach education and increased regulation. Curiously, the preparation and regulation of coaches has been a major omission from American society. In order to rectify these concerns, we conclude that now is the time to make the educator-coach the new norm

The cyclical relationship between physiology and discipline: one endurance running coach’s experiences problematizing disciplinary practices

ABSTRACT There have been numerous calls by coaching researchers for Foucauldian-informed coach developers to help coaches change their practices to be less reliant on discipline’s techniques and instruments. In this paper, we explored what it might mean for a Foucauldian-informed coach developer to work collaboratively with a male university endurance running coach as he learned how to problematize the use of discipline. More specifically, we examined some of the barriers, challenges, and opportunities that the coach experienced as he attempted to learn, in collaboration with the first author, how to question the unintended consequences of discipline’s techniques and instruments and rethink the “total effects” of his coaching practices. The results revealed that the coach was able to show a degree of problematization, however, in the field the deep-rooted connection between endurance running, physiology, and discipline made coaching for him in a less disciplinary way a challenge. To conclude, Foucauldian-informed coach developers working in sports where physiology is the predominant sport science could use specific pedagogical strategies that work with and explicitly complicate the strong cyclical relationship between discipline and physiology to help coaches implement practices that are less dominated by, not absent of, physiology.

“Good Athletes Have Fun”: a Foucauldian reading of university coaches’ uses of fun

Abstract Fun is deeply ingrained in the ways we talk about and understand sport: Having fun is what makes sport positive and healthy. Drawing on a Foucauldian perspective, we problematize how fun, a psychological construct, informs coaches’ practices. Interviews with 10 varsity coaches from a Canadian university indicated that the coaches used fun to overcome the ‘grind’ of physical skill training. In addition, fun was used to develop and naturalize a need for athletes’ positive psychological traits and skills. In their training contexts, thus, the coaches clearly employed fun to reinforce their use of a number of dominant disciplinary training practices. As a result, instead of operating as a positive force for athlete engagement, the incorporation of fun further legitimized and perpetuated coaches’ ‘normal’ training practices.