sports sociology

Coach: teacher, friend, mentor or the “more experienced other” (in memoriam) – part 2

(Originally published on elitefts, authored by me) This is the 11th day after my young friend and athlete’s passing. It’s a lot of time but not time enough to elaborate on my questions. They remain unanswered. I only coached him for a couple of months but the darkness in our continued private conversation kept me …

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Ego lifting: are you using the right expressions and ideas?

  What exactly is being criticized and rejected here? Besides the obvious technical items in training in terms of planning and execution of a motor task, the object of criticism is the emotional attitude. It means “it is a worthless lift performed to satisfy the ego”. Like so many words and expressions that come from …

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Falling out of love

THE DREAM IS OVER – LONG LIVE THE DREAM – Older adults with a varied life experience will relate to this: there’s a moment, and you don’t know when exactly that moment happened because you are just aware that it passed, that you realize you’re not in love anymore. There may be something there, but …

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Falling out of love

THE DREAM IS OVER – LONG LIVE THE DREAM – Older adults with a varied life experience will relate to this: there’s a moment, and you don’t know when exactly that moment happened because you are just aware that it passed, that you realize you’re not in love anymore. There may be something there, but …

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The outrage game

The outrage game. It goes like this (and we’ve all been guilty, at some point): ORIGIN: a fight, a lift, a meet Outrage wave 1: proficient and experienced outragers come out with one or more outrage claims (“high squat”, “no standards”, “bad judging”, “talks shit”, “coward”, “shitty striking”, “shitty grappling”, “poked his eyes”). Seconds later, …

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Unwanted attention: female muscularity, its admirers and distractors

The spectrum of male admiration/attraction for strong women and female muscularity and how to react to different levels of (sometimes unwanted) attention No, it’s not an article, just some thoughts: For some guys we are disgusting. For some, we are pretty. For some, we are VERY pretty, meaning very sexually attractive. That’s ok – everything …

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The gym as the home: Brewhouse Barbell

This article is a case study partly based on ethnographic analysis about a strength training gym. The goal here is to explore the concepts related to “homeness” on the choice of the training environment. It sets the ground for subsequent essays on alternative training settings and facilities and the concepts involved in their evolution. This …

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Something about principles, right and wrong, good and evil, coherence and violence

(because many of the issues we discuss concerning sports governance, politics and interpersonal relations boils down to this – take it as a warmup for a discussion about performance enhancing drugs and the hidden agendas of the war on drugs) Principles are guidelines or beliefs by which one lives one’s life, makes one’s decisions, etc. …

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