Exercise and Well-Being after High-Performance Sport: Post-Retirement Perspectives [1 ed.] 1032232722, 9781032232720

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EXERCISE AND WELL-BEING AFTER HIGH-PERFORMANCE SPORT POST-RETIREMENT PERSPECTIVES Edited by Luke Jones, Zoë Avner, and Jim Denison

Exercise and Well-Being after High-Performance Sport

Exercise and Well-Being after High-Performance Sport explores whether highperformance athletes have healthy and prosperous relationships with exercise and well-being after retirement from elite sports. This edited collection is the first of its kind to bring together sociologically informed accounts from former highperformance athletes about their retirement experiences and post-sporting careers. The chapters combine creative narrative writing and social theory to frame the experiences of exercise and well-being after retirement from high-performance sport. Written by former high-performance athletes who are now socio-cultural sports scholars, the authors explore how retiring from elite sport impacted their relationship to exercise and physical activity, identity, and long-term mental health. This book is key reading for graduate and postgraduate students, as well as academics and researchers interested in sports retirement experiences, sport sociology, mental health, and well-being. Luke Jones is a lecturer in sport coaching at the University of Bath, UK, and a former youth international and semi-professional footballer. Luke’s doctoral research and subsequent research programme has focused upon exploring retirement from sport using a socio-cultural perspective, including how former athletes relate to their own exercise. Zoë Avner is a lecturer in sports coaching at Deakin University, Australia, and a former French youth international and semi-professional footballer. Her research draws on post-structuralist and feminist methodologies to explore athlete and coach learning, power and coaching, and coaching ethics. Jim Denison is a former NCAA Division I middle-distance runner who also competed internationally following his university career. He is a professor in the Faculty of Kinesiology, Sport, and Recreation at the University of Alberta, Canada. A sport sociologist and coach educator, his research examines the formation of coaches’ practices through a post-structuralist lens.

Exercise and Well-Being after High-Performance Sport Post-Retirement Perspectives

Edited by Luke Jones, Zoë Avner, and Jim Denison

First published 2024 by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 and by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2024 selection and editorial matter, Luke Jones, Zoë Avner, and Jim Denison; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Luke Jones, Zoë Avner, and Jim Denison to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. ISBN: 978-1-032-23272-0 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-23273-7 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-27653-1 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003276531 Typeset in Times New Roman by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India

Luke Jones: To my family, Ali, Erik, and Lewin, and to my co-editors – Zoë Avner and Jim Denison – my mentors and friends. Zoë Avner: To my family, Jarrid and Lando, Philip, Jane, Elise, and Paolo. Jim Denison: To PM, my true touchstone for how I came to live a better life after sport.

Contents

Acknowledgements Editors Contributors

ix x xi

Introduction

1

LUKE JONES, ZOË AVNER, AND JIM DENISON

1

Professional Sport: An Ill-Fitting Suit?

7

KITRINA DOUGLAS

2

Aesthetics of Existence Post-elite Sport Performances: Negotiating the Critic and the Complicit Elite Athlete Self

21

GÖRAN GERDIN

3

Learning to Look Through the Body Rather than At It: An Athlete’s Attempt to Re-configure Their Relationship  with Exercise

34

JOHN TONER

4

A Hard Habit to Break: Epiphanies Stop Coming – If I Ain’t Running!

44

DAVID HOWE

5 

From Disciplined Body to Foucauldian Ethical Thinker:  A Transformational Tale of a High-Performance Baseball Player 

57

CLAYTON KUKLICK

6 

The Continuation of ‘Slim to Win’: The Sustained Impact of a  Dominant Cultural Ideology on One Athlete Post-sport JENNY MCMAHON AND KERRY R. MCGANNON

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viii Contents 7

Finally … for the Joy of It All: A Corporeal Reconciliation Narrative of a Former College Distance Runner

85

TED BUTRYN

8 

Moving in Different Circles 

98

DARRYN STAMP

9

Moving Afresh: A Narrative and Foucauldian Analysis of Transitioning to New Movement Practices 

109

JOSEPH MILLS

Conclusion

123

ZOË AVNER, LUKE JONES, AND JIM DENISON

Index

129

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank David Varley and the team at Routledge for commissioning and supporting this project through to fruition. We would also like to extend our heartfelt thanks to the contributors for their various chapters – without their endeavours and their stories this volume would not have been possible.

Editors

Luke Jones, PhD, is a lecturer in Sports Coaching at the University of Bath, UK. Luke’s doctoral research and subsequent research programme has focussed upon exploring retirement from sport using a socio-cultural perspective, including how former high-performance athletes relate to their own exercise. He has also published in leading socio-cultural journals, including (but not limited to) the International Review for Sociology of Sport; Sport, Education and Society; Leisure Studies; and Sports Coaching Review. Luke has also co-edited a special edition of Sports Coaching Review. Zoë Avner, PhD, is a lecturer in sports coaching at Deakin University, Australia. Her research draws on post-structuralist and feminist ethodologies to explore athlete and coach learning, power and coaching, and coaching ethics. Broadly, her work seeks to support the development of more ethical coaching practices and more diverse, equitable, and inclusive physical cultures both within traditional mainstream and emerging alternative lifestyle sporting contexts. She has published in a number of high-profile journals such as Quest, Sports Coaching Review, and Sport, Education and Society. Jim Denison is a professor in the Faculty of Kinesiology, Sport, and Recreation at the University of Alberta, Canada. A sport sociologist and coach educator. His research examines the formation of coaches’ practices through a post-structuralist lens. He has co-edited a number of books ranging from coaching to endurance running to narrative approaches to research. He also publishes regularly in leading coaching and socio-cultural journals such as the International Review for Sociology of Sport, Journal of Sport and Social issues, and Sports Coaching Review.

Contributors

Ted  Butryn is a professor of Sport Sociology and Sport Psychology in the Department of Kinesiology at San José State University, USA. He holds a PhD in Cultural Studies and Sport Studies from the University of Tennessee. He teaches graduate courses in Sport Sociology and Qualitative Research Methods, and undergraduate courses in Sport Sociology and the Psychology of Coaching. His research agenda is positioned at the nexus of critical sport sociology and sport psychology, and grounded in two complementary themes: (1) the sociocultural and psychological investigation of sport and exercise, and (2) the use of qualitative methodologies to advance critical interpretations of sport and exercise experiences. Kitrina Douglas is a video/ethnographer, storyteller, song-writer, performer, researcher, and narrative scholar whose research spans the arts, humanities, and social sciences working to make research findings more accessible and democratic. Particular areas of interest are identity, transitions, and mental health. She played professional sport for 12 years, and before that amateur golf for five years. As a professional she was English Open Champion and twice European Masters Champion, and played on the first winning European Solheim Cup team. As an amateur she played for Great Britain and England and was British Amateur Champion. Göran Gerdin, PhD, is an associate professor in the Department of Sport Science at Linnaeus University, Sweden. He is a former elite tennis player and still active tennis coach. His research focuses on how different discourses and the working of power shape practices and identities across the fields of sport, coaching, and school health and physical education (HPE). Lately, he has also been researching the enactment of pedagogies for social justice HPE across different contexts as part of the EDUHEALTH project. In his research, Göran draws on qualitative and participatory methodologies as informed by critical theory, poststructural, Foucauldian and Butlerian thinking. David Howe is a medical anthropologist and holds the Dr Frank J. Hayden Endowed Chair in Sport and Social Impact in the School of Kinesiology at Western University, Canada. With reference to the culture of disability, ethics of Paralympism, health and disability, and medical discourse surrounding

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Contributors disability sport, David is concerned that his research highlights ways and means of making sport and physical activity more empowering for marginalised populations.

Clayton Kuklick, PhD, is a clinical associate professor in the Master of Arts in Sport Coaching Program at the University of Denver, USA, where he teaches a variety of courses spanning pedagogy, kinesiology, and exercise physiology. His research interests include exploring coach learning and the use of sociological theory to critique coaching knowledge. Kuklick is a former professional player and collegiate baseball coach. Kerry McGannon is a professor in the School of Kinesiology and Health Sciences at Laurentian University, Canada. Her research focuses on socio-cultural influences of physical activity participation, with two streams: (1) social construction of self-identity and physical activity, and (2) critical interpretations of physical activity and implications for psychological experiences and health. She also studies the media as a cultural site constructing identities and uses interpretive qualitative methodologies (e.g., narrative, discourse analysis). Jenny McMahon, PhD, is a senior lecturer in Education at the University of Tasmania, Australia. Before moving into academia, she was an elite swimmer who represented Australia at an international level winning numerous medals. As a result of her own experiences as an athlete, she was motivated to do more in regard to athlete welfare. Since then, her research and teaching focus has centred around coach education, athlete welfare, athlete experience, and the human rights of athletes in sport. Joseph Mills, PhD, teaches in the Masters of Sports Coaching Program at the University of Denver, USA. A former international track athlete, his teaching and research interests are using social-cultural theories to connect with the biosciences and bridge the laboratory real-world divides in coaching, sport, and exercise. Darryn Stamp, PhD, is the programme leader for the Sport, Exercise and Coaching Science degrees at the University Campus North Lincolnshire. Having spent 13 years playing professional football (soccer) for clubs, including Scunthorpe United, Northampton Town, Chester City, and Stevenage Borough, he joined the ranks of non-league football in 2009, where he later played for Guiseley and Gainsborough Trinity. Following an 18-month spell as assistant manager at North Ferriby FC in the National Premier League, he left his final role in semiprofessional football in November 2018. John Toner, PhD, is a lecturer in sports coaching and performance science at the University of Hull, UK. His research interests include expertise, bodily awareness, and the phenomenology of skilled action.

Introduction Luke Jones, Zoë Avner, and Jim Denison

Retired high-performance sports people’s experiences of many aspects of life beyond sport are extremely complex. They are fascinating. Moreover, every time you speak to someone with a high-performance sport background you hear a different retirement story. Some tales are heart wrenching, equally, some are inspiring, but all are unique to the individual storyteller and deeply connected to the cultures they have found themselves within during and after their careers (Jones & Denison, 2017). Despite this rich tapestry of multifaceted experience in sports retirement, in the main, the depiction of retirement experiences in sport scholarship remains either largely bland – reduced to convenient phases, and packaged nicely into a process of steps to recovery or alternatively so intent on ‘showing rather than telling’ that it fails to move beyond thick description to provide any kind of theoretical insight (Denison, 2016). It seems that in an effort to either stay within the lanes of traditional research approaches or to embrace the promise of storytelling and stay true to ‘story as story’ (Denison, 2016, p. 10) something important gets lost along the way. This volume was inspired by a desire to bridge this gap and artificial binary by combining vivid sensory accounts and theoretical insights into the relationship between movement, health, and exercise in the population of retired high-performance athletes. In doing so, this volume heeds Denison’s (2016, p. 9) call to ‘bring social theory into our accounts in more obvious ways and to find ways to blend rich description with thick analysis’. All three editors of this volume have, at one time or another, competed in high-performance sport with varying degrees of success. Since leaving sport, all three editors have pursued careers in academia, become Foucauldian scholars, and spent energy thinking and writing about problematic aspects of sport and encouraging others to think differently about engrained ideas and practices that preside therein (e.g., Avner et al., 2019; Denison, 2007, 2010; Jones & Denison, 2017). Throughout our lives after sport, we have all experienced some of the wide-ranging challenges associated with the post-sport experience. And, as close friends and colleagues, familiar with looking at sport through a similar lens, have shared our thoughts, feelings, obstacles, and successes with each other (Jones et al., 2022). Throughout these cathartic conversations, common themes began to emerge: (a) that each of our relationships to exercise and issues of physical DOI: 10.4324/9781003276531-1

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Luke Jones, Zoë Avner, and Jim Denison

and mental well-being were deeply interconnected, and what is more, traceable to some aspect of our earlier sporting experiences (Jones & Denison, 2019); and (b) that Michel Foucault’s (1977) analytical tools had proved extremely useful both in helping us make sense of and problematize our sporting and postsporting experiences (Jones et al., 2022). However, in comparing and contrasting our experiences, as well as performing a ‘deep dive’ into the sports retirement landscape and literature, we found that more questions than answers emerged. Consequently, we came to see a broader examination of the sports retirement experience as a fertile and important emerging area within the sociology of sport with implications for health, leisure, and psychological well-being. In this volume then, we have sought to provide a unique population (ideally located to speak with authority on these issues) – a platform to shed light upon the complex, often paradoxical and nuanced experiences of post-high-performance athletes as they negotiate their relationship with exercise, their bodies, and their well-being in their post-sport lives. Sports Retirement Research Findings Living one’s life after leaving elite sport has always been an experience laced with difficulty. Indeed, despite decades of research into this phenomenon, challenging experiences continue to be reported for those managing their lives ‘post-sport’ (see the systematic reviews of Barth et al., 2020; Fuller, 2014; Park et al., 2013). Common problems reported by retired athletes include but are not limited to difficulty forming alternative identities away from sport (Carless & Douglas, 2009); mental health issues including depression, suicide, substance abuse, and disordered eating (Fuller, 2014); a plethora of physical health complaints including higher levels of physical dysfunction, depression, fatigue, sleep interruption, and pain (Simon & Docherty, 2014); consequences of repeated concussions in sport such as depressive episodes, chronic pain, and the development of neurodegenerative diseases (e.g., Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and dementia; Lehman et al., 2012); and significant challenges relating to exercise once leaving sport (Jones & Denison, 2019; Jones et al., 2022; Tracy & Elcombe, 2004). Despite this significant body of literature, little is known about former athletes’ experiences with respect to their ongoing relationship with exercise as one specific ‘post-retirement phase’ (Stambulova et al., 2020). More precisely, there has been no comprehensive collection of reflections dedicated specifically to the socio-cultural investigation of the sports retirement experience. As we have argued elsewhere (see Jones et al., 2022) we see this as an important under-researched aspect of the sport retirement experience that would benefit from a shift in focus and heuristic. We believe such a shift would allow for novel insights regarding the various legacies of high-performance sporting participation for retired athletes’ relationship to exercise, movement, and their bodies to emerge. Furthermore, we believe it would also allow for a better contextualization of athletes’ retirement experiences as inherently connected to the relations of power that typified their career experiences.

Introduction 3 In this volume, we have invited and encouraged former high-performance athletes turned sport scholars to re-imagine their starting points and to ask new questions to allow for different understandings of the complex experience of sport retirement to emerge. Given what we see as the promise of emerging socio-cultural analyses of the sports retirement experience, this book employs socio-cultural examinations of retired sports people’s experiences of exercise and well-being to analyze the multiple, interconnected aspects of this phenomenon from a sociocultural perspective. Towards Social Theories of Exercise and Well-Being in Sports  Retirement Contemporary popular texts written about sport for a mainstream audience typically position successful current and former high-performance athletes as inspirational figures who possess certain ‘secrets to success’ that we can all learn from as we pursue our own goals and ambitions – whatever they may be. One presumption of this logic is that high-level athletes obtain and retain transferable mental and physical skill sets that we might do well to mimic in our own endeavours if we want to lead healthy and fulfilling lives. But is this really a helpful narrative? Is this an accurate way to position athletes and the legacy of a career in sport? Not least because it implicitly frames the social arrangements of high-performance sport as automatic breeding grounds for the development of successful characteristics and behaviours – something sport sociology has routinely told us is simply not true. As Foucauldian sports scholars, we are well aware that this assumption is laden with pitfalls and dangerous connotations – including for high-performance athletes themselves (Gerdin et al., 2019; McMahon et al., 2012). In this sense, bigger questions concerning the social, cultural, and personal legacy and lessons learnt from a career in sport need to be perpetually asked. Accordingly, for this book we wanted to take on a project underpinned by the principle that social theory can act as a heuristic capable of not only critically challenging many of the romantic assumptions associated with the ‘doing of sport’, but of generating alternative implications following one’s immersion in high-performance sport. To achieve this aim, we believed that there was and continues to be tremendous merit, replete with several important lessons and insights, in taking a closer look at the relationship former high-performance athletes have with their exercise and well-being practices. Rather than accepting or indeed perpetuating the assumed notion that being a highperformance athlete automatically allows for a healthy and prosperous relationship with exercise and well-being post-sport, in this volume, our contributors have helped to show how thinking with various social theories allows for a far broader range of complex, diverse, and paradoxical answers to the question: Does immersion within high-performance sport really equip individuals well for becoming a healthy moving body for the rest of their lives? This book is a unique collection of original research chapters by former highperformance athletes who are now socio-cultural sports’ scholars. Our contributors hail from different parts of the world and have experience in a range of individual

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Luke Jones, Zoë Avner, and Jim Denison

and team sports. Each contributor’s chapter uses a combination of creative narrative writing and social theory to frame their experiences of exercise and well-being in their retirement from high-performance sport. Importantly, these chapters not only examine the legacy of the authors’ involvement in high-performance sport, but they also specifically focus upon the various ways that these uniquely placed individuals have attempted to re-imagine how they relate to movement and exercise in this new phase of their lives. The Chapters

In her chapter, Kitrina Douglas, a former professional golfer, presents stories that reveal the influence of dominant and counter narratives upon her professional sport career and current movement and exercise practices. Her chapter highlights how an understanding of narrative theory can shed light on the ongoing constraints the high-performance sport performance narrative can have post-sport, but also celebrates the possibilities that counter stories have to amplify and breathe life into stories that have been heretofore silenced – including those surrounding exercise and well-being for both current and former athletes. In his chapter, Göran Gerdin, a former professional tennis player, reflects on both becoming and unbecoming an elite athlete delving into a protracted process of ethical self-creation involving extended periods of ambiguity and uncertainty as he problematized normalized practices that are tied to pleasure, success, and reward. His chapter offers a discussion of how Foucauldian analyses of athlete narratives can help provide a moderate critique of elite sport practices and support former athletes’ ongoing negotiations of the critic and complicit elite sporting self. In his chapter, John  Toner, a former high-performance golfer, considers how his experiences of golf, and in particular how he learnt to think of his body and his movement exclusively in objective terms, have impacted upon the way in which he now experiences embodied practice. John uses narrative vignettes and accompanying phenomenological analysis to reveal to the reader how the different junctures of his golfing life have connections to his current orientation with regard to how he sees, treats, and lives with his moving body in his current exercise practices. In his chapter, David Howe, a former Paralympic runner, sheds light on the transition from high-performance runner, to jogger, to physical activity enthusiast and the changes that occur in each stage while the movement pattern remains reminiscent of running. His chapter explores the transitions that take place in, on, and through a Paralympic body that physically manifests as non-normative, because of congenital cerebral palsy which impacts extensively upon its right hemisphere. Through his analysis of the natural transformation of the ageing non-normative body he explores the alternations in habitus and technologies of self-monitoring that can either help or hinder the positive development of a lifeworld in retirement from elite sport. In his chapter, Clayton Kuklick, a former high-performing baseball player, reflects on his transformation from disciplined high-performing athlete into Foucauldian ethical thinker upon retiring from professional baseball. Using

Introduction 5 Foucauldian ideas around truth games, problematizing, and ethical self-creation (i.e., technologies of self), he critically analyzes his experiences across time highlighting the tensions, contradictions, and moments of resistance that shifted his identity and led to new discourses, movements, and different ways of life, wellbeing, and doing sport. In their chapter, former Olympic swimmer Jenny McMahon and her colleague Kerry McGannon present a selection of McMahon’s post-sport experiences using storied representations in order to show how the damaging legacy of the dominant cultural ideology ‘slim to win’, which she had embodied during her time as an elite swimmer, continued to affect her many years after finishing her athletic career. In doing so, the authors show how this cultural ideology led McMahon to continue to engage in indirect forms of self-injury in her post-sport life with potential longterm physical health consequences and mental health impacts. In his chapter, Ted Butryn, a former high-performance distance runner, reveals how he encountered and experienced his body as he aged and undertook what he calls corporeal and chemical journeys. By drawing upon a phenomenological lens and the thoughts of scholars who have considered the ageing body, Ted’s contribution explores the complex intersections of a runner identity, blue-collar masculinity, and ageing. Specifically, his chapter considers what these intersections mean for the health, well-being, and exercise of a middle-aged man trying to find a measure of peace through his evolving exercise practices and identity. In his chapter, Darryn Stamp, a former professional footballer, explores how his interpretive lens, and specifically his relational perspective, has allowed him to make sense of his exercise experiences in retirement. His chapter explores how his relational understanding, inspired by the work of Burkett and Crossley, allows him to make sense of his exercise as physical sensations borne out of interactions and relationships with a range of significant others as well as the links he makes to ‘his world’. As his removal from his football career has highlighted, Darryn’s experiences of exercise change as a result of the relational network he finds himself within – with each network presenting their own tensions and possibilities. In his chapter, Joseph Mills, a former high-performance middle-distance runner, describes the process of ‘moving afresh’ and the series of problematizations that led him to transition away from current dominant modernist scientific training practices to new qualitatively different movement practices informed by a poststructuralist logic. In doing so, he highlights the numerous gains to be made by embracing these qualitatively different movement practices as he seeks to move and help others move more thoughtfully, ethically, and sustainably. References Avner, Z., Denison, J., & Markula, P. (2019). “Good athletes have fun”: A Foucauldian reading of university coaches’ uses of fun. Sports Coaching Review, 8(1), 43–61. Barth, M., Gullich, A., Forstinger, C., Schlesinger, T., Schroder, F., & Emrich, E. (2020). Retirement of professional soccer players: A systematic review from social science perspectives. Journal of Sports Sciences, 39, 903–914.

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Carless, D., & Douglas, K. (2009). ‘We haven’t got a seat on the bus for you’ or ‘all the seats are mine’: Narratives and career transition in golf. Qualitative Research in Sport and Exercise, 1, 51–66. Denison, J. (2007). Social theory for coaches: A Foucauldian reading of one athlete’s poor performance. International Journal of Sports Science & Coaching, 2, 369–383. Denison, J. (2010). Planning, practice and performance: The discursive formation of coaches’ knowledge. Sport, Education and Society, 15(4), 461–478. Denison, J. (2016). Social theory and narrative research: A point of view. Sport, Education and Society, 21, 7–10. Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of a Prison. Penguin Books. Fuller, R. (2014). Transition experiences out of intercollegiate athletics: A meta-synthesis. The Qualitative Report, 19, 1–15. Gerdin, G., Pringle, R., & Crocket, H. (2019). Coaching and ethical self-creation: Problematizing the “efficient tennis machine”. Sports Coaching Review, 8, 25–42. Jones, L., & Denison, J. (2017). Challenge and relief: A Foucauldian disciplinary analysis of retirement from professional association football in the United Kingdom. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 52(8), 924–939. Jones, L., & Denison, J. (2019). Jogging not running: A narrative approach to exploring ‘exercise as leisure’ after a life in elite football. Leisure Studies, 38(6), 831–844. Jones, L., Avner, Z., & Denison, J. (2022). ‘After the dust settles’: Foucauldian narratives of Retired Athletes’ ‘Re-orientation’ to Exercise. Frontiers in Sport and Active Living, 267, doi.org/10.3389/fspor.2022.901308 Lehman, E., Hein, M., Baron, S., & Gersic, C. (2012). Neurodegenerative causes of death among retired National Football League players. Neurology, 79(19), 1970–1974. McMahon, J., Penney, D., & Dinan-Thompson, M. (2012). ‘Body practices: Exposure and effect of a sporting culture?’ Stories from three Australian swimmers. Sport, Education and Society, 17(2), 181–206. Park, S., Lavallee, D., & Tod, D. (2013). Athletes’ career transition out of sport: A systematic review. International Review of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 6, 22–25. Simon, J., & Docherty, C. (2014). Current health-related quality of life is lower in former division I collegiate athletes than in non–collegiate athletes. The American Journal of Sports Medicine, 42, 423–429. Stambulova, N., Ryba, T., & Henriksen, K. (2020). Career development and transitions of athletes: The International Society of Sport Psychology position stand revisited. International Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology. Epub ahead of print. https://doi .org/10.1080/1612197X.2020.1737836. Tracy, J., & Elcombe, T. (2004). A lifetime of healthy meaningful movement: Have we forgotten the athletes? Quest, 56, 241–260.

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Professional Sport An Ill-Fitting Suit? Kitrina Douglas

Introduction For the past 20 years, with my colleague David Carless, I have been researching mental health, or rather, the absence of it (Carless & Douglas, 2013a, b; Douglas, 2011; Douglas & Carless, 2008, 2009, 2015, 2020). Much of this work began in high-performance sport where, like many people, we were shocked by the tally of sportspeople who experience mental distress during their sporting careers. We were also saddened to learn that so many sportspeople at the top of their sports experienced anxiety, depression, were self-harming, or had suicidal thoughts. It is difficult to believe that still mental distress attracts stigma and discrimination. Still, public perception is that athletes are immune to mental distress and that being mentally tough (or more recently being resilient) is part and parcel of playing highperformance sport. In tandem with researching mental health and distress among professional sportspeople, I have also been writing auto-ethnographically about my experiences in sport (Douglas, 2009, 2012, 2014, 2021; Douglas & Carless, 2012a, b, 2015). This has mainly taken the form of what Hilde Lindemann-Nelson (2001) described as counter stories, and what Arthur Frank has termed moral nonfiction (Frank, 2004, p. 77). These are particular types of stories that hold a political, ethical, or moral dimension, and while based on embodied life experiences, are shared with the aim of contesting a dominant narrative, questioning its authority and shedding light on alternative narrative scripts (see Frank, 1999, 2000, 2010). Through broadening narrative possibilities, counter stories play an important role in amplifying stories that have been silenced, devalued, are taboo, or remain absent. For a storyteller like myself, whose life, actions, and identity in sport have been shaped publicly by social science researchers and by the way journalists have written about sport, counter stories become acts of purposive moral self-definition. One of the absences, in research terms, as the editors of this edition have noted, has been research exploring physical activity and sport later in life, for individuals who have, during an earlier phase of life, performed at the top of sport. Narrow portrayals of what an athlete might become later in life, and an absence of what their sport experiences mean, from a different vantage point in life, risk finalizing sportspeople’s identities and reduce the potential of insights gained from hindsight (Freeman, 2010). New insight and understanding emerge over time and DOI: 10.4324/9781003276531-2

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Kitrina Douglas

these may influence what we become and/or how we interpret earlier life experiences. Ethical dilemmas faced at one moment in life may have repercussions or implications at a later moment. An absence of stories showing this becoming, learning, and developing, as Zanker and Gard (2008) noted, “delegitimize the experiences of some people, sanction dangerous or unethical practices in sport … and even pave the way for oppressive or unwarranted social policies” (p. 48). What I would like to contribute through this chapter, therefore, is to shed light on the potential of narrative theory to address absences. I hope to breath stories into existence that have been silenced and to make more obvious why some experiences are difficult to put into words but are nonetheless fecund with meaning (Siegesmund, 2013). To this end, I will outline the main issues relevant to my use of narrative theory, and describe briefly how narrative began to make theoretical sense to me. I then use a selection of stories that have meaning and value to me to show this theory in action. First Encounters

If you want to know me, then you must know my story, for my story defines who I am. And if I want to know myself, to gain insight into the meaning of my own life, then I, too, must come to know my own story. (McAdams, 1993, p. 11) Shortly after dropping out of a professional tournament golf, I signed up to study for a BSc in Exercise & Sport Science at the University of Exeter (Douglas, 2014). On this course, I was taught that the professional athlete has, and must have, such a narrow focus on winning “it is impossible for him (or her) to be much else” (Werthner & Orlick, 1986, p. 337, my italics). Defining what an individual can or cannot “be” is a strong and weighty pronouncement. In narrative terms this is an example of “narrative foreclosure,” diminishing and reducing all possibilities for an athlete to grow, develop, and become. The choice of the word, “impossible,” suggests it is final. Alec Grant (2015) would name this “narrative entrapment” when the story about what a person can be is so narrowly defined, it commits symbolic violence. It should be troubling to all of us when a cultural map leads to such a prognosis, to say that it is impossible to be much else. It certainly troubled me sitting in the second row of the lecture theater at the University of Exeter that some well-published academics believed I, as a member of this community, could only “be” one thing, athlete. I wondered how all the other roles and responsibilities I held (and valued) could have been rendered absent by this statement. I am a sister, daughter, friend, aunty, teacher, coach, supporter, and so on. I was also a published author, entrepreneur, journalist, and commentator. Why were these omitted along with the moral and ethical dimensions of myself? This was the first time I had been able to access academic literature, and while I felt there was some truth in this statement, in that some of my colleagues on tour, might say “cut me through the middle and it says athlete” it was certainly not the case for all of us. The fact that I was sitting in the lecture theater and not striding

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round the golf course suggested the claims were less generalizable than the authors suggested. In short, experiences in sport that I valued had been rendered absent. At the time, like many students, I didn’t have the tools to respond, I felt disempowered and was silenced. It wasn’t until a decade later, when I began reading narrative theory, that I was able to place Werther and Orlick’s (1986) statement within a broader theoretical pallet. A pallet that illuminated for me what a master narrative was, and how it takes roots and in the process, silences alternative ways of being an athlete. Through narrative theory I began to understand how experiences become absent. Once I gained some understanding of the theory, I also understood how I could challenge misrepresentations and gain a voice to speak back. I should also be transparent at this point about not particularly wanting to disclose my life. I felt discomfort using my experiences to challenge what is missing. My choice to do so was an ethical move made on moral grounds. Frank (2004) suggested that if we have evidence we are “called” to share it as in the creation and sharing of stories that challenge the dominant narrative it can support other silenced individuals find their voices, and reduce stigma and discrimination. Narrative Awakening Having grown up with an Irish father, I know our family stories were shared as far back in my life as I can remember. The suggestions that humans have created stories since the beginning of time therefore make perfect sense to me. I also recognized, because I had experienced it, that through the storytelling process, and telling personal stories, an individual is able to create an identity and have this validated by their community. As many narrative scholars before me have shown, it is through stories that cultural values and meanings are passed down to the next generation along with rules for acceptable behavior, traditions, and customs (McAdams, 1997; McLeod, 1993). As I began to read the theory, it made sense of my own life, whereas other theories had not been able to. What was new and exciting for me when I first began learning about narrative theory is that through creating and sharing personal stories people also reveal a great deal of information about their culture. For example, in order to create a personal story, a storyteller only has at her disposal what already exists in her culture—this may be thought of as a cultural reservoir of story fragments, tropes, myths, anecdotes, characters who “do” things in story plots, plays, films, poems, songs, and so on. While these may be extensive, they are none the less finite. This means an individual’s ability to narrate their life experiences is somewhat limited by their culture. No resources, no story. For example, there were only binary options for male and female until “gender fluid” stories came over the horizon. Within any culture, some stories are highly valued while others become taboo and are shrouded in silence. Once I understood this, I began to be sensitized to my use of stories, as well as the stories of people around me. When the term “story” is used it doesn’t mean that events, action, and what happens to an individual are made up or are fiction. To be believed, the story will have

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to align with what is expected from such a story (Lindemann-Nelson, 2001). Put simply, if you say you are a winner, your actions better show it. If you say “this competition means everything” you better exhibit the type of behavior that provides evidence. In making evaluations about behavior, each culture creates and then draws on a narrative map to test, in identity terms, we are who we say we are. In the example of being a winner, the culturally shared narrative map includes having a tally of trophies and exhibiting behavior that shows dedication and sacrifice. The outcome is that an athlete’s identity will be questioned when their actions and story fail to align. Added to this, when a culture affirms an identity to be “good,” those who bring to light or challenge this truth are not likely to be believed. The challenger is too frequently silenced and their story becomes absent. Sadly, we have seen this in sport when young people who claimed to have been sexually abused by a coach were not believed. Following decades of abuse and silence, it has taken a groundswell for the sporting world to accept that not all coaches act in appropriate ways. Broadly speaking, therefore, narrative theory provides insights into how the stories people tell (both about their own lives and values, as well as other people’s) influence their actions, behavior, self-evaluations, health, and well-being. Over time, stories tend to cluster together in ways that give rise to recognizable and predictable type of story plot. We call these master or dominant narratives because they create a type of moral force that validates certain ways of being, behavior, and action. Or casts doubt and shame on those who fail to meet these terms. In high-performance sport, athletes are expected to want to win, and winning is often storied as “the” most important thing such that everything else is relegated in importance. Within such a narrative type, an athlete will be expected to put training ahead of relationships and activities such as attending a party, weddings, or other special occasion. Mental health is implicated when an individual adopts or claims a particular narrative (for example, being a winner, or being a “clean” athlete) yet their life experiences do not provide the evidence (they lose or are caught cheating). The athlete who says winning is everything, yet loses, is “outed” by the martial circumstances of their life and the identity they claim is undermined. Such events are often at the root of the distress evident among the athletes in our research who prior to transition out of sport said winning was the most important thing. In our high-performance sport research, David Carless and I identified at least three different types of narratives in sport (Douglas & Carless, 2006, 2015); we called these performance, discover, and relational narrative. The performance narrative is the dominant narrative, and most times it is storied as being the only way to excel in sport. The following extract provides a flavor: What can be more important? My golf is more important than anything. If I was in a relationship I would have to say to whoever that was, this is huge – it is not a job. It’s much more than that. It’s not just a career. I think that for all of us, it becomes our whole life. Because I don’t think that you can possibly be successful without it being the most important thing. (Douglas & Carless, 2015)

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In the above extract are three characteristics of the performance narrative: first, winning is more important than relationships; second, all athletes are said to hold the same values—and third, an individual “can’t be successful” without doing it this way. There are two issues here worth noting. The first, for those whose lives align with the performance narrative, self, and performance, goes hand in hand, when the golfer fails on the course, the self fails. This means life becomes a yoyo, up and down with performance fluctuations, and any deviation from winning, dedication, and sacrifice is likely to cause mental distress. In contrast, for those whose lives align with alternative narrative templates, this totalitarian monologue risks their experiences being devalued, and their “truth” being disbelieved. “Counter” narratives are those story plots that identify, resist, and undermine the authority of a dominant narrative by bringing to light morally relevant details that have been missing or misrepresented (Douglas & Carless, 2015; LindemanNelson, 2001). The discovery and relational narrative are alternative story plots and both provide evidence of athletes reaching the top of sport without putting winning first. Having laid out some of the key foundations of narrative theory, in what follows I draw on these principles to explore my life experiences in more detail, and particularly post professional sport, physical activity, and exercise. I should like to begin, however, with an illustration of how stories carry unintended consequences. Stories told by well-known coaches or athletes can influence how novices behave and what they believe is needed to improve, and this can also infuse cultural expectations about what it takes to get to the top. In the following I’d like to make visible the ways in which the dominant narrative, the performance narrative, becomes enacted within a culture and some of the consequences that silence experiences that fail to align with the dominant narrative script. Alison Harris (pseudonym), a national coach, who played international amateur and professional tournament golf alongside me, said, Kitrina, I tell my students how hard you worked, that you were on the practice ground before I arrived and were there when I left, I tell them if they want to get to the top, they have to do that, they have to hit 1000s balls every day. The media’s account would seem to back up what Alison believed was responsible for me winning. They wrote: As soon as Kitrina finishes her round she leaves the course, eats and returns to the practice ground to work for a couple of hours. It is this relentless drill that has taken her to the top in her first season. (Cited in Douglas, 2014) The “story” the media and my colleague create suggests that I was successful because of relentless drill. The language “drill” is used as a device to create a particular type of identity. The Daily Express provided another example of this:

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Kitrina Douglas Last weekend the long legged 5ft 9 Miss Douglas 21 turned the form book of women’s golf into a comic strip. The 50-1 long shot became British Champion after mowing down five internationals in a sensational march to the title. (Cited in Douglas, 2014)

This time I am mowing down the opposition and marching to the title. Did I use this language? No. Do I ever feel I was a soldier? No. Would I have explained my experiences in this way? No. Most times, war analogies and metaphors slip by unnoticed. Most of us have come to accept them as normal and see high-level sport as essentially a “conflict” between two and more “enemies.” In this sense, using the language of war to describe sport provides a way of dramatically and artificially heightening the importance and the consequences of winning and losing. War metaphors are an important and commonplace linguistic device that allows this particular way of doing sport to appear “normal”—the only way of doing sport. It isn’t just that I feel symbolic violence when an identity is created of me being a soldier, mowing down the opposition and marching to titles. Equally misrepresenting of me is the fact that all the dimension of practice that I value are missing. What my colleague and the media do here (and what is common) is they adopt the performance narrative, a story of singular dedication to winning, and surmise that “it is this” that took me to the top. It doesn’t on the surface appear offensive. But young performers are thus encultured by a fictional account of what it takes to reach the top, yet the label on the package reads “truth.” When I share stories about how I practiced, and what it meant to me, I voice a different language, different actions and interests. Further, neither the media or my colleagues can say for sure that it was hitting a lot of balls that made me a champion. As I have suggested (Douglas, 2014a, b, 2012), it could have just as easily been going sightseeing with my family during tournaments, or fulfilling spiritual obligations that aligned with my beliefs, or perhaps it was the drama lessons before I even started playing golf (Douglas, 2022). What may have made it possible for me to reach the top of sport may have been that winning wasn’t as important to me as it was to many other tour players. I mention the above because, as Frank (2004) reminded us, storytellers redraw boundaries and “render present what would otherwise be absent” (p. 62). What has been rendered present, by history books, the media, and in many “fans” memory, are wins and performances. An example of the way the values of the performance narrative infuse public perceptions is the response of a woman on a cliff path who stopped me and asked, “What are you doing now?” and when I responded with “a PhD,” she proclaimed “what a waste of all that talent.” It’s only a waste of talent if all I was supposed to be and do was to perform in sport. If my life is a journey where I can develop and grow in multiple directions and in activities that I value equally, not playing golf isn’t a waste, it could be storied as a step on a journey. On this occasion I was able to respond with a counter story which silenced and

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undermined the woman’s statement, I replied, “What about all the talent that was being wasted while I was playing golf?” In what follows I should like to provide further counter stories from different moments in my life. Given I believe that how we are introduced to high-performance sport plays a role in our exit possibilities, I begin by returning to a story I wrote in 2009 about how I dropped out of school to play a sport full time. I follow this with a story about how I experienced a typical practice session once I was a multiple-winning professional golfer. Following these I present two counter stories which I hope communicate how I experience physical activity as a 60-year-old female from the south west of England. Do You Fancy an Ice Cream? (Adapted from Douglas, 2009) The lure was the ice cream. He had offered them ice creams on the way back from the golf range. She and her little sister eagerly accepted the invitation to ice cream and even hit a few shots at the range. This offer, two days later, was a little different. “Do you fancy leaving school and playing golf for a year?” her dad asked, as if he was asking about ice creams again. She thought golf was boring, but school was pretty boring too and she had no burning desire to do anything in particular. “If you don’t like it you can do your A levels,” he reasoned. It all sounded so simple driving along in the car, it wasn’t an intense conversation, it didn’t even seem particularly important, it was just like he was asking do you fancy chocolate or vanilla? “If you like it,” he continued, eyes not diverting from the road, “but aren’t very good, you can do your A levels, but you will have a game you can play for the rest of your life. Golf’s played everywhere. If you like it,” he glanced over toward her shrugging his shoulders in the process, “and you are good at it, no-one can stop you. You see, you can always finish your education, at any age, but with sport,” there was a moment’s pause, “time is an issue, it’s a little different.” He left his proposal hanging. The ball, so to speak, was in her court. Of course, she didn’t know anything about golf, other than it was boring. She liked the smell of the lamb’s wool sweaters in the golf shop though—she quite fancied having one of those. Three different options, no drawbacks, no pressure, only opportunities. She shrugged her shoulders: Why not? While she and her father had been rather underwhelmed regarding the gravity of her decision to leave school at 17, without qualifications and without skills in the activity she was pursuing, her teachers weren’t quite so at ease with the decision and announcement at the beginning of term: “You’re doing WHAT?” enquired her form teacher. “I’m leaving school at Christmas to become a professional golfer” she said. “Do you think you have reached the standard then? It’s very difficult to make it in professional sport you know! Do you think you are good enough?” “I don’t know”, she replied in all honesty, but enjoying the drama, “I haven’t even played yet.”

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Practice (Adapted from Douglas, 2012) The warm bed wasn’t alluring enough, and though pleasant and comforting, she drew herself from the soft sheets, pulled on a pair of shorts, a tee shirt, socks, and trainers and headed for the car. Minutes later, she pulled up by the field and was emptying a bag of white balls onto the tanned grass. The sun hadn’t long been up and its orange light made the practice ground appear magical. She loved these mornings, cool air on her skin, an orange and red sky, hidden pockets of warm air, a musky aroma rising from the grass. As she squeezed each shot, it fizzed through the stillness but hardly made a sound as it settled near the white post she was aiming at 70 yards away. And it was always exactly 70 yards to start with. Her grouping of hit balls around the white post suggested she was no normal player, in fact, if you didn’t know better you would swear she had positioned the balls around the post as opposed to hit them from the length of a football pitch away. Her next shot was so accurate it pitched fully onto the 3-inch-wide post and ricocheted off making a loud crack, it was the only sound in the still air. Movement that stopped with the crack further up the field drew her attention. Three deer had been passing, now, they watched her, motionless, statuettes in the sun’s spotlight. She stared back, not moving, nor breathing, aware of slender legs, long bodies, a dignified and dainty presence. The lead deer turned its head from her to draw the morning through its nostrils, then with its nose it swept the dewy grass. Raising its head again something drew it back on its journey. The other deer looked from her to the larger deer, breathed-in a message hidden in the morning air and followed on. Her body went back to hitting, but her mind was filled with words. They arrived as silently and unexpected as the deer, they filled her head with joy, as had the deer, like the deer they would not move, so she emptied them out on a piece of paper. The only paper she could find was a page in her yardage book, but the lines came flooding out. As she wandered off to collect her balls, she hummed allowing the words to drop into her melody and out popped a ditty, she wouldn’t be so grandiose to call it a song, but she sang it just the same, maybe to herself, maybe to the deer, or maybe to remind her of that moment with the deer. Swells Up ‘Arrivederci seal’ Lying back minding my own business Waiting for, another set to show I’m drifting down, looking for some space When you show up, Beauty and such grace And in your eyes I can see A kind of curiosity I see you looking back at me Looking at you

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It’s 5:30 a.m., I’m sleepy, but swell is forecast. I make coffee, and sit quietly. Tom wakes up and takes tea. It’s getting light, I open the patio doors, the air is cool but not cold, and I catch Tom’s eye. We can both hear the sea, and we both recognize in each other’s eyes what that means. For me, it’s not good, and he knows that, for two reasons. First, it means there’s an onshore wind, and second, it means it’s gonna be big. Small swell doesn’t announce itself like the big breakers. I start singing, in my head, the Clash’s hit “Should I stay or go or should I go now, If I go it will be trouble …” and laugh, I’m excited, I’m expectant, I love the ocean. You rise above Then you disappear Deep you go Like you have no fear You rise again Pop up next to me I am also very apprehensive. I don’t like getting pummeled, I can’t manage big waves, I don’t duck dive. I’m hoping for something smaller than the sound predicts and hope my instinct is wrong, that it’s not big. I pull on my summer suit, 3 millimeters of neoprene on the body and 2 millimeters on the arms, it hugs my body, clings to its curves, extenuates every imperfection and trace of fat. I don’t mind, I like the way I look in this suit, I see a girl and physical strength, I like my height, and don’t really notice 60-year-old lines, bags, or aging. This suit makes me feel good, it’s the only type of suit I want to wear, and barefoot is always preferable to shoes. I’m out of the chalet like a whippet, waxing my board, and we head over the dunes. I’m taking my rocket fish and Tom his small blue board. Down through the dunes we duck and dive, both skipping along barefoot. Half way down the 200-foot drop, the dunes level out a little. From here you can get a better look at the swell, more awareness of the shape of the waves, where the breeze is blowing from, and it all matters. Today, the forming crests spill over in slow motion. I’m disappointed but walk on. I started surfing during my PhD, sharing on office with Tom and seeing him go off stressed every Friday and coming back every Monday full of joy. Hearing him sigh, lean back in his chair and begin to tell me about the dolphin that swam under his board, or bull seal that popped up next to him. I’d like to try that, I thought. Then Nathan and I were cycling round Cornwall and cycled right past a sign saying learn to surf. I came back the next day and booked a lesson. I asked for a one-onone but the instructor said, “sorry we only do group lessons, next one is 12 pm.” I came back at that time and it was just me, kind of—it was meant to be. The young man giving me the introduction explained things well, taught me what rip current is, why waves break, when to paddle, what goofy footed means, how to put a leash on my leg, and other than that, he didn’t give me too much technique. He just let me feel the board and the waves, and I laughed so much as my board, with me clinging on, was catapulted forward by the white water and propelled toward the shore. I

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wonder what he saw, what expectations he had of me for that lesson. A year later he caught up with me walking back from the surf, “I can see why you did so well at golf” he said. I wonder what he saw a year later, in that 40-year-old body—Was it my focus, intensity, a paddling against the odds? Was what he saw different to the other female 40-year-olds he introduced to surfing? “Are you any good” a relative asks when he learns I surf, “did you see the big wave surfing,” I shake my head, no to both, I’m useless, and not interested in watching. I’m taken back to the question I was asked by so many men when they found out I played golf, are you any good? By the time we get to the beach, it’s obvious it’s too big, for me. Sure, plenty of surfers will go out, Tom being one of them, and they will all catch magnificent waves, riding clean faces, and jumping off before disappearing beneath the ocean where their every move may be watched by seals and sometimes dolphins. These animals make us all look awkward. Where do you go when the storms hit these shores How do you dive so deep You turn circles underneath my world And somersaults in the sun I wonder, if I had got into surfing when I was 17, could I take these waves on now? I wonder, would I be skillful enough to get out the back on days like this? Well you can get out I tell myself, but then you’ll just sit there, you won’t go for any waves, because you know what will happen, and it won’t be much fun. I am fearful. If I had begun surfing when I was in my teens, would I not be so fearful, of being held down, of my lungs filling with salt water, of not being able to catch my breath, of looking down from what feels like the top of a building on an impossible to catch face of a wave, a wave that’s hollowing out before me, sucking air downwards, wishing I’d gone for a run instead? When I played golf I was cautious, I knew I couldn’t take on big carries over water, I was calculating, stuck to what I knew I could do. Some surfers call it the walk of shame, coming in without getting a ride. I didn’t even get wet and walk back. I call it the walk of sense, why would I push myself and not enjoy it? I want to enjoy it, and so sometimes, I turn around, disappointed. No rides, no surfing with seals, no glint of a shard of sunlight through a wave, no paddling out with a friend, no dancing along a wave. An Everyday Occurrence I run just about every day. I figure the human body must be able to do this right across the lifespan. It’s no big deal. I can’t remember the number of times someone has said “what about your knees.” What is it about people that they worry about knees? Sitting down is the problem. I tell people, I’m more worried about the hours I spend on my bum than the hours I spend plodding along and besides, with the amount of cake I eat, I need to run.

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Most days it’s just 5 miles, but every three or four days, I go further, 10, 20, 25, 30, I seem to have endless untapped energy. Last night, I decided to do one of my longer runs this morning and fell asleep running the route in my mind. I know it so well I imagined the terrain, what areas might now be overgrown as we head into summer. From my house on the banks of the Bristol Channel I head west, along the coast path toward Clevedon, then up a steep zigzag track into Priory woods, through the speckled flashes of light hitting my eyes through the forests canopy, over the motorway and along a lane to Cadbury camp, an Iron age hill fort still visible. I turn round 180 degrees to scan the horizon and spectacular views toward Weston-super-Mare, the Bristol Channel, and Welsh coast. Turning back I border Cadbury camp and then along the lane again through a gap in the fence, through four fields, sheep scattering in every direction, then out through the gate and down between the expensive houses hidden in the woods, over another style and more sheep, then behind Noah’s Arc zoo, I spot an elephant, up another hill and over two fields to the donkeys, six animals I’ve befriended, old fellas that look like they’ve been spared the knackers yard, “hello donkeys” I call out as I pass. Is it too gray, too cold, or too early for them to be out? I don’t wait. Down the hill behind one of Bristol’s exclusive private schools for boys, through another field and downhill this time to Priory wood, past allotments, over the motorway again, along sheep way, past a series of bird hides, into the marina area Portishead and I’m asleep. This run is half of what is called round here, the Gordano Round, a 42-kilometer/26-mile figure-of-8 loop in the country, and the bit I’ll do today is about 17 miles. For the 2 hours and 30-minute run, I take a credit card, my phone, and the entry card to my home, and that’s it. Although I’m looking forward to the run, I’m equally looking forward to stopping for coffee and pastries at Mokoko, and my departure time and route are all synched to Mokoko’s opening time of 9 a.m. I wake before the alarm, the dawn is arriving, which shoes might work today I wonder, I check the weather forecast. If it’s rainy, I’ll wear trail shoes, if dry, I’ll wear my road shoes. The sky is a purple blue, the water between my home and the Welsh coast like glass, mirroring the sky. I make coffee in a cafetière, and drink it from a blue cup and saucer, a ritual, or maybe just still, a delight, I’ve been drinking my morning coffee from the same cup and saucer for 30 years. I love it, the texture of the ceramic, the color, the shape of the cup, the curl of the lip and it not being too big. I’m venturing out “before the world wakes up,” using 84-year-old Nell’s words, a participant in our research with women in rural areas. She wasn’t interested in bone mineral density, managing her balance or blood pressure. How many people in their 80s would describe their exercise as “an Arthurian Knight off to seek adventure.” And I’m lost in thought, writing, analysis, in conversation, creating songs, and then the day before intrudes. “I saw you along Nore Road,” says the woman scanning my shopping at the checkout. “You’re so good,” she says. I’m not, I think. I don’t really self-identify as “a runner,” I don’t want to be observed. I don’t run to be good, and the so many women who say I shouldn’t feel bad because they

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don’t look so fit. I find myself running early in the morning to avoid being seen. Is that because of how observed I felt playing golf. Is it because I just don’t want to be put in a box by others, now too? “Are you training for London?” a driver asks, pulling over and winding his window down. I feel interrupted, I smile, “no, just running” I say without stopping, I start justifying myself in my head, carrying on the conversation of why I’m not competing in anything. I don’t like competition. I run because I can, because my body doesn’t hurt, because I love the quietness of the morning, but love the birds, the deer, the sheep, the ocean. I hear a truck coming up behind but stay in the middle of the narrow lane as I’m fed up moving over for cars, and anyway I’m just nearing the top of the hill, make them wait, I think. Most drivers make no concession for pedestrians, cyclists, or people plodding along. At the brow, where there is a passing place, I move to the side, “don’t move over for us” a voice bellows through the open window. I turn my head and observe three men in the front cab of a flatbed truck, “that’s bloody marvelous” the driver continues through the open window. His comment makes me laugh, the workmen pass, I plod on. “In anybody’s book that is impressive,” says a man on the same hill brow, stood still with his dog, both watching me run up the hill. As I chug closer he continues, “I used to be a runner.” I continue his sentence in my mind and wonder why he stopped. In the previous stories, I have attempted to render present what has been absent in the stories written about me. In particular, how I experience high-performance sport, and then how I experience some of the physical activities I currently participate in. I’m aware these more recent stories have been influenced by other stories I have written or have felt called to write. Of course, the above cannot tell it all, they cannot show it all nor can storytelling convey many of the most powerful experiences that go on, in a body, in motion. And I refer here to territory where rhythm, music, songs, the smell of the earth, the mist on my face become entwined and merge, where somatic pre-linguistic body knowledge exists without words. It seems, in this contribution, I was asked to cleave from my body what physical activity means to me now, as if my body can disentangle six decades of experience, desire, wonder, and interconnection. Through narrative theory, I have a bridge from living in a world where dominant narratives exist, to meeting these narratives as voices and action in my head, and then confronting them head-on in the world. As listening devices, narrative alerts me to which narratives exist in the lives of people I encounter. Additionally, the theory provides me with a framework for understanding how other’s values and beliefs have been influenced by what is available in their culture. I often find my experiences are “at odds” with what people expect. I am aware, very acutely from writing this, how much I want to disappear from the other’s view. I remember my advisor saying that through my doctoral research I could make a name for myself. My thoughts, as he said this, were that I already have a name, I don’t want any more fame. I told him, “I’m a potterer.” He said,

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“Potterers never accomplish anything.” I begged to differ. I believe these feelings of not wanting to be seen are the sediment of being placed—by dominant narratives in sport—in an ill-fitting script. Like being asked to wear a prison uniform. Whether this be what it means becoming a dropout, leaving school without any qualifications, or saying I’m going to become a professional as if it is that easy. It is an ill-fitting script that removes creativity, agency, and song writing from the pleasure and expertise of generating skills while hitting balls. It is naïve for exercise medicine to assume that we all want our exercise to focus on physical benefits, as opposed to becoming Arthurian Knights, or just enjoying how rhythm and feel are experienced. Having an understanding about the possibility of broadening cultural horizons through making present stories that are absent seems an important contribution to make and something worth engaging in. While I still don’t want to share my life and have it analyzed and dissected I also recognize that the performance narrative remains a narrow, omnipresent script that continues to silence alternative ways of living, being, and experiencing the world. I want to challenge its power. I hope the modest contribution here might challenge narrow understandings about aging, about female participation in sport, and perhaps doing so might open up possibilities for athletes during their sport careers to chart alternative ways of being in sport, and maybe even help some to reclaim a story that is valued, yet missing. References Carless, D., & Douglas, K. (2013a). Living, resisting, and playing the part of athlete: Narrative tensions in elite sport. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 14(5), 701–708. Carless, D., & Douglas, K. (2013b). “In the boat” but “selling myself short”: Stories, narratives, and identity development in elite sport. The Sport Psychologist, 27, 27–39. Douglas, K. (2021a). You’ll never walk alone: Snapshots of British football, love, loss, pride, shame, hope, inclusion and a song. International Review of Qualitative Research, Online first published 9 Oct 2022. https://doi.org/10.1177/19408447211049526 Douglas, K. (2021b). “And I dedicate this win to…” Performing grief in high-performance sport. Autoethnography, 2(3), 334–344. Douglas, K. (2014). Challenging interpretive privilege in elite and professional sport: One [athlete’s] story, revised, reshaped, reclaimed. Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health, 6(2), 220–243. Douglas, K. (2012). Signals and signs. Qualitative Inquiry, 18(6), 525–532. Douglas, K. (2009). Storying myself: Negotiating a relational identity in professional sport. Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise & Health, 1(2), 176–190. Douglas, K., & Carless, C. (2020). The long run: A story about filmmaking as qualitative research. Qualitative Inquiry, 26(3–4), 281–290. Douglas, K., & Carless, D. (2015). Life Story Research in Sport: A Narrative Approach to Understanding the Experiences of Elite and Professional Athletes. London: Routledge. Douglas, K., & Carless, D. (2012a). Membership, golf and a story about Anna and me: Reflections on research in elite sport. Qualitative Methods in Psychology Bulletin, 13(1), 27–33.

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Douglas, K., & Carless, D. (2012b). Taboo tales in elite sport: Relationships, ethics, and witnessing. Psychology of Women Section Review, 14(2), 50–56. Douglas, K., & Carless, D. (2009). Abandoning the performance narrative: Two women’s stories of transition from professional golf. Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, 21(2), 213–230. Douglas, K., & Carless, D. (2008). The team are off: Getting inside women’s experiences in professional sport. Aethlon: The Journal of Sport Literature, XXV, 241–251. Frank, A. W. (2010). Letting Stories Breathe: A Socio-narratology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Frank, A. W. (2004). The Renewal of Generosity: Illness, Medicine, and How to Live. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Frank, A. W. (2000). The standpoint of the storyteller. Qualitative Health Research, 10(3), 354–365. Frank, A. W. (1999). The Wounded Storyteller. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Freeman, M. (2010). Hindsight: The Promise and Peril of Looking Backward. New York: Oxford University Press. Grant, A. (2015). Re-storying narrative identity: A dialogical study of mental health recovery and survival. Journal of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing, 22, 278–286. Lindemann-Nelons, N. H. (2001). Damaged Identities, Narrative Repair. New York: Cornell University Press. McAdams, D. (1993). The Stories We Live By: Personal Myth and the Making of the Self. New York/London: Guilford Press. McLeod, J. (1997). Narrative and Psychotherapy. London: Sage. Siegesmund, R. (2013). Dewey, auto-ethnography, and the abuse of global dialogue. In N. K. Denzin & M. Giardina (Eds.). Global Dimensions of Qualitative Inquiry. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press. Werthner, P., & Orlick, T. (1986). Retirement experiences of successful Olympic athletes. International Journal of Sport Psychology, 17, 337–363. Zanker, C., & Gard, M. (2008). Fatness, fitness, and the moral universe of sport and physical activity. Sociology of Sport Journal, 25, 48–65.

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Aesthetics of Existence Post-elite Sport Performances Negotiating the Critic and the Complicit Elite Athlete Self Göran Gerdin

Introduction Both becoming and unbecoming an elite athlete is a complex endeavour filled with mixed feelings and emotions some of which are related to certain moral and ethical dilemmas. In recent years, reports of severe depressions and mental illnesses as related to the pressures of elite sport and retirement have increased (e.g., Barth et al., 2020; Montero et al., 2022; Souter et al., 2018) raising questions about the ethics of elite sport and its short- and long-term impact on athlete well-being (Agnew et al., 2017). A wealth of previous research has, for instance, demonstrated how the disciplinary power and technologies of elite sport shape both coaching practices and constructions of the athlete self (e.g., Denison et al., 2017; Markula, 2004; Markula & Pringle, 2006). Less research, however, has explored how former elite athletes understand and (re)negotiate disciplinary practices and the self in relation to sport and physical activity post sport retirement (Jones et al., 2022). I grew up in a small town in Sweden during the golden years of Swedish tennis in the 1980–1990s with the likes of Björn Borg, Mats Wilander and Stefan Edberg all being ranked number one in the world and winning many of the grand slams. I excelled as a junior tennis player winning medals in both regional and national championships. Between the ages of 18 and 23, I then played (semi) professionally, competing in international tournaments and playing for various tennis clubs in places like Australia and New Zealand. I officially retired from elite tennis in 2003 when I started my secondary teaching degree. My problematisation of elite sporting practices and its lasting effect on the self did not, however, start until some years later when I commenced my doctoral studies and began examining the works of Michel Foucault and how his ideas had been drawn upon by sport scholars. Drawing on Denzin’s (1989) proposal that there are four kinds of epiphanic moments ‘which leave marks on people’s lives’ (p. 70), my discovery of and engagement with Foucauldian theorising was indeed the ‘illuminative’ epiphanic moment that prompted my critical examination and problematisation of elite sporting practices. Based on my elite sporting experiences – the ‘cumulative’ epiphanic moment (Denzin, 1989) – my ‘problematisation’ began to revolve around my up until then acceptance of, and adherence to, the disciplinary practices of elite sport. At the time I was, for instance, drawn to Kelly and Hickey’s (2008) Foucauldian examination DOI: 10.4324/9781003276531-3

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of identity formation within professional Australian Football League (AFL) that showed how the workings of power within the AFL created narrow athletic subjectivities, which made it difficult for transition and change in young people’s lives. Through a self-reflexive process, I started problematising how the disciplinary practices involved in producing elite tennis players such as myself were implicated in the creation of narrow and potentially unhealthy subjectivities. As I have discussed elsewhere (Gerdin et al., 2019), it was also certain ‘major’ epiphanic moments or ‘moments of crisis’ (Denzin, 1989, p. 70) associated with me experiencing youth player suicides as a tennis coach that provided further catalyst for this problematisation. It was as a consequence of these epiphanic moments, and with the help of Foucauldian theorising, that I also started questioning the ethics behind the disciplinary practices of elite sport. Drawing on the Ancient Greeks’ emphasis on the aesthetics of existence, Foucault (1985) invited us to focus on the production or shaping of an ethical self through a restrained and stylised engagement with problematised activities. In this chapter I present a narrative that delves into my creation of a post-elite athlete self as a work of art (Foucault, 2000) in relation to (elite) sporting practices. My hope is that this narrative can provide a further critique of how elite sporting practices often are implicated in the production of narrow and unhealthy identities but also offer some insights into how such practices, with the help of Foucauldian theorising, can be problematised and transformed. Sport Practices and the Self Sport is often seen as an important arena for producing law-abiding, democratic, productive and healthy citizens. Coakley (2015) termed this belief in the inherent goodness and purity of sport as the ‘Great Sport Myth’ and claimed that for those who believe in this myth, sport is believed to automatically produce positive personal development and social capital benefits such as the building of character, improving of health, boosting of academic performances and enhancing of social statuses and connections (see, e.g., Donaldson & Finch, 2012; Erdal, 2018; Staurowsky et al., 2015). However, these findings do not address the complexity and contextuality of sport experiences. When individuals believe in the inherent goodness of sport, they become more apt to ignore that sport experiences can lead to diverse outcomes and often fail to advocate to improve sport experiences for all (Coakley, 2015). This importantly involves a focus on how sport practices help shape the construction of athlete identities – identities that have an impact on both the short- and long-term health and well-being of individuals (Gerdin et al., 2019). Indeed, writing this chapter in 2021 when two high-profile athletes, Naomi Osaka and Simone Biles, respectively, pulled out of Wimbledon and the Olympics due to mental health concerns highlights a need for everyone involved in contemporary sport to ask some fundamental moral and ethical questions such as: What role does sport play in (re)producing toxic practices of self and identities? What discourses and power relations inherent in sport constitute these practices of self and identities?

Aesthetics of Existence Post-elite Sport Performances 23 Research specifically related to retirement has to date mainly focused on when athletes transit away from sport (e.g., Park et al., 2013) and from a psychological perspective (e.g., Stambulova et al., 2007) with less research focusing on the ‘postretirement phase’ (Stambulova et al., 2021). However, those studies of this postretirement phase which do exist, for instance, show that long-term consequences for former elite athletes include increased levels of a range of mental health problems such as stress, anxiety and eating and depressive disorders (e.g., Åkesdotter et al., 2020) and athlete’s increased potential for psychological distress due to having to recreate their athletic identity in post-retirement (Menke & Germany, 2019). Based on these concerns, research within sport psychology has focused on how athlete health and well-being can be better cared for both during and after involvement in elite sport. This research agenda has, for instance, given rise to extensive research on athlete’s ‘dual career’ (see, e.g., Stambulova et al., 2015) and led to national sporting organisations adopting national guidelines, such as in Sweden, to support their athletes’ dual careers. However, as recently pointed out by Jones et al. (2022), there remains a gap in research that considers the long-term implications of having been a ‘docile’ elite athlete body: Put simply, socio-cultural researchers who analyze the phenomenon of retirement from high-performance sport have yet to extensively consider the longerterm social implications of having ‘lived in sport’ — after the dust has settled, as it were, due to the specific discourses and power relations present and active within high-performance sport systems and cultures. (Jones et al., 2022, p. 12) Rather than drawing on psychological perspectives and in taking heed of Jones and colleagues’ (2022) call, in this chapter, I draw on Foucauldian theorising, particularly his writings on technologies of self, to explore ways that former elite athletes might problematise their own relationship with the disciplinary logic of sport and its long-term consequences for understanding the self. I am particularly interested in examining understandings that offer possibilities to disrupt the insidious impact that disciplinary training technologies can have on athlete identity and well-being post-retirement. Disciplinary Power, Aesthetic Existence and the Self as a Work of Art Foucault (1995) used the term ‘disciplinary power’ to refer to the control, judgement and normalisation of subjects in such a way that they were ‘destined to a certain mode of living or dying’ (p. 94). He in particular explored the position of the body as a site of the subject’s social production and suggests that bodies are subjugated to certain forms of ‘disciplinary technologies’. Foucault (1995) claimed that the body is a crucial site of disciplinary, normalising practices and the workings of disciplinary power define: how one may have a hold over others’ bodies, not only so that they may do what one wishes, but so that they may operate as one wishes, with the techniques,

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Göran Gerdin the speed and the efficiency that one determines. Thus discipline produces subjected and practised bodies, ‘docile’ bodies. (Foucault, 1995, p. 138)

Foucauldian analyses of disciplinary power and technologies in sport reveal the production of docile and normalised athletes (e.g., Denison & Mills, 2014) where athletes’ bodies are controlled via analysis of movement, fitness testing, monitoring of performance, the collection of statistics, hierarchical observation and normalising judgements with associated punishments and incentives. Studies have also highlighted an associated array of problematic consequences of the workings of disciplinary power and technologies in sport. These consequences relate to issues such as ‘retirement’ at young ages (sport dropout), psychological burnout, chronic pain, poor dietary practices, body-image problems and even cases of depression (see, e.g., Barker-Ruchti & Tinning, 2010; Lang, 2010; McMahon, et al., 2012). Sport and coaching practices, built on unquestioned disciplinary technologies and relations of power, risk producing narrow and potentially unhealthy athletic identities that have an impact on both the self and others. Such problems clearly run counter to common assumptions of how sport helps contributing to, for instance, the production of healthy citizens. However, like many other Foucauldian sport scholars, e.g., Markula, Pringle, Denison, Crocket, Avner, Mills, and Jones, I have found Foucauldian theorising not only useful in examining and critiquing sport practices but also for resisting and bringing about social transformation. In particular, I have been drawn to Foucault’s (1980) notion that possibilities for social change can occur through ‘a reactivation of local knowledges’ (p. 85) that in turn can ‘reveal marginalised discourses and allow opportunities for diverse ways of thinking to be opened up’ (Pringle, 2008, p. 220). In other words, through reactivating marginalised ways of knowing within their sport practices, Foucauldian scholars can allow for the circulation of alternative discourses that can be drawn upon to create differing sporting identities and ways of understanding sport. In this endeavour I have particularly utilised Foucault’s theorising of ethics and technologies of the self. In Foucault’s perspective, ethics is conceived of neither as a coherent set of moral prescriptions nor as a study of moral behaviours. Instead, he viewed ethics as an ethical attitude aimed at transforming the relationship with oneself into a work of art (Foucault, 2000). The ethical questions Foucault asked are how individuals problematise what they are or do, how they problematise the world in which they live (Foucault, 1988) and what means individuals have for (trans)forming their relationships with themselves. In his work, Foucault was inspired by the Ancient Greeks’ emphasis on the aesthetics of existence. For Foucault (1985), the aestheticisation of ethics within Ancient Greece invited ethical subjects to focus on the production or shaping of an ethical self through a restrained and stylised engagement with problematised activities. He further argued, ‘from the idea that the self is not given to us, I think there is only one practical consequence: we have to create ourselves as works of art’ (Foucault, 2000, p. 262).

Aesthetics of Existence Post-elite Sport Performances 25 To explain this process of self-transformation, Foucault (1988) used the concept of technologies of the self which is defined as ‘an exercise of self upon self by which one tries to work out, to transform one’s self and to attain a certain mode of being’ (p. 2). Foucault (1985) further described four key modes to this process – the ethical substance, mode of subjection, ethical work and telos. The ‘ethical substance’ is concerned with determining an aspect of the self (e.g., an aspect of one’s identity, set of behaviours or emotions) that needs to be problematised. After identifying the ethical substance, the next stage involves addressing the question of why change is needed, the ‘mode of subjection’. Foucault (1985) argued that through critically reflecting on the mode of subjection, the individual can then determine strategies for performing ‘ethical work’ or ‘practices of self’ to create new ways of performing and being. Finally, there needs to be an overall goal for engaging in this ethical self-work, which Foucault (1985) describes as the telos. In an early paper (Gerdin, 2017) based on my doctoral work, I drew on Foucault’s (1985) technologies of the self and four modes of subjectivation to demonstrate boys’ problematisation of dominant discourses of gender and power relations in PE. The paper focused on the stories of select individual boys and groups of boys who were particularly engaged in questioning, challenging and problematising aspects of their own masculine identities in PE and who expressed a desire to perform gender or construct masculine identities in more responsible, inclusive and ethical ways. More specific to the sport context, I have also previously together with Richard Pringle and Hamish Crocket (Gerdin et al., 2019) drawn on the same Foucauldian framework to examine my coaching practices through a narrative of self and my desire to coach more ethically. The narrative revealed how I experienced the tragedy of youth player suicide and how I problematised the insidious influence of technologies of dominance on athletic subjectivities. To counter this problem, I developed an athlete-centred approach and deliberately shifted away from an authoritarian style. I also avoided the use of monotonous drills and no longer prioritised the production of ‘winners on the tennis courts’ but was inspired to promote the development of healthy, well-rounded and resilient youth. My broader ‘telos’ was to produce players who enjoyed playing the game and who were more broadly involved in the life of the club. In recognising the importance of differing contexts in the process of making these coaching changes, we in this paper concluded that coaching practices were neither liberating nor oppressive: yet, it was the coaches’ awareness of their ‘ability to exercise power in negotiating dominant discourses that makes transformation possible’ (Gerdin et al., 2019, p. 14). In a recent study, Jones, Avner and Denison (2022) drew on Foucauldian theory to present and analyse a series of vignettes concerning their own sense-making and meaning-making about exercise following their long-term involvement in highperformance soccer and distance running. Their paper both points to the ongoing problematic legacy of high-performance sport for retiring athletes’ relationship to movement and exercise, but also how Foucauldian theory can serve to open new spaces and possibilities for thinking about sports retirement. Building on my previous work and Jones and colleagues (2022), this chapter presents and analyses a

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narrative that delves into my creation of a post-elite athlete self as a work of art (Foucault, 2000) in relation to (elite) sporting practices. Narrative Representation and Foucault The use of narratives (or stories) has long been employed in various sport research contexts. Narratives, as Barthes (1977) points out, are ‘present in every age, in every place, in every society’ (p. 79) and therefore signals the effectiveness of narratives to serve diverse purposes (e.g., communicate, educate, affect, instruct, entertain, motivate and transform). Researchers have drawn on narrative inquiry to explore sport coaching issues (see, for example, Potrac et al., 2012) and more recently post sport retirement issues (see, for example, Jones et al., 2022). The theoretical justification and use of narrative inquiry is well established in the sociocultural examination of sport and exercise practices (although not without debate, see Denison, 2016) and is also well suited for scholars drawing on Foucault. Indeed, Foucault was described by Deleuze (1988) as ‘a great writer’ (p. 23), in part, as he ‘never looked on writing as an aim or an end in itself’ (p. 23) but as a critical process. Foucault (1991) wanted his readers to have an ‘experience’ that would challenge their thinking and permit self-transformations, ‘an experience that might permit an alteration, a transformation, of the relationship we have with ourselves and our cultural universe’ (pp. 36–37). However, Foucault did not want his texts to be prescriptive for how people should think. Rather, he wanted his texts to serve as ‘invitations’ that allowed readers possibilities ‘to slip into this kind of experience’ (Foucault, 1991, p. 40). He further acknowledged that all of his texts were written based on ‘a direct personal experience’ (p. 38) with the various social issues that he explored. With these words from Foucault in mind, presented below is a personal narrative and Foucauldian analysis that make visible the ways in which I have come to engage in problematisations or ethical self-work in transforming my relation to physical activity and recreation post-retirement from elite sport. ‘You are too social Göran’ that’s what she said. I had just come off my first loss in a while and it happened to be against a much younger player and in a game that I was close to securing my first ATP point which would have finally after many years of trying included me in the ranking of the 1500 best players in the world. I had lost in a game against someone that I was expected to win against, a much younger and less experienced player but I’d found myself to have lost the competitive edge and yes like my friend’s mom said after the game maybe I had become ‘too social’ but what does that even mean? At that time, I didn’t reflect on it anymore but instead kept playing tournaments for a few more years before finally retiring and ‘giving up’ the dream of becoming a full-time tennis professional. My desire to become an elite tennis player can be seen as produced by the socio-historic context (discourse) in which I was growing up in Sweden in the 1980–90s with the likes of Björn Borg, Mats Wilander and Stefan Edberg,

Aesthetics of Existence Post-elite Sport Performances 27 creating a desire in generations of Swedish boys like me to become as successful and famous as them. The status, reward and pleasures potentially derived from this discourse made this dream but also the rigorous and disciplinary training regime needed to achieve this dream feel like perfectly normal. Looking back at growing up playing tennis I didn’t think that I had actually been part of what Foucault (1979) would call the ‘disciplinary machinery’ (p. 143) of becoming and being shaped into a productive and docile ‘tennis machine’. But I later realised that I very much had been part of that machinery and was so for a long time. It was only when I began studying at the university and was able to reflect on my tennis career with the help of Foucault’s theorising that I started to realize what disciplinary techniques are involved in becoming and being a docile and productive elite (tennis) athlete. In the early years of my tennis career, this meant drilling myself together with others over countless hours on the tennis court and off the tennis court. Perfecting our technique, strokes and our movement on the court. Trying to achieve full physical and mental control over the body (including showing no emotions on the court like Björn ‘Iceborg’ Borg) by training and pushing the body to become stronger, more agile and avoiding injuries in order to perform our best on the tennis court when it most mattered. The disciplinary machinery also importantly involved keeping various logbooks, recording, evaluating and monitoring patterns and the effects of training, matches, eating and sleeping. All in order to fine tune both the body and self to be a champion on the court. The disciplinary technologies also involved what Foucault (1995) would call the individualization of us as athletes both on court and off court slowly being turned into individuals that could be ranked and measured against each other. Being ‘too social’ worked against this. Many of my tennis playing friends who got ranked much higher than me were able to adhere to and deal with this process of becoming individualised better than I did ever did. Being on tour, travelling from one place to next week after week and performing your best required a certain way of being and being comfortable with being on your own most of the time, something that I was never fully able to do. Foucault (1995) further argues that to enable effective disciplinary practices, the spaces accommodating such practices are needed. Indeed, sporting spaces such as tennis courts are ingrained with disciplinary technologies where techniques, movements and performances are constrained by, evaluated and ranked through the athletes’ efficient use of space. Sporting spaces are saturated with the effects of disciplinary technologies but also can be seen as affording of elite athletic performances. The seeking and use of alternative spaces has been important for me in attempting to free myself from the long-lasting effects of disciplinary technologies. It’s in the spaces of ‘tramping’ as it is called in my adopted home country of New Zealand and on the snowboard slopes that I have found what Foucault (1967) might call my ‘heterotopia’ or heterotopic space. A space where I for the last 15 years or so have attempted to recreate my former elite athlete self, away from the disciplinary technologies and discourses of performance, competition

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Göran Gerdin and winning. These days I spend a lot of time with my family and at times by myself on tramping tracks and going snowboarding. It is in these spaces I have endeavoured to recreate my former elite athlete self as work of art (Foucault, 2000). It should of course also be acknowledged that spaces such as tramping tracks and ski fields can also afford the use of disciplinary technologies and maybe in the end it is more about what practises or logics people bring to these spaces that either produces these spaces as competitive performance spaces or aesthetic and experiential spaces. Indeed, when I stopped playing tennis and later started my physical education teacher training, I started learning about other ways of looking at the performing body in space and in relation to educational values and learning about the body as a way of contributing to both physical, mental, social and emotional health. In particular, I was drawn to physical education curriculum objectives around the focus on diverse bodily and aesthetic experiences as opposed to highly specialized bodily (sporting) performances. Retrospectively, my engagement with and experiences of physical education teacher training provided me with significant both ‘illuminative’ and ‘cumulative’ epiphanic moments (Denzin, 1989) – although it required me to later also engage with Foucauldian theorising to be able to makes sense of these. While on tramping tracks and on the snowboard slopes, especially when I am on my own, I find that you have no one to compare yourself to. There is space and time to listen to and be more attuned to your body and its relation to the world around us, the trees, the plants, the animals, the snow, the water. In this ‘Tuning into one’s self’ (Markula, 2004) there is room to foster and cultivate a different type of ‘athletic’ identity that is not entirely free from but still somewhat less dependent on the workings of disciplinary power. In particular, I like being alone at the top of a ski field at the end of the day when everyone else including the ski patrol have left and just sit there watching the sunset and as you start going down the slope taking time to listen to the sound the snow makes and then slowly making your way down to the bottom of the mountain. It’s like time stops and all those other things to do with performance and being ranked or evaluated are almost non-existent. Or at the end of a long day’s tramp you put your tent up then take your time cooking dinner on the Trangia and go for a late-night swim. This is how I attempted to recreate my sense of self in relation to the body in movement. Prompted by my readings and learnings about Foucault’s technologies of self and my active problematisation of elite sporting practices, I sought to create different meanings when it comes to learning about and knowing one’s body and self through outdoor pursuits such as tramping and snowboarding. As a result of my critical reflection about the effects of disciplinary technologies on the body and identity (my ethical substance), I have desired (my mode of subjection) to become more attuned to and aware of the potentially harmful consequences of submitting myself to disciplinary technologies and the workings of power. As reflected on and discussed elsewhere (Gerdin et al., 2019), I have seen many young people create problematic, unhealthy and narrow identities through

Aesthetics of Existence Post-elite Sport Performances 29 being exposed to elite sporting practices. As a tennis coach but also in my everyday life I have attempted to do ethical work in relation to recreating meanings about the body and movement and the long-term shaping of (un)healthy identities. I nowadays try hard, for me and others around me, to saviour bodily and movement experiences that are more about being in the now and a learning about the world and our connection to it. However, this aesthetics of existence (Foucault, 1985) and creating myself as a work of art (Foucault, 2000) is not an easy or linear process. It is a process filled with conflicts and tensions where sort of a recurrent elite athlete identity is still drawing me back to my former elite athlete self. Negotiating the critic and complicit elite athlete self at times creates moments of (identity) crisis (Denzin, 1989) when I still enjoy the pleasures, rewards and status from reliving my former elite athlete self (for example, subjecting myself to rigorous disciplinary training regimes or competing at the highest (senior) tennis level). However, it also leads to moments of wanting to speak out or speak the ‘truth’ what Foucault (1999, p. 1) would call ‘parrhesia’, both in relation to myself and others of the potentially harmful and restricted identities that are created. My current ‘telos’ (Foucault, 1985) thus revolves around being that person across different sport and movement context who problematises and draws attention to inherent ethical issues in elite sporting practice. For instance, watching my kids play sport and being involved in practising or games I now still too often see the use of disciplinary technologies whether they are in the swimming pool, on the basketball court or on the athletics track. Both the coaches and kids (and their parents) very much buy into the short- and long-term effects of subjecting yourself to disciplinary training regimes. Many people view this as the most effective means for producing elite athletic performances and even if this is true what sort of people and societies do we create when the support for disciplinary technologies and dominant discourses of performance, competition and winning in sport remains so prevalent and strong. My telos therefore further coheres around being a critical voice that attempts (often in futile) to challenge and raise awareness among athletes and coaches of the potentially harmful and narrow elite athlete identities that are created in, by and through these spaces which have a long-term effect on athletes’ health and well-being both during and post involvement in sport whether at elite or non-elite levels. At the same time, I also find myself wanting to remove myself and my kids from these spaces where elite sporting practices and associated disciplining technologies are still alive and well yet again, I feel that it serves a purpose in order to be that voice that continues to challenge and problematize the effects of disciplinary technologies. However, once again there are moments of ‘slippage’ in this telos of mine which means that I constantly have to reassess and reorient myself in these fast-changing times we are living in both in my role as an academic but also as a participant in sport and other movement contexts. For long I for instance resisted what many people use these days, these so-called exercise watches to be able to more freely experience being on the tramping tracks or snowboard

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Göran Gerdin slopes without constantly being monitored in terms of heart rate, steps or distance covered. But now I have also started using one of these and at least for me it symbolises the long-term impact of my former elite athlete self. The need to record, monitor and evaluate in order to improve performance. What the future holds I don’t know but I am certain that for me Foucault’s concepts and theories – although he has been dead for some time now – will continue to be useful for reflecting on and negotiating my critic and complicit elite athlete self.

Conclusion The narrative and associated Foucauldian analyses presented above can help provide a further moderate critique of elite sport practices and the complexity of negotiating a critic and complicit elite sporting self. The narrative reveals how I am engaged in a protracted process of ethical self-creation involving extended periods of ambiguity and uncertainty. Through my narrative I have further highlighted how problematising normalised practices that are tied to pleasure, success, reward and power are difficult even when these practices are known to create various problems (Denison et al., 2019; Gerdin & Pringle, 2017). As Pringle (2010) illustrated, movement pleasures (and displeasures) are not intrinsic; rather, they are socially produced and effectively managed through various social arrangements. In negotiating the effect of disciplinary power and discourses of performance, competition and winning, I argue that I will to some extent always have a desire to adhere to disciplinary technologies and discourses. In my post-elite sporting life, they are still and will probably always be tied to the pleasures and displeasures I derive from participation in sport and other leisure time activities. Just like Foucault, I do not believe there can be a society without relations of power but that we as individuals through a focus on being active moral and ethical agents within such power relations can help ‘games of power to be played with a minimum of domination’ (Foucault, 1988, p. 18). By raising awareness and attempting to act on the potentially harmful and unhealthy long-term identities that both constitute and are constituted by the disciplinary practices in elite sport, I believe that we can promote greater care for athletes and thus more ethical elite sporting practices. Drawing on Nietzsche (2001), Foucault argued that the self as a work of art is not a final state but a fragile thing that in turn can give rise to dissatisfaction and resistance. The aesthetics of existence can be seen as a process of ‘eternal recurrence’ (Nietzsche, 2001): each subject form or way of living that is achieved can give rise to problematisation and the recurrent use of the aesthetics-of-existence instrument. Nietzsche’s idea that everything recurs in the same way can also apply in a certain sense to the aesthetics of existence. After all, the possibility cannot be excluded that in the continuous formation and transformation of the self, earlier subject forms might recur. Indeed, my narrative highlights how I continue to be pulled back into my former elite athlete self in the use of disciplinary technologies (lately with the use of exercise watches) and a focus on the pleasures, rewards and status associated with

Aesthetics of Existence Post-elite Sport Performances 31 competition and winning. As recently pointed out by Jones et al. (2022), the ‘undoing’ of discipline is a process which has and continues to require attentiveness and diligence – particularly in light of the ever-increasing push to quantify, track, monitor and evaluate one’s ‘progress’ against a whole set of arbitrary metrics and targets fuelled by an array of media. However, this recurrent former elite athlete self can also be understood as another one of the four types of epiphanic moments Denzin (1989) talks about, ‘relived’ epiphanic moments. From this perspective, reliving disciplinary bodily technologies and its effects can help reassert the ongoing need to continuously reflect on and challenge the problematic nature of these experiences. Finally, the various self-changes that I have made and continue to make are certainly not undertaken in a neat, linear, progressive and purely rational manner (Crocket, 2017; Gerdin et al., 2019). These changes take place within periods of frustration, doubt and uncertainty. The process of (re)creating oneself as a former elite athlete as a work of art is complex, non-linear and requires ongoing commitment or critical reflection. Nevertheless, in my own efforts to problematise and ask critical and ethical questions associated with elite sporting practices I have found Foucault’s writings on the ethics of self-creation and technologies of the self helpful and therefore conclude this chapter by inviting others to engage with Foucauldian ethics and technologies of the self in their own lives. I particularly implore people to seek out alternative spaces and bodily experiences that are less constrained by the disciplinary technologies of this world. References Agnew, D., Henderson, P., & Woods, C. (2017). Ethics, integrity and well-being in elite sport: A systematic review. The Sport Journal, 19, 1–19. Åkesdotter, C., Kenttä, G., Eloranta, S., & Franck, J. The prevalence of mental health problems in elite athletes. Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport, 23(4), 329–335. Barker-Ruchti, N., & Tinning, R. (2010). Foucault in leotards: Corporeal discipline in women’s artistic gymnastics. Sociology of Sport Journal, 27(3), 229–250. Barth, M., Gullich, A., Forstinger, C., Schlesinger, T., Schroder, F., and Emrich, E. (2020). Retirement of professional soccer players – a systematic review from social science perspectives.Journal of Sports Sciences, 39, 903–914. doi: 10.1080/02640414.2020.1851449 Barthes, R. (1977). Introduction to the structural analysis of narratives. In R. Barthes (Ed.), Image, music, text: Essays selected and translated by Stephen Heath (pp. 79–129). Fontana. Coakley, J. (2015). Assessing the sociology of sport: On cultural sensibilities and the great sport myth. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 50, 4–5. Crocket, H. (2017). Problematizing Foucauldian ethics: A review of technologies of the self in sociology of sport since 2003. Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 41(1), 21–41. Donaldson, A., & Finch, C. F. (2012). Planning for implementation and translation: Seek first to understand the end-users' perspectives. British Journal of Sports Medicine, 46(5), 306–307. Deleuze, G. (1988). Foucault (S. Hand, Trans.). University of Minnesota Press. Denison, J. (2016). Social theory and narrative research: A point of view. Sport, Education and Society, 21(1), 7–10.

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Denison, J., & Mills, J. P. (2014). Planning for distance running: Coaching with Foucault. Sports Coaching Review, 3(1), 1–16. Denison, J., Mills, J. P., & Konoval, T. (2017). Sports’ disciplinary legacy and the challenge of ‘coaching differently’. Sport, Education and Society, 22(6), 772–783. Denison, J., Jones, L., & Mills, J. P. (2019). Becoming a good enough coach. Sports Coaching Review, 8(1), 1–6. Denzin, N. K. (1989). Interpretive Biography. Newbury Park: Sage Publications. Erdal, K. (2018). The adulteration of children’s sports: Waning health and well-being in the age of organized play. Rowman & Littlefield. Foucault, M. (1967). Of other spaces. Diacritics, 16, 22–27. Foucault, M. (1979). Discipline and punish : the birth of the prison (A. Sheridan, Trans.). London: Routledge. Foucault, M. (1980). Power/Knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings, 1972– 1977. Pantheon. Foucault, M. (1985). The use of pleasure: The history of sexuality (Vol. 2). Penguin Books. Foucault, M. (1988). The history of sexuality: The care of the self. (R. Hurley, Trans., Vol. 3). Penguin. Foucault, M. (1991). Remarks on Marx: Conversations with Duccio Trombadori. Semiotext. Foucault, M. (1999). Discourse and truth: The meaning of the word parrhesia (lecture given by Michel Foucault at the University of California at Berkeley, October–November 1983) J. Pearson (Ed.), compiled from tape-recordings and reedited in 1999. Retrieved from http://foucault.info/documents/parrhesia/ Foucault, M. (1995). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison. Vintage. Foucault, M. (2000). On the genealogy of ethics: An overview of a work in progress. In P. Rabinow (Ed.) and R. Hurley (Trans.), Ethics: Subjectivity and truth (Vol. 1, pp. 253– 280). Penguin. Gerdin, G. (2017). ‘It’s not like you are less of a man just because you don’t play rugby’— boys’ problematisation of gender during secondary school physical education lessons in New Zealand. Sport, Education and Society, 22(8), 890–904. Gerdin, G., & Pringle, R. (2017). The politics of pleasure: An ethnographic examination exploring the dominance of the multi-activity sport-based physical education model. Sport, Education and Society, 22(2), 194–213. Gerdin, G., Pringle, R., & Crocket, H. (2019). Coaching and ethical self-creation: Problematizing the ‘efficient tennis machine’. Sports Coaching Review, 8(1), 25–42. Jones, L, Avner, Z., & Denison, J. (2022). ‘After the dust settles’: Foucauldian narratives of retired athletes’ ‘re-orientation’ to exercise. Frontiers in Sports and Active Living. https:// www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fspor.2022.901308 Kelly, P., & Hickey, C. (2008). The struggle for the body, mind and soul of AFL footballers. Australian Scholarly Publishing. Lang, M. (2010). Surveillance and conformity in competitive youth swimming. Sport, Education and Society, 15(1), 19–37. Markula, P. (2004). “Tuning into one’s self”: Foucault’s technologies of the self and mindful fitness. Sociology of Sport Journal, 21(3), 302–321. Markula, P., & Pringle, R. (2006). Foucault, sport and exercise: Power, knowledge and transforming the self. Routledge. McMahon, J., Penney, D., & Dinan-Thompson, M. (2012). ‘Body practices: Exposure and effect of a sporting culture?’ Stories from three Australian swimmers. Sport, Education and Society, 17(2), 181–206.

Aesthetics of Existence Post-elite Sport Performances 33 Menke, D. J., & Germany, M. L. (2019). Reconstructing athletic identity: College athletes and sport retirement. Journal of Loss and Trauma, 24(1), 17–30. Montero, A, Stevens, D, Adams, R., & Drummond, M. (2022). Sleep and mental health issues in current and former athletes: A mini review. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, https:// www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.868614 Nietzsche, F. (2001). The gay science. Cambridge University Press. Park, S., Lavallee, D., & Tod, D. (2013). Athletes’ career transition out of sport: A systematic review. International Review of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 6(1), 22–53. Potrac, P., Jones, R. L., Gilbourne, D., & Nelson, L. (2012). ‘Handshakes, BBQs, and bullets’: Self-interest, shame and regret in football coaching. Sports Coaching Review, 1(2), 79–92. Pringle, R. (2008). ‘No rugby-no fear’: Collective stories, masculinities and transformative possibilities in schools. Sport, Education and Society, 13(2), 215–237. Pringle, R. (2010). Finding pleasure in physical education: A critical examination of the educative value of positive movement affects. Quest, 62, 119–134. Souter, G., Lewis, R., & Serrant, L. (2018). Men, mental health and elite sport: A Narrative Review. Sports Medicine – Open, 4(1), 57. Staurowsky, E. J., De Souza, M. J., Miller, K. E., Sabo, D., Shakib, S., Theberge, N., ... & Williams, N. I. (2015). Her Life Depends on It III: Sport, Physical Activity, and the Health and Well-Being of American Girls and Women. Women's Sports Foundation. Stambulova, N., Stephan, Y., & Jäphag, U. (2007). Athletic retirement: A cross-national comparison of elite French and Swedish athletes. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 8(1), 101–118. Stambulova, N., Ryba, T., & Henriksen, K. (2021). Career development and transitions of athletes: The international society of sport psychology position stand revisited. International Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 19(4), 524–550. Swedish Sports Confederation (2018). Swedish National Guidelines for elite athletes’ dual careers. Stockholm, Sweden: Normy AB.

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Learning to Look Through the Body Rather than At It An Athlete’s Attempt to Re-configure Their Relationship with Exercise John Toner

Introduction There was a time when golf meant the world to me. School holidays meant arriving at the course first thing in the morning and playing late into the evening. I’d practise until my hands were thick with calluses. The game was joyful and carefree but there was also a quiet determination to how I’d go about my practice and the process of improvement. Achieving a certain level of proficiency meant being picked for developmental squads. This presented me with a challenge. I was determined to improve and I wanted access to high-level coaching but I was also painfully shy and hated the thought that I might have to interact with an unfamiliar adult. The decision to take part in these squads meant things became a little more structured and it meant being subject to the gaze of experts – those tasked with the diagnosis of flaws. Encounters with coaches in these settings were inevitably quite fleeting though. Coaches didn’t get the chance to spend much time with us. It was all quite hurried and rushed. We’d receive a comment here-or-there, often in passing, and one-to-one interactions were brief affairs. Everything was conducted with a cold and clinical efficiency. I remember a dilapidated driving range and the wind as it whistled through the rafters. I remember being told that it was my turn – the two coaches would see me now – and so I hurried quickly to the furthermost bay on the range. One coach mumbled something as I arrived. The coaches shared a joke but became more serious as they turned to face me. I readied myself to hit some balls but all I could think of was the hushed silence and the coaches gaze upon me. I recall a number of panicked and violent movements – any semblance of timing or rhythm had disappeared. No, no, no they said. There’s something wrong. Here’s how you need to do it. I couldn’t quite understand the instructions. I was too embarrassed being put on the spot to work out precisely what they were asking of me. There was no time for questions or comment. A decision had been made. I would have to change the way I moved. That was the only way forward. That was the only way that I’d improve. I was ushered out of the room. I never saw these coaches again.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003276531-4

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Becoming proficient in any sport requires an athlete to acquire the ‘techniques of the body’ (Mauss, 1973) that represent the modes of being and doing that embody aspects of a given culture. These techniques are often acquired via what Mauss (1973) calls ‘prestigious imitation’ whereby an individual ‘imitates actions which have succeeded and which he has seen successfully performed by people in whom he has confidence and who have authority over him’ (p. 73). The process of acquiring these techniques is fundamentally social in nature. For example, coaches often play a key role in transmitting the main corporeal techniques and dispositions that are thought to characterise excellence in a sporting discipline. The transmission of these techniques can, however, prove to be quite prescriptive in nature. Indeed, coaches are often reliant on the use of explicit instructions and verbal feedback when seeking to communicate ideas and to improve an athlete’s movement efficiency. As I’ll proceed to document, this has an important influence on how performers begin to think of and conceive their embodied capacities. Let me briefly detail what this latter process (i.e., the inculcation of body techniques) might look like in a typical coaching session in golf. In my experience, practitioners start a lesson by identifying a swing ‘flaw’ and will then set about instructing the player how to remedy this problematic movement pattern. To ensure players have a clear understanding of the identified flaw, they may be told how their movement deviates from an idealised pattern. This might involve showing the player split-screen video footage comparing their swing to that of an elite or highlevel performer. The coach in this case may not necessarily expect the player to mimic this ‘ideal’ movement/pattern but rather the footage is used as a pedagogical strategy to help them understand and visualise the difference between the ‘flawed’ and the ‘correct’ technique. This type of coaching practice inevitably leads to the objectification of bodily processes, however. The body is objectified because to address the identified flaw the player has little choice but to adopt an attentive and reflective stance towards some feature of their action. They’re expected to focus on the problematic movement component and to think about how they might improve its efficiency. In doing so, the athlete is encouraged to adopt a third-person perspective in which the body is taken as an object (Gallagher, 2005). It is the objectification of the athletic body that takes up much of my focus in this chapter. I seek to provide a phenomenological account of what it feels like to take one’s body as the object of one’s attention. I start by detailing how bodily presence is typically portrayed in phenomenological literature. I then explain how objectification coloured much of my experience as a golfer and how it has continued to colour the way I see and think about my body as a recreational athlete. I conclude by considering how I have sought to re-configure the relationship I have with my body by learning to live through it as the subject of my experience. Phenomenological Accounts of the Objectified Body In phenomenological discourse, the body is portrayed as being lived through as the subject of one’s experience. Phenomenologists posit that the body dis-appears during the performance of everyday actions and repertoires – those that are considered

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habitual and automatic (Leder, 1990). It’s likely, for instance, that you have little recollection of how you dressed this morning or the precise movements of your hand as you buttered a piece of toast. These quotidian endeavours are performed habitually and with little need to attend to our bodily comportment. They unfold quickly, effortlessly and usually with a high degree of accuracy. The body recedes into the background of our awareness during the performance of these simple and highly familiar actions. According to Leder (1990), these actions are motivated and organized by outer-directed concern. In order to strike a nail properly I must look at it, not my swinging hand … my body, as the sensorimotor means of such surveying, yet recedes before this experiential primacy of ends. (p. 19) The body is, as Merleau-Ponty ([1945] 2002, p. 167, 453) puts it, our ‘anchorage in a world’. In other words, it is that through which we orient our attention and navigate our world of action. A ‘dis-appearing’ body doesn’t vanish as such but rather ‘it is simply that which never shows itself for structural reasons’ (Leder, 1990, p. 27). Leder distinguishes between background dis-appearance and focal dis-appearance. In background disappearance, bodily regions are relegated to a supportive role and recede into the margins of one’s consciousness, whereas in focal dis-appearance, just as the eye becomes invisible within the visual field it generates, we are no longer aware of specific body parts even though they ‘form the focal origin of a perceptual or actional field’ (Leder, 1990, p. 26). Leder’s (1990) phenomenological analysis makes an important conceptual distinction between bodily dis-appearance and dys-appearance. Leder believes that the body will only make itself apparent when the embodied subject experiences pain or illness. It is at this point that the body is said to dys-appear. In Greek, the prefix dys signifies ‘bad’ or ‘ill’. When our habitual engagement with the physical world is disturbed by pain or illness the body is suddenly experienced as away, apart or torn asunder from the self (Leder, 1990). Here, attention is inevitably turned back on the body as the embodied subject attempts to come to terms with this new mode of being. This is seen to represent an objectifying process in which the agent considers some aspect of their body as a thing-like-object. Doing so is believed to disrupt our embodied coping – the effortless and supposedly subconscious way in which we negotiate our world of action. This might happen whenever we fix our gaze or adopt an ‘analytical attitude’ (Merleau-Ponty, 1945, p. 262) in order to scrutinise the wrinkles on our fingers or the length of our finger nails, for example. The demands commonly placed on the sporting body, and the highly skilled performer in particular, often result in the objectification of bodily experience. Consider, for example, what happens when the athlete experiences an injury or when some aspect of their bodily action is suddenly compromised. In such cases, the body is inevitably thrust back into the athlete’s awareness. Perhaps the most obvious example of objectification is when we are subject to the ‘gaze’ of a coach

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and when instruction forces us to turn our attention back to our bodies. Indeed, the highly didactic nature of coaching practice may also prompt performers to think of their bodies like any ‘thing-like-object’. My experience as a golfer was that I was constantly working alongside coaches to adapt or modify my technique with a view to increasing my movement proficiency. I remember fixating on my technique and being able to think of little else as I played. I can’t draw the club back I thought. I just can’t. I’ve forgotten. To what extent should my wrists be pronated at the top of the swing? Am I trying to turn my shoulders too far? What degree of separation should I have between my shoulders and hips? I’ve now been stood over the ball for what feels like minutes … perhaps it’s only been a few seconds but it feels like an eternity. What must my playing partners think? Eventually, I manage to initiate the swing and somehow advance the ball. There’s sweat on my brow and my body seems to be throbbing. I daren’t make eye contact with the other players. How am I supposed to get through the rest of this round? I can’t face this. I mutter apologies to my playing partners and walk off the course. This event represented a particularly severe case of ‘paralysis-by-analysis’ but it was somewhat typical of a period where I could do little else but to objectify my action. In fact, it didn’t seem to matter how well I played. My body was always the subject of critique. As far as I was concerned, there was always something ‘wrong’ with my movement which required change and coaching intervention in particular. My experience of improving my action meant that my body was often ‘opaque’ in the sense that I ceased to look ‘through it’ but rather ‘at it’ (Zeiler, 2010). The decision to reconfigure some feature of my swing involved the body moving from the background of my awareness and being brought to the foreground where it was taken as an intentional object. Focusing on specific components of habitual movement might be said to have disrupted my ‘self-forgetfulness’ (a state where the body remains inconspicuous; Leder, 1990) by ensuring that my body came into relief and made itself apparent (Colombetti, 2011). This resulted in a feature of my habitual behaviour becoming the thematic object of my experience. This meant that I ‘involuted’ attention to a specific part of the body thereby representing an introspective or reflective type of proprioception (Gallagher, 2003). Objectifying the body involves evaluating its qualities like one might evaluate any physical object in our environment. The objectification of my action was particularly evident during lessons where I worked alongside a coach to break down my movement into component processes and subjected it to an analytical gaze. Whilst working with coaches to change my technique did help me improve, its lasting legacy was that I found it difficult to think of my body in anything other than objective terms. Involvement in highperformance sport inculcated in me a sense that I could only think about my body in terms of how I was deviating from a specific standard or ideal. The body was almost always the object of my attention. The driving bay where lessons take place is shiny and pristine. Various gadgets are laid out and cameras are positioned to capture my swing from a number of

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From a young age, I learnt to see my movement as dysfunctional or deviant in some way. My only way of knowing or understanding my body was to think of it in objective terms. Am I moving the way coach has instructed? Am I moving with the desired level of power? Was my practice leading me to hit the ball further or to generate more club-head speed (both outcomes which could be measured and compared to a standard)? There’s little doubt that I’d forgotten to attend to the sensuousness of my movement. Whilst the preceding vignettes represented the nadir of my golfing experience these incidents also prompted me to re-evaluate how I thought of my body. In time, I came to recognise that it was deeply problematic to view my game purely in terms of what was ‘wrong’ with my movement. I think I also began to realise that I didn’t need to constantly submit myself to the expert gaze of a coach in order to diagnose and rectify flaws. After all, even when my coach was happy with my action, I had continued to evaluate it in objective terms. I can’t quite pinpoint what prompted this change of perspective – perhaps an understanding that I was making myself miserable in the pursuit of an ideal – but I know it encouraged me to think of my body in different terms. It encouraged me to be less exacting and to attribute more meaning to how my body felt when moving. I moved beyond thinking of my body as an object to be manipulated, controlled and rendered more efficient. I came to understand that thinking of my corporeality in this way had the dual effect of limiting my bodily attunement and restricting my capacity for ‘creative self-fashioning’ (Heyes, 2007). Despite this change in perspective, my embodied engagement has continued to involve a ‘dis-appearing’ body where I occasionally view my corporeality as deficient or somehow lacking. As I’ll explain when detailing my recent experience of exercise, a painful injury was caused, in part, by attempts to move my body in line with an objective ideal. Immersion and Pre-reflective Bodily Awareness Much of my experience as a golfer undoubtedly involved the objectification of bodily processes but, in time, I learnt to play whilst looking through my body rather than at it. There were rare occasions where I was so wholly absorbed in my performance that the body ceased being the object of my attention. It’s important to provide some coverage of this phenomenon to give the reader a sense of how

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living through the body as the subject of our experience might differ from the process of objectification. My experience of absorption wasn’t that my body disappeared completely from awareness but rather that I had an awareness of being nearer or closer to a goal and that my body was moving in a manner constitutive of this goal. This, in Dow’s (2017) words, represents a form of ‘self-synthesis’ where one is aware of certain aspects of bodily functioning in a way that aims at mastery of the task. For me, this meant that my body was present but present as a source of pleasure rather than a source of unease or discomfort. I remember the ease and fluency with which I moved. I can recall the effortless transition between backswing and downswing for example and the way I glided through the ball at impact with what seemed to me to be an unusual level of grace. I recall my movements during this period as having a certain aesthetic quality. My movements felt more balanced, rhythmic and effortless. I wasn’t preoccupied with hitting the ball a certain distance or with creating a predetermined level of power. I wasn’t worried about moving my limbs in a certain way. These were secondary concerns. Instead, performance was characterised by an immersion in my movement which involved a bodily intentionality. But most of all I remember how it felt to be immersed in my surroundings. The gentle sea breeze caressing my face, the marram grass as it tilted and swayed, the way the course seemed to glisten in the brilliant sun, and the swallows as they danced and swooped amongst us. I seem to have an acute recollection of the elements and my connection with them. When swinging well there’s a sort of languorous quality to one’s action. Power appears to be generated effortlessly. Golfers often refer to this as having good ‘tempo’ and use the term to capture the fluent and rhythmic sequencing of movements. I would often judge my tempo by drawing on a kinaesthetic sense of the transition between various stages of my swing. I’d consider the speed with which I moved the club away from the ball or the subtle change of speed and direction that accompanied the beginning of my downswing. Here, I wasn’t evaluating my action by seeking to objectively determine how it related to some ideal. Instead, I drew on a subjective sense of what ‘feels right’. A movement may feel right when it fulfils a certain aesthetic sensibility – when we move with the desired level of fluency for example. In Ravn’s (2010) study, ballet dancers used this term when evaluating whether they were felt ‘placed and aligned’ in their body as they performed complex moves whilst parkour practitioners in Aggerholm and Larsen’s (2017) study spoke about the need to perform landings ‘cleanly’ – in other words, with the level of control and ease they were striving for. I posit that the desire to land movements ‘cleanly’ constitutes a subjective and bodily sense of performing the task ‘just right’. When in this state, the athlete remains aware of their body but it does not become the thematic object of their awareness. Importantly, the lived body is not reified but is the ‘here from which I see the world of far and near distances and the now in which I interpret my past and reach for the future’ (Zeiler, 2010, p. 4). This sense of being-in-the-world involves experiencing the body as subject.

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My Current Practice I’ve argued that coaching practice can be highly objectifying in nature. In my case, learning to objectify the body meant that I often thought of it in normative terms and this seems to have followed me throughout my life. If I catch a glance of my posture as I stride past a shop window, I wonder why my shoulders are so swooped and my spine so hunched. I immediately wonder what can I do to address this? Whose help might I need to solicit? What expert can cure me of this physical shortcoming? This acute self-consciousness also pervades my current involvement with exercise. My exercise now consists predominantly of weight training (albeit rather lightweights) and attending group classes in the gym such as BodyPump. For those unfamiliar with this particular group activity, BodyPump requires participants to perform high levels of repetition using a barbell or free weights. Exercisers are positioned at stations in front of an instructor and spend a 60-minute class moving quickly between a series of predetermined exercises including bench presses and squats. There’s a certain manic quality to this form of exercise as participants transition quickly between the different sets. There’s little opportunity for rest but this is precisely the aim of all high-intensity forms of exercise. Much of my embodied practice, as a golfer in the past and now as someone who exercises recreationally, has been characterised by what I’ve already referred to as a bodily dys-appearance (where the body feels bad, ill or deviant). This sense of unease has continued to pervade all forms of physical activity I engage in. In an exercise class such as BodyPump, for instance, my attention is inevitably drawn to the surrounding mirrors which often seem to cast my corporeality in an unfavourable light. I use the mirrors to observe myself in motion and to detect some inefficiency. I might realise that my squat isn’t particularly deep and this prompts me to think about corrective exercises I might employ to improve my range of motion. I can rarely move without wondering what is ‘wrong’ with my movement. I often suspect the instructor is evaluating my technique and is ready to offer some prescriptive feedback. In the midst of action, I contemplate how I might generate more speed or force or what it is about my technique that could be altered. This means that I rarely feel present in the activity itself. My thoughts are often dominated by what I need to do differently or more effectively. Ironically, thinking about my body in these abstract terms actually serves to prevent me from truly attending or listening to my body as I perform somewhat complex (and potentially dangerous) moves. This fixation with improving my movement efficiency eventually proved my undoing. I remember feeling a certain frustration that I hadn’t progressed in terms of how much I was lifting. I must push myself I thought. I began trying to lift more. For a number of weeks I increased both the frequency and intensity of my exercise. All proceeded well until I began to feel an acute pain in my elbow as I performed bench presses. Initially, I dismissed this as the discomfort that arises when one starts to extend the load placed upon the body. I thought perhaps there’s something incorrect about my technique and so directed my focus to the positioning of my wrist and elbows as I snapped the bar into position. I was sure that correcting

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my technique would ease the pain. After all, when my body had ‘failed’ me as a golfer, it was always because of some technical inefficiency. It was because of my inability to follow the instructions of my coach and to manoeuvre the club into the desired position. I’d never countenanced the idea that my inability to move in the desired manner might be due to some physical limitation. I’d always been taught that improvement required change and perseverance with difficult tasks. It required one to steadfastly commit to the process of transformation and this meant sticking doggedly to tasks we’ve set ourselves. I knew that improvement involves setbacks and that playing through pain or discomfort is just part-and-parcel of this process. Upon reflection, I suppose it was this kind of thinking which lead me to continue exercising even when the pain became excruciating. I actively began to think of strategies I might use to continue exercising despite the pain. I found that lathering my elbow with enough deep heat went someway to numbing my sensation but it could only do so much. Eventually, the pain was such that I could barely lift the bar without wincing in agony. That was that. I had little choice but to stop training. When moving with ease bodily feelings tend to be quite diffuse. By contrast, pain tends to localise bodily feelings by drawing attention to specific features of our comportment (Colombetti, 2011). In my case, I became acutely aware of the tendons surrounding my elbow (parts of my body that would normally exist in background awareness). Lifting any sort of weight was suddenly out of the question. Even minor movements elicited discomfort. Sitting at my desk typing became extremely uncomfortable. I remember wincing in pain as I picked up one of my children. Pain suddenly ‘coloured’ my way of ‘engaging with others and the world’ (Zeiler, 2010, p. 9). This was an unsettling experience as I sought to understand and account for this new restricted capacity. I experienced what Leder (1990) calls a ‘temporal discontinuity’ where movements once fluid and effortless are now dysfunctional and provoke discomfort. This hurt part of my body became the explicit object of my attention. The injury had prompted a bodily dys-appearance where my body became a thing I was acutely aware of and which hindered me ‘from being or acting as freely as before’ (Zeiler, 2010, p. 13). My attention was continually drawn to it as the simplest of movements evoked a painful response. Pain is said to disrupt our mind–body–world relation by making the body an ‘alien presence’ (Leder, 1990, p. 73) in which it is an object other than the self. My body had become something strange and peculiar – no longer performing tasks that gave me a sense of fulfilment or purpose. The pain was such that exercise was no longer tenable. This had a considerable impact on my sense of well-being. I’d come to structure my week around this form of exercise and felt a profound sense of loss without it. I was acutely conscious of losing muscle mass. I was impatient to start training again. I’d wait a few weeks for the pain to subside before trying to lift weights but this merely exacerbated the injury. Rest alone seemed to make little difference. Eventually, I sought the advice of an expert. A physio informed me that I had tendonitis and I began a programme of therapy which would come to alleviate the pain. I’m now exercising again but some pain remains. However, I think I’ve identified a level or intensity of exercise that I can manage without inflaming my injury. This has required me to put aside

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all thoughts of how I might improve my bodily proficiency or performance. I’ve been forced to stop thinking about what I might do differently. I’m now left with little choice but to accept that I must exercise ‘within myself’ and this has required me to re-think my relationship with my body. Conclusion My steadfast refusal to alter the weight on my bar, or to consider the possibility that I might need to rest my body, seems remarkably foolhardy in light of the injury I suffered. It seems peculiar to think that I wouldn’t alter my practice in response to the pain I was suffering. After all, I have no desire to excel as a weightlifter. I have no particular need to re-shape my body or achieve certain competitive goals. To the outsider, the notion that I would have any need to push the limits of my performance might seem ludicrous and entirely unnecessary. Why not exercise in a manner that allows me to maintain a modicum of fitness whilst avoiding any risk of injury? I suppose the answer here might lie in the fact that I’ve always thought of my body as a project – as something deficient that required thematising. That is, I’ve always experienced my body in a reifying manner (Legrand, 2007). There was always something wrong with it. My experience recovering from injury has made me think carefully about the rather dysfunctional relationship I have with my body. I’ve come to realise that it has always stood forth as something bad. It was never enough to maintain my current level of performance – whether that be in competitive golf or something as mundane as a group exercise class. I’ve always felt the need to scrutinise my body and think of ways it might be rendered more efficient. Perhaps the injury will serve as a blessing. I do think that it has prompted me to reflect and consider how I might become more attuned to my corporeality. I now wish for my body to appear to me as something good, positive or easy (Zeiler, 2010). I neither wish for it to dys-appear (where it appears as something bad or deviant) or dis-appear (where it recedes into the background of awareness). It should be neither forgotten nor inconspicuous. Instead, I wish to establish a relationship with my body where it eu-appears or stands forth as something positive (Zeiler, 2010). I hope to think of my movement in terms of its capacity to be graceful, elegant or fluent. My aim when exercising now, and when negotiating my world of action more generally, is to learn how my body might be felt without being constantly attended to, monitored or objectified. I’m now making a concerted effort to bring proprioceptive and kinaesthetic sensations to the front of my awareness when exercising without taking them as the intentional object of my awareness (i.e., evaluating these feelings in terms of ideals or normalised standards). This involves a number of techniques including trying to appreciate ‘from the inside’ the patterns my limb movements create. According to Kupfer (1995) ‘isolated with and within his body [sic] in its environment, the performer is free to appreciate the rhythms he [sic] makes with it’ (p. 403). Learning to appreciate the rhythmicity of my movement has facilitated a certain aesthetic pleasure but it has also allowed me to get closer to my body and to experience it from the inside. This represents a move away from looking at my body towards looking through it.

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I aim to ‘listen to my body’ by focusing on bodily felt sensations such as the kinaesthetic qualities of my movement. The goal here is to reach what Parviainen and Aromaa (2017) refer to as ‘bodily knowledge’ (i.e., sensuous information that is available through reflective bodily activity). This requires the ‘bracketing’ of one’s motor skills by moving without any ‘prejudgement’ about what might constitute an ‘efficient’ or ‘inefficient’ movement pattern. I hope to learn how to ‘trust my own embodied responses’ and ‘take more gradual responsibility’ for my own exercise. This process has undoubtedly proven challenging. After all, I have a long history of thinking of my body in objective terms. There are times when I revert to an ‘analytical gaze’ but I am getting better at avoiding imposing a ‘reifying attitude’ (Legrand & Ravn, 2009, p. 393). I am gradually becoming more adept at attending to the sensory dimensions of my lived and direct experience of physical activity. In time, I hope to eschew self-objectification altogether. Doing so will require me to accept that the body is, in Heyes’s (2007) words, ‘deeply unpredictable and, sometimes immutable’ and that this is ‘a fact rather than a failure, to be worked with philosophically and spiritually, rather than a cause for despair because a certain normalized trajectory is blocked’ (p. 132). References Aggerholm, K., & Højbjerre Larsen, S. (2017). Parkour as acrobatics: An existential phenomenological study of movement in parkour. Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health, 9, 69–86. Colombetti, G. (2011). Varieties of Pre-Reflective Self-Awareness: Foreground and Background Bodily Feelings in Emotion Experience. Inquiry, 54, 293–313. Dow, J. M. (2017). Just doing what I do: On the awareness of fluent agency. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 16, 155–177. Gallagher, S. (2003). Bodily self-awareness and object perception. Theoria et Historia Sceintiarum: International Journal for Interdisciplinary Studies, 7, 53–68. Gallagher, S. (2005). How the Body Shapes the Mind. New York: Oxford University Press. Heyes, C. (2007). Self-transformations: Foucault, Ethics, and Normalized Bodies. New York: Oxford University Press. Kupfer, J. (1995). Sport – the body electric. In W.J. Morgan & K.V. Meier (Eds.), Philosophic inquiry in sport (pp. 390–406). Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Leder, D. (1990). The Absent Body. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Legrand, D. (2007). Pre-reflective self-consciousness: On being bodily in the world. Janus Head, 9, 493–519. Legrand, D., & Ravn, S. (2009). Perceiving subjectivity in bodily movement: The case of dancers. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 8, 389–408. Mauss, M. (1973). Techniques of the body. Economy and Society, 2, 70–88. Merleau-Ponty ([1945] 2002). Phenomenology of Perception. London: Routledge. Parviainen, J., & Aromaa, J. (2017). Bodily knowledge beyond motor skills and physical fitness: A phenomenological description of knowledge formation in physical training. Sport, Education and Society, 22, 477–492. Ravn, S. (2010). Sensing weight in movement. Journal of Dance & Somatic Practices, 2, 21–34. Zeiler, K. (2010). A phenomenological analysis of bodily self-awareness in the experience of pain and pleasure: On dys-appearance and eu-appearance. Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy, 13, 333–342.

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A Hard Habit to Break Epiphanies Stop Coming – If I Ain’t Running! David Howe

Introduction It was supposed to be a simple jog into the sunset – my retirement as a high-performance runner. Looking back, however, remembering, and reflecting it was far more complex than that. Retirement, whether it is from an occupation or a serious leisure pursuit (Stebbins, 1992), is always a defining moment in one’s lifeworld – we have expectations placed upon us by ourselves and others as to how our life will be transformed. The Western traditional belief is that in retirement we will slow down in terms of our productive outputs. When we retire from an occupation, there is an assumption that we will have more time on our hands to do the things that we have always wanted to do. Life fills up with hobby-related passions. If retirement is from a career as an elite athlete, society is less resolute as to how we should be spending our time (Coakley, 1983; Grove et al., 1997) and this transition frees up time that was filled with activities that, at least at the beginning of one’s sporting career, were more often than not done in the pursuit of fun (Bale, 2004). This transition from high-performance sport then creates a conundrum. As we progress in our development as a sportsperson from the youthful engagement with physical activity towards organised sport and ultimately – the pursuit of the goals higher, faster and stronger – more burden is placed upon our time. At some point, the time spent in pursuit of an elite sporting career manifests itself as a form of work. For those of us lucky enough to be paid – because to some our performance warrants it – this sporting activity does become work. With this shift in focus to sport as a professional occupation comes an added pressure that can take the original feelings of fun away almost entirely (Bale, 2004; Heinrich, 2001). Therefore, when we retire as elite sportspeople, our ‘fun hobbies’ of the past remind us of the hard work and habits that we created to become successful on the field of play. This is why, in retirement, there is a need for some to re-invent themselves. I was a high-performance runner who competed in four Paralympic Games (1988–2000) in middle-distance events (800–5000 metres). In this chapter, I will chronicle the transition from high-performance runner, to jogger, to physical activity enthusiast and the transformations that occurred as I age. Our human lifecourse is full of transitions that can only be properly articulated in the rear-view mirror. The transformative nature of time passing through a lifecourse from young DOI: 10.4324/9781003276531-5

A Hard Habit to Break 45 enthusiast to elite high-performance athlete and then back to a recreational enthusiast is not a highly stratified trek. Only in the act of reflecting are we able to see how life has changed and make some sense of it. These transitions I document here take place in, on and through a Paralympic body that physically manifests itself as non-normative, because of congenital cerebral palsy which impacts extensively upon its right hemisphere. It is important to state here, however, that in every other aspect of my life I am privileged. I am a Canadian, middle class, white, heterosexual male, albeit an ageing one. Because of the physically distinctive body in which I live and access the world around me, there is no literature that directly relates to my transformation from high-performance runner to a physical activity enthusiast. Anthropologist Robert Murphy in his classic ethnography The Body Silent (1987) evocatively explored the decline in social and physical status of his body as he transformed from an able academic, through the experience of disability, to ultimately death as his body became permanently silenced.1 Murphy’s graphic transformation highlights the temporality of physical capital and the decline of the body. This ethnographic narrative account does not consider retirement from high-performance sport, as is my aim in this chapter, but the loss of status he suffered as his body declined is salient to the argument herein. It is significant that the understanding of continually transforming ageing sporting bodies and their needs and requirements is predicated upon a normate starting position (Garland-Thomson, 1997). That is to say that my experience of my ageing asymmetrical body is distinctive to those discussed in the social science of sport literature to date – though recently there have been interview-based studies exploring the transition of professional para-athletes in the UK in retirement (Bundon, 2021). As I literally run towards my past, remembering and reflecting on my time as an elite runner, the training I undertook to achieve sporting success collides with my training as a social anthropologist. As a result, the narrative contained in these pages is an amalgam of my identities as a runner and as a social anthropologist. The ongoing evaluation of the virtue of moving my body and the consequences of doing so as new pains and injuries surface as it ages are instrumental in determining whether there are gains in well-being and whether they are worth it. To analyse the natural transformation of the ageing non-normative body in its transition from high-performance running to physical activity enthusiast, I will explore the alternations in habitus and technologies of self-monitoring that can either help or hinder the positive development of a lifeworld in retirement from elite sport. Self-Ethnography, Reflecting and Remembering For the purpose of this chapter, I am producing an ethnography of the self where my memories of my life stages as a young man are reflected upon in order to distinguish them from nostalgic reminiscences that may lack a degree of authenticity ‘in writing, remembering and representing our field work experiences we are involved in the process of self presentation and identity construction’ (Coffey, 1999). In essence, this field site is my lifecourse and remembering in a clear fashion is difficult. Some scholars have avoided this difficulty by adopting an autoethnographic

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approach from the outset of their research where detailed field notes are taken as lifecourse transitions occur (see Chang, 2008; Reed-Dahahay, 1997). Others in the field of the social science of sport have adopted autoethnographic phenomenology or autophenomenography (Collinson, 2009; Collinson & Hockey, 2015). While autoethnographic phenomenology would be useful in exploring my feeling regarding my transition from high-performance runner to a physical activity enthusiast, this current chapter is a retrospective endeavour and therefore falls squarely in the realm of the anthropology of the self, in which remembering and reflecting are key (Coffey, 1999). In fact, in this current work remembering is both a methodological tool and the object of research (Keighley, 2010). The process of writing this chapter in an odd way was enhanced by the physical act of moving like a runner – albeit slowly, as it helped in the act of remembering my former self. Running is a place where I remember. Most importantly, it is a place where I remember not the thoughts of others, but something that I once knew, a lifetime ago, but was forced to forget in the process of growing up and becoming someone. I knew this but I did not know that I knew it; and in this I was just like everyone else. Running is it place for remembering. (Rowlands, 2013: xvii) The act of running is something that has a profound effect on many human beings (Heinrich, 2001) as running is the basis of so many sporting practices. Movement in its simplest form is something that finds us. While we are social cultural beings, the physicality of movement allows us to engage with the physical world around us and has a significant impact on the human condition. Therefore, in terms of remembering, the physical act of moving the body can literally ‘jog’ memories from forgotten times and places. Significance of Time and Space In this discussion, time takes on several important roles. When we become serious about pursuing running, time can be doubly significant. We want to reduce the amount of time it takes us to cover a certain distance. Success in achievement running (Bale, 2004; Brohm, 1978) is determined in part by this factor, assuming you are also moving faster than your competitors over a given distance. To achieve this aim, it also takes time to train. Creating the habitus (Tomlinson, 2004) of a middledistance runner is a huge time commitment (see Howe, 2006, 2017). Looking at the training diaries2 I have kept which detail the work I put into condition my body as a high-performance runner, on average I spent 15–18 hours per week on activities designed to enhance my running. Training included stretching, mobility drills, weight training, massage therapy, strength training as well as running. All these activities around the act of running were designed with the specific needs of my body in mind. Having the right side of my body congenitally underdeveloped meant that I am asymmetrical and therefore it was exceedingly important to get the balance of training right so that the natural body imbalance I had became less, as

A Hard Habit to Break 47 I became a more proficient athlete – helping me to both avoid injury and enhance my performance potential. Of course, today as I age and do not train seriously, my body is in the process of returning to its asymmetrical state. While this to some readers may seem a sad state of affairs, it is normal with the passage of time. This passage of time, as my body returns to its natural state, though more decrepit than in my youth allows me the space to remember and reflect on the time that has passed since I lived in and through a high-performance running body. Time in the day to day passes more quickly than ever before yet I move more slowly as I age and each passing day is less significant as a measure of time in my life. The social significance and the cultural relativity of time in this context should not be underestimated (see Hassard, 2016). The passage of time momentarily can be slowed down as I remember and reflect while I am running. I resonate with my past life since the movement patterns that facilitate my remembering are reminiscent of the running culture and habits of the past but importantly are sediments in my present that will likely exist in the future. Creating a Habit for Movement: From Fun to High Performance and Back Again While running as a child, and other forms of playful activity may be our first engagement with movement cultures, the focus on a particular physical activity often depends on the whims and interests of our parents. My father was captivated by the majesty of elite track and field athletics when he was young. As his firstborn child he passed on the love of track and field to me at a very early age, and I was given the opportunity to watch all the events at the Montreal Olympics of 1976. This exposure to the elite end of the sport dovetailed nicely with the hero worship I had already established with the high school runners that my father coached week in and week out. I was drawn to running by its relative simplicity and ease of movement (Bale, 2004). Because of my imperfect body I was awkward in my movement patterns. It took a particular type of physical activity to regulate my movement. The repetitive nature of running mimicked a metronome in a music class – with every click being a foot strike. In this way I was able to discipline my ‘mortal engine’ (Hoberman, 1992) through the act of training for the sport of middle-distance running. To best make sense of what the act of training for high-performance running does to the body – in this case the body through which I experience the world – we need to be mindful of the concept of embodiment. Kimayer has suggested that the metaphor of embodiment serves to maintain a place for the richness of bodily experience and significance of bodies as agents and areas of action. Embodiment works against the tendency to treat bodies simply as property (my body and yours) or as vehicles entirely subordinate to our will. The essential insight of embodiment is that the body has a life of its own and that social worlds become inscribed on, or sedimented in, body physiology, habitus, and experience. (2003, p. 285)

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The study of embodiment has been central to the field of the social science of sport for well over 30 years (Hoberman, 1992). Embodiment is also front and centre in the act of running and this has been nicely articulated in the high-performance realm (Bale, 2004) and across the spectrum of performance (Bridel et al., 2017; Heinrich, 2001). To make sense of my embodiment as a former high-performance runner I draw upon the practice theory of Pierre Bourdieu – particularly his conceptualisation of habitus (1977, 1984, 1990a). In essence, the work of Bourdieu draws to our attention the fact that embodiment means seeing the experience of the body not as an object to be studied (in the manner our colleagues in physiology or biomechanics might) but rather as it relates to the subjective interpreter of culture (Csordas, 2002). In other words, the running body is (re)produced within and by the social and physical environment (Howe & Morris, 2009). Important here is the fact that this can be the case before and after retirement. The movement patterns in which we choose to engage impact us throughout the lifecourse. As such, running bodies can be transformed through the creation of habit by the repetitive nature of movement drills, and the practices of running that are prescribed traditionally by coaches. In retirement, we pick and choose what habits to maintain and which to ‘put out to pasture’. Today, of course, there may be less need for a physical coach as popular medium, such as running magazines and training blogs can in principle be used to improve the body’s performance while running. In the transition from fun to performance running and back again, the specificity of training was the most acute for me when I was engaged in the pursuit of elite times and medals where the relationship with various coaches was deeply personal. The high-performance coaches that I have worked with knew everything about me – it was not simply what I did in training but also details such as how much I slept and what and how much (in terms of calories) I ate every day that was important. This specificity of training and the relationships I had with my coaches, who incidentally were not Para coaches but rather high-performance running coaches, were instrumental in shaping my habitus as an elite runner. I wanted to train in the same way as other elite runners. However, while I could mirror (and often surpass) their commitment to training (central to my habitus), I could not replicate the fluidity or the speed of their running movements. The transition in training from simply running six times a week over time becomes at least a 15-hour-a-week commitment, that, when combined with the pressure of performing for government funding, can lead to running being more like work than play. Of importance post-retirement is that while the amount of time I was training was greatly reduced, the fact that I was not doing it with any guidance or support may have impacted my transition to post performance running. But as I transitioned from an elite runner to a jogger, it is also worth noting that more time was spent coaching elite athletes of my own (Howe, 2017; Howe & Morris, 2009). The act of coaching, which I find rewarding, may have provided a bridge for me as I transitioned into retirement. The habitus of an individual is continually changing through time and according to Bourdieu it is the embodied sediment of every interaction we have with the

A Hard Habit to Break 49 lifeworld (Bourdieu, 1977, 1984, 1990a, b). The movements I undertook as a child running were transformed by the training that I engaged in as a junior athlete and every year it got a little more serious. The training routines I went through transformed my body so that moving like a runner became habitual. The speed strength and stamina required to be an elite runner meant that I embodied particular movement patterns, although these were distinctive to me as I never achieved complete symmetry in my body. It is not too large a theoretical step to link Bourdieu’s conceptualisation of habitus to Merleau-Ponty’s corporeal schema (1962). Borrowing from Merleau-Ponty (1962), corporeal schema comprises the skills required for the performance and the practical understanding of the training and competition that may be transformed depending on the action of other. According to Crossley, Habit involves a modification and enlargement of the corporeal schema, an incorporation of new ‘principles’ of action and know-how, which permit new ways of acting and understanding. It is a sediment of past activity which remains alive in the present in the form of the structures of corporeal schema; shaping perception, conception, deliberation, emotion and action. (Crossley, 2001, p. 125) Corporeal schema allows us to understand how we, as human, habitually act without acknowledging the decisions we have made. Therefore, corporeal schema can be understood as embodied knowledge and needs to be utilised in order to make sense of how the body interacts with others and particular material spaces in the case of runners where they train and compete. These interactions are instrumental in helping to develop an athlete’s habitus whether that be at a high-performance or recreational level. In other words, ‘the corporeal schema is an incorporated bodily know-how and practical sense; a perspectival grasp upon the world from the “point of view” of the body’ (Crossley, 2001, p. 123). As a runner I do not ‘see’ my corporeal schema, but rather in the act of reflecting on a career in high-performance running I am able to attribute certain positive and negative qualities in my disposition to the habitus of this specific cultural context. The corporeal schema of a high-performance runner allows for unconscious improvised action. For example: Changes that occur within a race in terms of the tactics of the other competitors and the ability of the athlete to respond are directly linked to the disposition or the ability to improvise that the athlete innately has developed through physical training and lived experiences more generally. (Howe, 2006, p. 328) Unlike spontaneous movements in racing situations, the act of retirement from high-performance running is a conscious one. It may take place due to the inability to recover sufficiently from an injury, so that training is curtailed, and performances suffer. On the other hand, it may be the result of the realisation that it is not possible to push the body any harder or that age and other life commitments

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get in the way of once again elevating one’s performance. For me, it was a combination of the latter two points. The event I wished to compete in during the 2004 Paralympic in Athens was removed from the programme. I could not imagine training for another event late in my career, so I retired. Yet, even as I now plod along my running routes, my body reacts when it is passed by another runner. Without consciously doing so – I speed up only slowing down when I am made consciously aware of my acceleration, often by my inability to regulate my breathing properly at the faster pace. On reflection, this surfaces as a reminder of days gone by, when I would attempt to run my competitors into the ground. Retirement from a team sport can impact individuals profoundly as they transition to life after sport (Hickey & Roderick, 2017; Jones et al., 2022; Rodrick, 2014). In a social environment where you are surrounded by teammates on a daily basis, it is certainly understandable to miss the camaraderie when you retire. Likewise, if you retire at a relatively young age (Kerr & Dacyshyn, 2000) there may also be trouble adjusting to life after competitive sport. But for someone who runs long distances (in training at least) it can be a lonely pursuit (Sillitoe, 2010). It has been suggested by scholars that we should more accurately talk about life transitions rather than retirement (Baillie, 1993; Park et al., 2013). While this might be psychologically beneficial given the negative connotations associated with retirement, a shift to a life after high-performance sport where your body in habitual trained to reproduce movement that may not be considered normal in non-sporting contexts is perhaps too abrupt to be considered a transition. Think for example of offensive or defensive lineman in Canadian or American football. The habitus of sacrificing your body to either protect (offence) or harm (defence) the quarterback has little value off the field of play so the transitioning to life after sport could be tremendously difficult. As a high-performance runner – certainly I could have transitioned to what Bale (2004) referred to as fitness running or jogging, yet this activity is constructed to get people to run for health purposes rather than the enjoyment of the pursuit. As such, the culture around fitness running or jogging is distinctive to high-performance running. For one thing it is often done in groups (Robinson et al., 2014) which when I see them, I literally run away in the other direction. The expectation of joining a social group that will help foster participation in an attempt to stay motivated is just foreign to me. While such views will make some see me as curmudgeonly, social theorist of the body, Chris Shilling highlighted the pitfalls of fitness running: ‘Having taken up running over several years in the belief that it would make me fitter and healthier, I then learned the wear and tear of the exercise has permanently damaged my hips’ (Shilling, 1993, p. 204). Injuries are the unintended consequences of the engagement of various movement cultures but there is potential for injury from running equally at the high-performance and the fitness level. This is because at the high-performance end of the spectrum bodies are pushed to their physical limits whereas those who engage in fitness running may lack the habitus of appropriate movement patterns (good running technique) which can fast track the potential for injury (Howe, 2004). After my retirement from Paralympic athletics, I did as little as possible for six months. I did not want to move in an organised or regimented fashion. The

A Hard Habit to Break 51 disciplining of my body which was the hallmark of my training and the related lived experience (Allen-Collinson, 2009; Hockey & Allen-Collinson, 2017) need to be better reflected upon in order to make sense of why I stopped moving in retirement. Part of the problem was my lack of desire to become part of fitness running or jogging culture, whose collectivity – ‘we are all in this together’ – meant that I would not belong. After gaining over 20 pounds in six months I realised that I had to do something to look after myself. Because of the cerebral palsy in my body I felt the options of physical activities were limited. Swimming was an option but for two reasons I could not stomach it. Following a painted line on the bottom of a pool – lacks the visual stimulation of going for a run. I was also forced into the pool to either aqua-jog (the mimicking of running movements while in the water) or swim when I was injured as a highperformance runner in order to maintain cardiovascular fitness, which brings back unpleasant memories. I also wanted something that could be done anywhere and could be fit in easily into my daily routine. My habitus as an elite runner was still embodied through the movement of my swelled body and was reminiscent of my past, so I ran, but it was different. Movement Trackers: Bio-power at Arm’s Length My transition to jogging was not smooth sailing. Because I had been underweight as a runner the clothing I still had fit rather tightly over my relatively inflated body. I was embarrassed by my physical state, and I started running in the dark in order to hide myself from public scrutiny. The running clothing I purchase now is less revealing to further hide my body. Gone are the form fitting technologically advance running tights of my heyday. They were replaced by looser fitting clothing that still purportedly was technologically advanced. In order to get new gear when I started running to control my weight (it was the mid-2000s) meant going into a physical shop and trying things on. I was struck by the commodification that had gone on in fitness running. Running was no longer the simple solitary pursuit I remembered from my childhood. Quantification is important in fitness running. Pulse rate and blood pressures monitored: body sizes is measured. And, at the same time, looking good is at least as important, it seems, as keeping fit. Such fitness regimes can also connote individual mobilizing themselves for a world of work in commerce. (Bale, 2004, p. 17) As I got a degree of fitness back and began to regularly run – once a day six days a week – I did my best to avoid the overconsumption of jogging culture. While as a high-performance athlete with sponsorship deals, I took pride in looking the part, as a jogger I felt the overt consumption was for pretenders. I no longer entered races – unless it was to act as a pacemaker for friends because I had no desire to test myself against the clock. The jogging collective culture to me – certainly when

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I first transitioned – seemed to exhibit many of the qualities that I despised in the world. Privilege, greed and self-indulgent consumption. Almost two decades later – I no longer jog – I do physical activity that resembles running. The shift in my attitude was brought on by being given the gift of a so-called smartwatch. This device which measured heartrate, distance, calories expended, steps taken and importantly time made me realise that I was so slow that I should be timing myself with a sundial. Over the past two decades, health and fitness trackers and smartwatches have been sold to all sundry to serve in the battle of the West to fight what is contentiously referred to as the ‘obesity epidemic’ (Rich & Miah, 2014), that has been central to debates around the issues of greatest concern in Western health contexts (Rich, 2011). While the consumer technologies conflict with international policy rhetoric attempts to broaden the understanding of health to reduce health disparities globally, instead of ‘focusing on individuals’ specific health-related behaviours’ (Lupton, 2015, p. 176) these technologies are becoming ubiquitous in fitness running cultures (Bale, 2004). Because of these debates around health and the self it maybe apposite to adopt a Foucauldian lens to make sense of the capacities of these technologies to control behaviour. ‘The work of Foucault around discourse, bio-power and normalisation has received extensive attention across digital and health sociology. Digital health technologies have intensified the imperative to be healthy within modern society’ (Depper & Howe, 2017, p. 100). In other words, bio-power is an agent of normalisation, and it shapes public understandings of health in Western contexts. Fitness running or jogging, therefore, is seen as a consumer marketplace where the expansion of the use of tracking technologies has given rise during neoliberal times to a moral imperative to live a healthy life, as a virtuous bio-citizen (Fotopoulou & O’Riordan, 2017; Harwood, 2009). Long before this Foucault believed that technologies developed by societies could be used to ‘continuous regulatory and corrective mechanisms’ (1978, p. 144) to monitor and therefore normalise citizens into docile bodies. Foucault drew upon Jeremy Bentham’s ‘plan for the panopticon as the paradigm of a disciplinary technology’ (Rabinow, 1991, p. 18) in order to bring together disciplinary power and knowledge, the joining of which Foucault referred to as technologies that ‘come together around the objectification of the body’ (Rabinow, 1991, p. 17). Today the difference is that rather than simply the structure of buildings, particularly corrective in nature, such as hospitals and prisons that were central to Foucault’s work, the panopticon sits on our wrists and records to borrow from the band The Police ‘every breath you take every move you make’! If we purchase these technologies our bodies have the potential to be controlled with every step. Add in the online communities either hosted by the manufacturer or through private businesses, runner can measure their performances against one another and even win virtual awards breaking records on various running routes. Upon reflecting it is unclear to the extent to which I buy into the consumer marketplace around fitness tracking technologies that are designed to discipline our bodies to achieve health and wellness (Lupton, 2017) but I did start using a smartwatch a decade ago. As a newer model currently sits on my wrist and I am

A Hard Habit to Break 53 reminded of my movements (or lack thereof) at any moment, reflecting on my current life without this biotechnology seems unimaginable. I originally bought into the technologies because I loved the way it mapped where I ran. Reflecting on the purchase that leads to the quantification of my movement leaves me contemplating why others use this technology. The same bodies that join fitness running groups may need the motivation of the numbers generated by the technology to fully engage in their running culture that is still a foreign field to me. From the Running Anthropologist’s Armchair The process of writing this chapter has been a good one. Getting out and running has helped me remember my past self through re-kindling with familiar but distant movement patterns. I realise now that life was simpler as an elite runner as I had one goal – to run fast. Today, as I run, I think my training as a runner and as an anthropologist collide. Running is a place where I can channel long forgotten thoughts: of thinkers read and largely forgotten, of thinkers buried long ago and whose thoughts have similarly been buried somewhere in my brain while it goes about its day-to-day business of keeping me alive and mostly sane. (Rowlands, 2013, p. 205) Situated in my office at work I stare at my last Paralympic uniform which is framed behind glass on the wall. A fragment of material culture from my past. I am left wondering – would the uniform still fit and why is it today that I hide my body away? The stigma (Goffman, 1963) I still carry as a burden – because of my imperfect body shapes how I exercise today to a far greater degree than I did in the past. In days gone by to run as fast as I could over my chosen distances was all that mattered. The corporal schema established through training does not make me immune to ostracisation of my bodily imperfection in the public sphere, when I do not have the invisible shield of high-performance sport to protect me. In my life as an anthropologist my imperfect body should not matter – but it does. It gives me cultural capital in the field in which I research but it also acts to marginalise me both in academia and in physical activity spaces. Today as I run – or engage in physical activity that mimics running, I am confronted by memories of races and the training I did to achieve (relative) success. While I do this running alone, I remember my training in anthropology. I am in the role of D’Artagnan a character from the Dumas novel The Three Musketeers. The musketeers in this case are Pierre Bourdieu, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Michel Foucault, who filter in and out my mind as I sweat and strain during my daily plodding of the urban landscape around London and Ontario, Canada. These three musketeers helping make sense of days gone by in my lifeworld. But where does the time go – was it not just yesterday that I was making my international debut? Unfortunately, it was not! As I have run through the lifeworld, I have been relatively lucky – while it is clearly not 1985, I am still able to draw

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upon the sediments of the habitus I once embodied every time I lace up my training shoes when I am alone running. Being alone and moving I am protected from the external gaze that attempts to control me. Yet, due to the advance in consumable technology I am now forced out the door by a panopticon on my wrist. The smartwatch on my wrist does without doubt controls me. For example, I never charge it unless I am sedentary at my desk – because I do not want to lose valuable steps that I would accumulate were I being active. I am clearly in a liminal state (Turner, 1965) – betwixt and between high-performance and fitness running cultures. I am lucky I am still able to enjoy moving like a runner. My imperfect body still allows me to get out the door most days urged on by the need to get my steps in, and moving for me is an antidote to stress. It also allows me to not fret about the need to buy a larger size of jeans and I can be guilt free when I enjoy a beer at the end of the day. In spite of this, as a running anthropologist I am unable to determine whether I am running away from the past or towards a brighter future. Time will tell. Notes 1 Robert Murphy’s widow Yolanda, also an anthropologist, finished the text as Robert passed away before the project was completed. 2 These diaries are a useful resource that allows me to see the amount of time I spent training but unfortunately, they lack the thick description required to facilitate further socio-cultural understanding – other than the fact they were of significant importance because I still have my full set of training diaries even 20 years after my ‘retirement’.

References Allen-Collinson, J. (2009). Sporting embodiment: Sport studies and the (continuing) promise of phenomenology. Qualitative Research in Sport and Exercise, 1, 279–196. Allen-Collinson, J., & Hockey, J. (2015). From a certain point of view: Sensory phenomenological envisioning of running space and place. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 44, 63–83. Baillie, P. H. (1993). Understanding retirement from sports: Therapeutic ideas for helping athletes in transition. The Counselling Psychologist, 21(3), 399–410. Bale, J. (2004). Running Cultures: Racing in Time and Space. London: Routledge. Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. London: Routledge. Bourdieu, P. (1990a). The Logic of Practice. Cambridge: Polity Press. Bourdieu, P. (1990b). In Other Words: Essays Towards a Reflective Sociology. Cambridge: Polity Press. Bridel, W. M., Markula, P., & Denison, J. (2017). Endurance running. In A Socio-Cultural Examination. London: Routledge. Brohm, J. M. (1978). Sport: A Prison of Measured Time. London: Pluto Press. Bundon, A. (2021). The professionalisation of paralympic sport and implications for the retirement experiences of paralympians. In Athlete Transitions into Retirement (pp. 32– 45). London: Routledge. Chang, H. (2008). Autoethnography as Method. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press.

A Hard Habit to Break 55 Coakley, J. (1983). Leaving competitive sport: Retirement or rebirth? Quest, 35(1): 1–11. Coffey, A. (1999). The ethnographic Self. London: Sage. Crossley, N. (2001). The Social Body: Habit, Identity and Desire. London: Sage. Csordas, T. (2002). Body/Meaning/Healing. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Depper, A., & Howe, P. D. (2017). Are we fit yet? English adolescent girls experience of health and fitness apps. Health Sociology Review, 26(1), 98–112. Fotopoulou, A., & O’Riordan, K. (2017). Training to self-care: Fitness tracking, biopedagogy and the healthy consumer, Health Sociology Review, 26(1), 54–68. Foucault, M. (1978). The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction. (R. Hurley, Trans.). New York: Random House. Foucault, M. (1984). The politics of health in the eighteenth century. In P. Rabinow (Ed.), The Foucault Reader (pp. 273–289). New York: Pantheon Books. Foucault, M. (1988). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. London: Penguin. Goffman, E. (1964). Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. New York: Simon and Schuster. Grove, J. R., Lavallee, D., & Gordon, S. et al. (1997). Coping with retirement from sport: The influence of athletic identity. Journal of Applied Sport Psychology 9(2), 191–203. Harwood, V. (2009). Theorizing biopedagogies. In J. Wright & V. Harwood (Eds.), Governing Bodies: Biopolitics and the “Obesity Epidemic” (pp. 15–30). London: Routledge. Hassard, J. (Ed.). (2016). The Sociology of Time. New York: Springer. Heinrich, B. (2001). Why We Run: A Natural History. New York: Harper Collins. Hickey, C., & Roderick, M. (2017). The presentation of possible selves in everyday life: The management of identity among transitioning professional athletes. Sociology of Sport Journal, 34, 270–280. Hoberman, J. M. (1992). Mortal Engines: The Science of Performance and the Dehumanization of Sport. New York: The Free Press. Hockey, J., & Allen-Collinson, J. (2015). Digging in: The sociological phenomenology of “doing endurance” in distance-running. In Endurance Running (pp. 227–242). London: Routledge. Howe, P. D. (2004). Sport, Professionalism and Pain: Ethnographies of Injury and Risk. London: Routledge. Howe, P. D. (2006). Habitus, barriers and the [ab]use of the science of interval training in the 1950s. Sport in History, 26(2), 325–344. Howe, P. D. (2017). Hitting a purple patch: Building high performance runners at Runtleborough University. In W. Bridel, P. Markula, & J. Denison (Eds.), Endurance Running: A Socio-Cultural Examination (pp. 212–226). London: Routledge. Howe, P. D., & Morris, C. (2009). An exploration of the co-production of performance running bodies and natures within “running taskscapes”. Journal for Sport and Social Issues, 33(3), 308–330. Jones, L, Avner, Z., & Denison J. (2022). “After the dust settles”: Foucauldian narratives of retired athletes’ “re-orientation” to exercise. Frontiers in Sports and Active Living, 4, 901308. doi: 10.3389/fspor.2022.901308 Keightley, E. (2010). Remembering research: Memory and methodology in the social sciences, International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 13, 55–70. Kerr, G. & Dacyshyn, A. (2000).The retirement experiences of elite, female gymnasts. Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, 12(2), 115–133. Kimayer, L. J. (2003). Reflections on embodiment. In J. M. Wilce (Ed.), Social Cultural Lives of Immune Systems (pp. 282–302). London: Routledge.

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Kristensen, D. B., & Ruckenstein, M. (2018). Co-evolving with self-tracking technologies. New Media & Society, 20(10), 3624–3640. Lavallee, D., Gordon, S., & Robert Grove, J. (1997). Retirement from sport and the loss of athletic identity. Journal of Personal and Interpersonal Loss, 2(2), 129–147. Lupton, D. (2012). M-Health and health promotion: The digital cyborg and surveillance society. Social Theory & Health, 10, 229–244. Lupton, D. (2013). Quantifying the body: Monitoring and measuring health in the age of mHealth technologies. Critical Public Health, 23, 393–403. Lupton, D. (2017). Self-tracking, health and medicine. Health Sociology Review, 26, 1–5. Merleau-Ponty, M. (1962). Phenomenology of Perception. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Millington, B. (2009). Wii has never been modern: ‘Active video’ games and the ‘conduct of conduct’. New Media & Society, 11, 621–640. Murphy, R. F. (1987). The Body Silent. London: WW Norton & Company. Park, S., Lavallee, D., & Tod, D. (2013). Athletes' career transition out of sport: A systematic review. International Review of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 6(1), 22–53. Rabinow, P. (1991). The Foucault Reader. London: Penguin. Reed-Danahay, D. E. (Ed.) (1997). Auto/Ethnography: Rewriting the Self and the Social. Oxford: Berg. Rich, E. (2011). Exploring the relationship between pedagogy and physical cultural studies: The case of new health imperatives in schools. Sociology of Sport Journal, 28(1), 64–84. Rich, E., & Miah, A. (2014). Understanding digital health as public pedagogy: A critical framework. Societies, 4, 296–315. Robinson, R., Patterson, I., & Axelsen, M. (2014). The “loneliness of the long-distance runner” no more: Marathons and social worlds. Journal of Leisure Research, 46(4), 375–394. Roderick, M. (2014). From identification to dis-identification: Case studies of job loss in professional football. Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health, 6, 143–160. Rowlands, M. (2013). Running with the Pack; Thoughts from the Road on Meaning and Mortality. London: Grata. Shilling, C. (2012). The Body and Social Theory. London: Sage. Shilling, C. (1993). The demise of sociology of education in Britain? British Journal of Sociology of Education, 14, 105–112. Sillitoe, A. (2010). The Loneliness of the Long-distance Runner. London: Vintage. Stebbins, R. A. (1992). Amateurs, Professionals, and Serious Leisure. Montreal: McGillQueen’s Press-MQUP. Thomson, R. G. (1997). Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature. New York: Columbia University Press. Tomlinson, A. (2004). Pierre Bourdieu and the sociological study of sport: Habitus, capital and field. In Sport and Modern Social Theorists (pp. 161–172). London: Palgrave Macmillan. Turner, V. (1967). The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual. New York: Cornell University Press. Yannick, S. (2003). Repercussions of transition out of elite sport on subjective well-being: A one-year study. Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, 15(4), 354–371.

5

From Disciplined Body to Foucauldian Ethical Thinker A Transformational Tale of a High-Performance Baseball Player Clayton Kuklick

Introduction Sociology of sport scholars have long studied the influences of sporting culture and relations of power on athletes’ identities, their performance, and well-being (Markula & Pringle, 2006; Mills & Denison 2013, 2016). Much of this literature has used well-known social theorist Michel Foucault’s work to critique the dominating discourses and practices that operationalize disciplinary and confining ways to practice and do sport that implicate the production of hardworking, tough, hypermasculine, progressive, and efficient athletic identities. The production of these identities is framed by the moral codes of what are accepted as the truth or keys to success, which comprises sport’s disciplinary logic (Denison et al., 2017). And so, athletes without resisting are disciplined and controlled to be a certain way (i.e., hard working). While often deemed desirable with their associated positive outcomes within the sport culture, these sporting truths, unknowingly, are limiting and have shown to produce negative attributes such as normalizing identities, and underperforming, battered, apathetic, and docile athletes (Denison, 2007, 2010). These negative consequences have been linked to reasons for athletes’ voluntary or involuntary retirement (Crocket, 2014; Denison, 1997; Douglas & Carless, 2009; Sparkes & Smith, 2002). The negative consequences from sport’s dominating disciplinary logic seem to be compounded and intersected with athletes’ transition into retirement as they experience contradictions to their identity and turn to formulate different ones as they come to understand themselves in different social contexts (Denison et al., 2017; Jones & Denison, 2017). When athletes retire there is a sense of absence from the excitement, glory, and accomplishment that was once experienced, which shapes athletes’ identities as they navigate their lives outside of sport’s moral codes (Denison, 1996; Denison et al., 2017; Sparkes & Smith, 2002). In retirement transitions, sporting identities don’t necessarily fit within the accepted moral codes of social contexts outside of sport, leaving retired athletes recouping injuries, reluctant to participate in sport, angry, abusive, depressed, at a loss for who they are (Crocket, 2014; Denison, 1997; Douglas & Carless, 2009; Sparkes & Smith 2002), and more severely, with mental health issues and suicidal ideation (Reardon et al., 2019). To free oneself from such negative consequences of sport and to generate greater satisfaction and understanding of oneself, scholars have shown how a less DOI: 10.4324/9781003276531-6

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disciplinary logic or what Foucault (1980, 1985) would refer to as an ethical self is formulated in response to resistances or refusals of sport’s disciplinary logic (Bridel & Rail, 2007; Chase, 2006; Denison et al., 2017; Kuklick & Gearity, 2019). For example, literature has considered how female rugby identities (Chase, 2006), eating behaviors (Chapman, 1997), body shapes and figures (Chase, 2008; Johns & Johns, 2000; Markula, 2004), and sexual preferences (Bridel & Rail, 2007) are shaped by problematizing dominant sport norms to produce a freer and more ethical self. Without problematizing and resisting sport’s truth games, the transition seemingly creates complications and confusion as retired athletes bring their sporting identity into new ways of life. The challenge with adopting a less disciplinary logic and subsequently developing a more ethical self is that it is at odds with modern societies’ constructed reality that linear, progressive, and structured practice and training approaches used to produce hardworking, tough, and efficient athletes will produce success and wins (Denison et al., 2017). An ethical self is critical and pessimistic of sport’s truths, explores contradictions to these truths, and acts on these realized problems (Foucault, 1985). Due to the complex nature of the social forces shaping athletes’ identities as they engage in new lifestyles, jobs, and realities outside of sport, the current chapter looks to expand upon the sport retirement literature by showing how relations of power across my experiences as a high-performing athlete influenced my transformation from the hardworking and tough sporting identity to a less disciplinary, ethical self in transition to retirement. In this transformational tale, I too show the emotional toll and the long-term implications of sporting identities on retired athletes. The story illustrates how Foucault’s theorizing of truth games, problematizing, and ethical self-creation can be used to understand how and why social forces move athletes’ identities into a less disciplinary and ethical self that provides opportunity for the realization that athletes are freer to be who they want to be than they may think as they navigate retirement. Truth Games, Problematizing, and Ethical Self-Creation Fundamental to Foucault’s work are the ideas of power relations and truth, which he used to show how dominant knowledges and practices specific to social contexts ultimately shape individuals’ identities (1978, 1983, 1984, 1995). Foucault’s (1995) early work revolved around how within various contexts of modern society (i.e., prison, hospitals, education), techniques of domination (i.e., panopticon, hierarchical observation, means of correct training; see Markula and Pringle, 2006) were derived from dominant knowledge to conform individuals into effective, hardworking, and efficient working bodies, which also invisibly exhibits negative consequences (Denison, 2007, 2010, Johns & Johns, 2000; Mills & Denison, 2016). Foucault’s (1978, 1984, 1988) later work and of interest to this chapter revolved around truth games, problematizing, and ethical selfcreation to explain how individuals’ subjectivities are constructed, transformed, and modified in social contexts (1978, 1984, 2000a, b). Foucault (1984, 1988) saw subjectivities as being multiple, and socially and contextually constructed

From Disciplined Body to Foucauldian Ethical Thinker 59 through relations of power. While Foucault dismissed any possibility of existence without relations of power, his concept of an ethical self offers opportunities for individuals to practice freedom within relations of power, to challenge takenfor-granted truths, and to engage in an active formation of oneself (Foucault, 1987). Foucault (1985) theorized that oneself is formed within and through moral codes, or truth games that are a “set of values and rules of action” that distinguish which thoughts and practices are forbidden or permitted, which are considered positive or negative, and how one applies themselves as a moral subject (p. 25). In this way, the production of subjectivities is engaged by individual’s negotiation between themselves as a moral subject and their engagement with attitudes, thoughts, and practices that make up truth games within any given socio-historical context (Foucault, 2000a). Foucault (1983) theorized that moral codes and the social forces implicating them do not drastically change over time; however, how individuals apply themselves within the moral codes can change. Transformations into an ethical self occur in response to actively problematizing the moral codes of truth games (Markula & Pringle, 2006). Problematizing is a way of thinking through which an individual questions the way they are formed as a subject and engages resistances and contradictions to truth games. An ethical self is constructed from the continual, open-ended, and ongoing process of critically problematizing truth games. In comparison, without problematizing, contradictions and resistances to truth games are not realized as subjects go along adhering to them. Foucault (1978) thought there were no definitive scenarios that would cause one to problematize truth games because we can never be freed from power, nor is power negative. However, he did explain how such transformation, which individualizes the moral code, can occur in a four-part process. This ethical self-creation process includes: (a) the ethical substance, (b) mode of subjection, (c) ethical work, and (d) telos (Foucault, 1985). The ethical substance is the aspect of oneself that is perceived or considered to be problematic. As such, one problematizes truths, conceives resistances and contradictions to such truths. Depending on the problematic area, in the mode of subjection, the individual considers their relationship and value with the truth and their moral obligation to adhere to something ethical that necessitates putting different ideas and actions into practice. Ethical work is in reference to these practices. That is, the work that “one performs on oneself, not only to bring conduct into compliance with a giving rule, but to attempt to transform oneself into an ethical subject of one’s behavior” (Foucault, 1985; p. 27). This involves selfforming activities to produce continuous self-transformation and elaboration into a diverse set of practices. The telos is the goal for such ethical work. This refers to what the individual intends and aspires to be (Foucault, 1983, 1985). In this ethical self-creation process, the individual acts upon themselves, monitors, tests, and improves their ethical work, while keeping relations of power in mind (1985). The ethical self then offers opportunities to others, as Foucault describes, “since each individual has at his disposal a certain power, and for that very reason can also act as the vehicle for transmitting a wider power” (Foucault, 1980, p. 72).

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The Research Method, Setting, and Analytic Process Autoethnographies are distinct stories or cases that extrapolate the lived experiences of the author as a means of conducting research (Ellis & Bochner, 2000). With this approach, authors critique their lived experiences to provide new understandings for the realities of a complex socio-cultural context (Markula & Denison, 2005). Stories that are coupled with social theories have greater impact and construct deeper understandings for the complexities that permeate around the topic being explored (Denison, 2016). In the current chapter, I use Foucault’s theoretical tools of truth games, problematizing, and the four-part process of ethical selfcreation to analyze my transition from a hardworking and tough high-performance athlete into retirement and different ways of life and doing sport. I use data derived from my three-year stint as a minor league professional baseball player attempting to advance my position into the major leagues. In the United States, major league baseball (MLB) is the highest level of baseball and contains many levels of minor leagues (i.e., single A, double A, triple A) that serve as a pipeline for it. In the minor leagues, athletes sign contracts, are typically paid monthly or biweekly, and are provided room and board during the season that range from 100 to 150 games per year depending on the level. During the off-season, minor league players are typically not paid; however, they spend their time coaching, providing individual baseball lessons, or other work responsibilities while training and practicing to advance their position to the next minor league level or MLB. My story as a minor league catcher begins in 2007 in my third year as a professional player before retiring upon completion of the season. The events following this period map my post-retirement transition into an ethical self, which led to the production of a more creative, less disciplinary, and ethical self. In the analytic process, I used emotional recall and systematic sociological reflexivity to critically scrutinize and connect my experiences as an elite player with Foucault’s concepts to provide theoretical and practical inferences that show changes in subjectivities, and their effects on my thinking and well-being across time (Ellis & Bochner, 2000). My autoethnographic story presents factual content in chronological order as I experienced the events at various time points leading up to my retirement from high-performance baseball player and thereafter. Truth Games of the Tough, Hardworking Body Joe Amoroso’s voice, the broadcaster for the New Jersey Jackals, beams across the internet to be listened to by fans, spectators, friends, and family. It’s a two-two count, Tucker nods and takes the sign from Kuklick. Big pitch here folks as the Jackals are just one out away from their fourth straight win. Tucker out of stretch, delivers—Morrison swings and pops the ball up into foul territory on the home dugout side. Kuklick is tracking it. This is going to be close. Kuklick dives into the wall to make the catch [the crowd cheers in the background]. Kuklick is getting up limping a bit but seems to be okay. Don’t

From Disciplined Body to Foucauldian Ethical Thinker 61 we just love his hard work and toughness here at Yogi Berra stadium. That will do it folks, another Jackals win and exciting finish! The ending to games was a bit refreshing because it meant celebrating a win when it happened or merely the conclusion of a long hard day of work. My daily routine leading up to the competition was all I knew about how to be successful. More work, practice, and acute injuries to patch up before game time were what I knew to keep a job on the field and the only way to move up. My routine, all of which were optional with the exception of team warm-up and batting practice, entailed precise order, consistency, and timely attention to tasks and things to do, performed in superstition as most baseball players do. This all started with the 11 a.m. wake-up call and thoughtful consideration for when the lights come on to perform at 7:05 p.m. 11:00 a.m. Wake-up, shower, and dress 12:00 p.m. Breakfast/lunch 1:00 p.m. Clubhouse to change into practice and workout gear that was washed by clubhouse manager 1:20 p.m. Warm-up and light workout on the field with kettlebells, bands, medicine balls, dumbbells 2:00 p.m. Early hitting work: Tee work, short toss in the batting cage, or on the field with assistant coach Ed Ott, by myself, or a teammate 3:00 p.m. Defensive pitch calling game planning 3:30 p.m. Snack and meet with athletic trainer for preparation 4:00 p.m. Team warm-up 4:15 p.m. Team batting practice on the field 5:30 p.m. Eat 5:45 p.m. Shower and get dressed in uniform 6:15 p.m. Out to the field for autographs and starting pitcher warm-up 7:04 p.m. National anthem 7:05 p.m. Game time 10:00 p.m. Game concludes 10:15 p.m. Eat, ice, and post-game repair with the athletic trainer, and beers to celebrate a win 12:00 p.m. Leave stadium and clubhouse I implemented the routine as my playbook to success from which the manager, coaches, teammates, broadcaster, fans, spectators, family, and friends came to know me for. That is, a hardworking, tough son of a gun. Our manager, Joe Cal, admired that it was almost impossible to keep me out of lineup because despite pain, injury, and worry that I wasn’t doing enough, I never showed any dip in effort. The acute injuries were many: plica in the knee, inflamed rhomboids requiring cortisone shots, scratched corneas, deep bone bruises, a torn intercostal at the ribs, skin lacerations and massive blood blisters, broken nails, lower back sprains, tennis elbow, and host of other inflammations at joints. Yet, they never strayed me

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to withdraw from play or any standard level of effort. I sought after cheers, slaps on the ass from teammates, and extra praise from the broadcaster and fans when putting forth the same effort under injured conditions as I would in full capacity. The attention was empowering, and I craved it to the point where I was constantly watching to ensure I was doing more and being tougher than everyone else. But, it did come with worry and stress to feel accomplished and that I had done enough to be set up for success. One of the proudest instances that I will never forget was the specular play highlighted by the broadcaster in the opening passage. But it wasn’t the play that made me proud, rather it was the hard work and toughness that I maintained amid catching 32 straight games in a row without a day off yet playing with a torn intercostal. Joe, the manager, who was aware of my injury during this period, pulled me aside and said, “with this type of hard work and toughness, you will always have a job with me in professional baseball.” From a Foucauldian stance (1983), various power forces make individuals subjects and connects them to certain identities via their experiences and interactions in social contexts. The effect of power therefore produces certain accepted identities and associated behaviors that are considered the truth (1984). Researchers have long established that sports disciplinary logic consists of ideas around hard work and toughness to equal success (Denison et al., 2017), which I fully adopted in a process of self-negotiation that constructed my identity across my career (Foucault,1983). It was through the routine of hard work regardless of the circumstances, pain, or situation that made me tough, constructed my identity, and was confirmed by some sense of success. Coaches, teammates, broadcasters, fans, making more money, moving up in status, all served as truth game reinforcers that glorified my hardworking and tough identity. After years of competing in baseball at the youth, high school, collegiate, and professional, the moral codes engaged me in truth games where being tougher and working harder than others would lead to the next level. But, it didn’t. Foucault thought that “truth or being does not lie at the root of what we know or what we are, but at the exteriority of accidents” (Foucault, 1977, p. 146). Accidents that problematize one’s identity in relation to what is considered the truth. Contradictions to a Simple Question: Problematizing the Ethical  Substance of Hard Work and Toughness Upon the end of my third season in professional baseball, at the age of 26, I went back home again to live with my parents to begin off-season preparations. After merely two weeks of rest and recovery, my anxiousness for taking time off elevated and got to the point where I couldn’t feel comfortable anymore. I felt like I was wasting time. I started working at a local baseball academy to instruct individual lessons and my new off-season routine, yet with the same hard-core logic. I lifted, conditioned, and practiced in the mornings with the ideas that days off were a hindrance to my progression and that practicing the same precise details would cause improvements for moving up the next season. After two months into the routine, on one day I returned back to the house after a sweat session where my mother

From Disciplined Body to Foucauldian Ethical Thinker 63 had a healthy lunch waiting. My mother, a collegiate coach, ex-national lacrosse player, and who was also a believer of hard work and toughness, asked about how my training went. “Not too bad. Still a long way away and lots of work to do,” I said. Her next question was so simple, yet so contradicting and problematic to me. Sensing my seriousness and extreme focus, she asked, “At what point does your hard work no longer make it fun and worthwhile?” This question stuck with me through the night and into the next upcoming weeks. I reflected on my experiences and started realizing the contradictions to the effects of my identity and practices. Had I forgotten how enjoyable it is to work hard at something toward reaching a goal in sport? In the past, putting forth hard work gave me value, was fun, and generally produced success. Or did it not? Why wasn’t I having enjoyable experiences while putting forth hard work? Why wasn’t my hard work worthwhile in leading toward moving up in levels? After all I had been using the same toughness and hard work playbook my entire career and yet had been at the same level for three years where my batting average and defensive statistics fluctuated across seasons. But, I was tougher and worked harder than ever and did more than everyone else. Where was this all going and for what purpose? Foucault (1978) argued that individuals problematize considered normal truths when “it is necessary for a certain number of factors to have made it uncertain, to have made it lose its familiarity, or have provoked a certain number of difficulties around it” (p. 117). However, as scholars of sport have studied, problematizing sporting truths is not something that happens naturally, consistently, and seamlessly, due to power relations confining sport to the disciplinary truth that hard work and toughness lead to further development and ultimately success (Mills & Denison, 2013, 2016). For Foucault (1978), he thought there were no distinct situations in which one would problematize because problematizing is produced through power relations, which act as starting points for different ways of thinking. In my story, my mom posed a simple question that initiated problematizing one particular sport truth that was foundational to my constructed identity. Such a problematizing question and exposed contradictions led to my retirement. The fanatical adherence to toughness and hard work in my routines and behaviors was supposedly the truth and I had now problematized it. It had led me to seemingly a loss of enjoyment, a host of injuries, anxiousness toward ensuring I worked hard enough on any given day, engaging toughness in the work by doing it regardless of the circumstances, and over analyzing minute details to the point of decrements in performance. I was constantly sore and tired, and I called “that” “fun.” And, on top of it, I still hadn’t moved up in level. I retired and moved into coaching where I felt I could use my knowledge learned from professional baseball experiences to help other athletes reach their dreams of playing professionally. The Retired Athlete Coaching with Hard Work, Toughness, Pain, and  Guilt: The Beginning of Ethical Work Within about a month of retirement and sending my resume out, I accepted a graduate assistant coaching position and moved to Georgia. I had been to the Collegiate

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World Series two times as a player and had professional playing experience, so our team and the coaches looked up to me for having some understanding for what it would take to get there. I knew how, hard work and toughness. “Let’s go! Everyone out to right field line for warm-up drill set B today” as the digits on my watch turn to 3:00 p.m. “Come on, Pete, let’s get excited to get to work on this gorgeous day.” After warm-ups, “Okay its 3:35 p.m., defensive individual period,” I yell with excitement. “Pirk, bring the cones, Billy get the bucket of balls, drill set C today.” Pete slowly jogs over. “Okay, guys, we first have our blocking drill, 10 balls in a row.” Get up there Pirk and start us off going to the right.” Pirk finishes and then Billy goes. “Billy, glove first,” I point. “Good work!” “Spin around it, chin down, Benton.” Pete goes next. “Come on, Pete, can you please work a little harder? You drive me nuts. Everything you do is the bare minimum.” At 4:25 p.m., I look at my watch and see that we have a couple of minutes before batting practice starts. I call the catchers in from the drill set. Great work today, guys! Keep working at it. As a reminder, I am here every day for early or post practice defensive or offensive work. Billy and Benton got some good receiving work in before practice that really paid off today. Interrupting my little chat with the catchers, I hear down in the home plate area, “KUK [COOK], we are ready for you for BP [i.e., batting practice].” “Okay, I am coming. I threw 1,000 balls yesterday and I’ll throw 1,000 again today. I’m a workhorse, the streak continues!” I yell jokingly to our head coach who appreciated my resiliency for throwing batting practice every day. In my first year as a graduate assistant coach, I helped the team reach their first Division II College World Series appearance and we finished third in the county. Hard work and toughness in my coaching practices and expectations for players were present everywhere. However, my views and thoughts were changing behind the scenes. Foucault (1978, p. 96) explained how “points of resistance” and “actions of refusal” to partake in certain moral codes break its dominance to shape and move individual’s identities and ways of thinking. As Pete’s position coach, I selected him to be the starter despite the others working harder and being more resilient to injury, bumps and bruises, and adversity. I felt guilty for promising to the others that hard work and toughness would get them on the field. My arm ached from throwing batting practice, I was exhausted from the early morning training sessions, and the extended practice time working with athletes before and after practice. These experiences provided a sense to resist as I engaged the mode of subjection where I negotiated the value of hard work and toughness in relation to truth games (Foucault, 1985). In this process of resisting, Foucault (1985) highlights how one test outs and experiments with acts of resistance, which was reinforced by our success of going to the College World Series. However, at this point in my understanding of self I had still not fully engaged in ethical work where self-forming activities and changes in practices are used toward being an ethical subject (1983). After all, my coaching actions, my physical and mental exhaustion,

From Disciplined Body to Foucauldian Ethical Thinker 65 and guilt were still “normal” and were being negotiated as to how my shifts in thinking fit into sport’s moral codes. I had not yet understood the intention or telos of my work beyond making sense of how I had been fooled by sport’s truth games. Acts of Resistance and the Loosening of Hard work and Toughness:  Ethical Work as a Coach That next coaching season I took on a head coaching position for a collegiate summer league where players from across the country are recruited to play after their collegiate season has concluded. During this season, I set out to meet in a learning community with a couple of coach developers to discuss and brainstorm problems I was facing. I had started to coach differently and questioned hard work and toughness that I had come to know in my experiences, had been seeing all around me, and had been reinforced by some levels of success. I was exploring hard work and toughness differently by looking at hard work and toughness in nonlinear, nonprogressive, and in non-reductionistic ways. I was critiquing my expectations of the hard work and toughness, examining the implications of the work being done, and what was not being considered, while in comparison, I would have previously viewed practice by the amount and intensity of the work, or resiliency of athletes doing the work. I had used variation in batting practice by integrating sets where athletes didn’t know what was coming, provided choices and options for the athletes to choose, created challenges to be engaged with less repetitions, more rest and recovery periods, and changes in spaces in which they practiced their activities. “Okay guys, your choice on this round. Your choice on how many reps, where you want the pitches, what you want thrown. Just tell Coach McCarty.” In the past, I would have normally mandated early work batting practice, regulated the amount of work based on my hard work standard, and would ride those that didn’t hit the hard work mark. I implemented such approaches with the consequences of hard work in mind, to expedite learning and to promote higher levels of enjoyment. Buzzzzz. Buzzzz. Buzzzz. Pop’s [Dad] cell illuminates the screen on my cell as it vibrates across my desk as I prepare line up for the night’s game. I answer, “What’s up, pops?” My dad replies, “Yo. Yo. What’s up coach, what’s the lineup looking like tonight? I just wanted to wish you all good luck.” I reply with positivity, Thanks, yea, two losses in a row. I’ll be mixing some things up again tonight. I have been trying new things in practice and doing things differently that seem to be invigorating. I gotta tell ya, our season has been a bit of a roller coaster and I haven’t been that stressed about it. The players are getting better, and we are having fun doing it. Foucault argued that due to the complex nature of power relations, when shifts in identity and ways of thinking occur, it doesn’t necessarily result in a “true” self, rather an acceptable type of identity within power relations that fits within moral codes. I hadn’t resisted hard work and toughness completely, but the value was loosening (i.e., mode of subjection) as I was still engaging in activities that were within sport’s moral codes. As athletes transition into retirement, they often are

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challenged by the new contexts and fail to construct and reformulate new identities causing feelings of depression and confusion that their former athletic self no longer exists (Crocket, 2014; Sparkes & Smith, 2002). In this way, retired athletes may benefit from realizing that resistive practices of others in their social groups may invigorate them to reconstruct their identity (Crockett, 2017). In my case, the “material of my moral conduct” (Foucault, 1984, p. 26) that I brought to the learning community of coach developers was to look at the work being done differently: for enjoyment, satisfaction, and quality, despite the amount. Unknowingly at the time, they helped construct practices that were acts of resistance, yet still acceptable within the moral codes, shifting my identity and ways of thinking. Unexplained Contradictions, Now Explained: A Less Disciplinary, More Ethical Self A few years later, I stopped coaching at the collegiate level to complete my PhD in preparation for being a coach developer. At this time, I had been introduced and started reading about post-structuralism and Foucault’s work exploring power relations, identity constructions, and sport’s truth games. My past experiences and self were making more sense to me as I extended my ethical work as a retired athlete. I still missed being glorified and putting on a show of hard work and toughness both as an athlete and coach. But I had now become a bit angered by my realization that this identity was the culprit of many years of stress, worry, and physical impairments that could have been hindering my success to reach higher levels. My identity had now shifted. It wasn’t that I no longer valued hard work, rather I had more clarity for my goal or the telos for who I aspired to be (Foucault, 1983). I aspired to be an ethical Foucauldian thinker that balanced work and toughness, was able to see the consequences of sport’s truth games and engage in creative activities. And, in this way using my shift in identity and ways of thinking, ethically, as a wider power for shaping and moving others (Foucault, 1978). Wah—wah—wah. Wah—wah—wah. I pop out of bed as my alarm rattles on the nightstand. I feel tight but good, and fresh and looking forward to the day. I start with my morning workout down in my home gym that comprises of standard weight room equipment (e.g., squat rack, bench, dumbbells) along with various objects (e.g., cinder blocks, rocks, 6″ × 6″ plank). But my workout is far from standard. My clavicle clicks as I start off with a set of “atemporal” pull-ups, but I still feel good. “Atemporals” were training methods I thought of that uses time as a sensation or unquantifiable digit to perform movements. I would normally engage exercises with a precise set of reps and specific rest periods in a specific time frame. Now, I complete my sets of pull-ups until I feel good, feel a burn, until I spell out a word, or sing a set of phrases to a song. From there I head over to engage some “spasmodic tempo” squats, where I use time in various and discontinuous ways. For these squats, I pulled a random phone number out of my cell phone and used the first digit for the number of reps, the second number for the time I engaged the eccentric contractions (i.e., six seconds on the way down), and the third number for the time of the concentric contraction (i.e., four seconds on the way up). I then start

From Disciplined Body to Foucauldian Ethical Thinker 67 into some “variable geographic” training methods where I perform exercises in different locations than they normally would. I start with a set of some bent over rows on the first set of steps to go up the stairs, then standing on top of the bench, and then on my front porch. Next, I play with “intra-geographical” training methods for my shoulder movements where I perform them outside of linear planes, with different degrees of range of motion, and in different shapes. For each set of my shoulder front raises, I perform them in a different range of motion for each arm from rep to rep, performed it on one leg, in the shape of an S, and with my torso rotated to the left. Each of these approaches falls within my new and creative ideas of a fluid and fragmented training philosophy which involves a constantly backtracking, swinging, and changing approach to planning exercises and performing hard work. So, instead of working hard in traditional linear and progressive fashion, I resist it and go from small to big body parts, engage variations to blocked meso-cycles in reverse order, and disrupt load progressions where things are different in any given training session. As I finish up and walk up the stair sweating profusely, I think to myself, “Sheesh, I feel great. That was some hard work, and I had some fun doing it.” I can see how, when I think about it further, how in reality there are so many other things to look at in the hard work being done, rather than just the intensity and amount of work in the same revolving cycle of movements, exercises, and practices that would normally take place. Foucault (1985) thought that individuals are freer to be who they want to be than they think, and through ethical work they are practicing self-care and liberating themselves from truth games. This process is thought to be a constant ongoing creative activity, like an art, that can give rise to new forms of life (Foucault, 1985). In my case, I was developing new and creative training methods that disrupt considered normal approaches to hard work. My transformation, too, seemingly took quite a long time where I now look to ethical work over hard work and toughness and contemplate, critique, and rationalize with less disciplinary Foucauldian thinking the effects of my experiences as a high-performing baseball player. I still think it is good to work hard to not be complacent, and to be tough and tolerate pain as these qualities, at some level, have set me up for success. I no longer think of hard work as unidirectional. Rather than plowing ahead to meet the hard work standard, I engage tasks in moderation, appreciate the qualities of how I feel in doing them, and look to different ways of doing my work. In this way, my work and transformation of self is still ongoing and acting within my telos as I perform self-care. At the very least, this process has provided a sense of my identity and self in the process of retirement as I engage new contexts and moral codes (Foucault 1978, 1985), juxtaposed to retired athletes that often suffer from withdrawal and a sense of selflessness for long periods of time (Douglas & Carless, 2009). Conclusion Using Foucault’s theorizing of truth games, problematizing, and ethical work, I was able to show my transformation from a hardworking, tough, high-performance baseball player into a less disciplinary, ethical Foucauldian thinker. Many retired

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athletes suffer from problems associated with constructed identities from sport’s disciplinary logic that may cause them to retire voluntarily or involuntarily. In my case, I wish I would have problematized sport’s moral codes of hard work earlier in my career to overcome the building up of negative unforeseen consequences (i.e., pain, stress, underperformance) that I had been experiencing throughout my career. Ethical work has provided me with a transformed hard work identity consisting of new ideas, exercises, training methods, and movement practices that have helped overcome consequences that might have been sustained into retirement. When retired, existing athletic identities can cause complications as athletes interact with new social contexts where existing ways of being may or may not fit, leaving retired athletes with issues that impact their life. In this way, I am thankful of my ethical work because I didn’t fit the hard work sporting identity into a new way of life, and nor did I resist hard work completely. Through ethical work, I was able to see the consequences of my identity, but also its value where abandoning hard work completely would have led to other problems. After all, resisting hard work completely might result in the inability to maintain a non-sport career, which otherwise could lead to post-retirement mental health issues (Dougless & Carless, 2009). In this way, this chapter offers a unique context of sport retirement and its relationship with one aspect of the multiple interacting identities that makes up oneself. For this reason, I wish for others to meet Foucault to help with making sense of the complex realities of retirement and to find out what part of oneself is desirable to be addressed (i.e., ethical substance) by problematizing the moral codes that construct one’s identity when entering retirement, which often goes unproblematized (Chapman, 1997; Crockett, 2017). References Bridel, W., & Rail, G. (2007). Sport, sexuality, and the production of (resistant) bodies: De-/reconstructing the meanings of gay male marathon corporeality. Sociology of Sport Journal, 24, 127–144. Chapman, G. E. (1997). Making weight: Lightweight rowing, technologies of power, and technologies of the self. Sociology of Sport Journal, 14, 205–223. Chase, L. F. (2006). (Un)disciplined bodies: A Foucauldian analysis of women’s rugby. Sociology of Sport Journal, 23, 229–247. Chase, L. F. (2008). Running big: Clydesdale runners and technologies of the body. Sociology of Sport Journal, 25, 130–147. Crocket, H. (2014). “I had no desire to be having this battle with this faceless man on the soccer field anymore”: Exploring the ethics of sporting retirement. Sociology of Sport Journal, 31, 185–201. Crocket, H. (2017). Problematizing Foucauldian ethics: A review of technologies of the self in sociology of sport since 2003. Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 41(1), 21–41. Denison, J. (1996). Sport narratives. Qualitative Inquiry, 2(3), 351–362. Denison, J. (1997). Sport retirement in New Zealand. Journal of Physical Education New Zealand, 30(1), 11–14. Denison, J. (2007). Social theory for coaches: A Foucauldian reading of one athlete’s poor performance. International Journal of Sports Science & Coaching, 2(4), 369–383.

From Disciplined Body to Foucauldian Ethical Thinker 69 Denison, J. (2010). Planning, practice and performance: The discursive formation of coaches’ knowledge. Sport, Education and Society, 15(4), 461–478. Denison, J. (2016). Social theory and narrative research: A point of view. Sport, Education and Society, 21(1), 7–10. Denison, J., Mills, J. P., & Konoval, T. (2017). Sports’ disciplinary legacy and the challenge of ‘coaching differently’. Sport, Education and Society, 22(6), 772–783. Douglas, K., & Carless, D. (2009). Abandoning the performance narrative: Two women’s stories of transition from professional sport. Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, 21(2), 213–230. Ellis, C., & Bochner, A. P. (2000). Autoethnography, personal narrative, reflexivity: Researcher as subject. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of Qualitative Research (2nd ed., pp. 733–768). Sage. Foucault, M. (1977). Nietzsche, genealogy, history. In D. F. Bouchard (Ed.), Michel Foucault: Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews. Cornell University Press. Foucault, M. (1978). The History of Sexuality, Vol 1: An Introduction. Vintage. Foucault, M. (1980). Questions on geography. In C. Gordon (Ed.), Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972–1977. Harvester. Foucault, M. (1983). The subject and power. In H. L. Dreyfus & P. Rabinow (Eds.), Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics (2nd ed.). University of Chicago Press. Foucault, M. (1984). Nietzsche, genealogy, history. In P. Rabinow (Ed.), Foucault Reader. Pantheon Books. Foucault, M. (1985). The History of Sexuality, Vol. 2: The Use of Pleasure (R. Hurley, trans.). Penguin. Foucault, M. (1987). The ethic of care for the self as a practice of freedom. In J. Bernauer and D. Rasmussen (Eds.), The Final Foucault. MIT Press. Foucault, M. (1988). The History of Sexuality, Vol. 3: The Care of the Self (R. Hurley, trans.). Penguin. Foucault, M. (1995). Discipline and Punish (2nd ed.). Vintage. Foucault, M. (2000a). The ethics of concern of the self as a practice of freedom. In P. Rabinow (Ed.), Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth, Essential Works of Foucault: 1954–1984 (Vol. 1, pp. 281–301). Penguin. Foucault, M. (2000b). On the genealogy of ethics: An overview of a work in progress. In P. Rabinow (Ed.), Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth, Essential Works of Foucault: 1954–1984 (Vol. 1, pp. 253–280). Penguin. Johns, D. P., & Johns, J. S. (2000). Surveillance, subjectivism and technologies of power: An analysis of the discursive practice of high-performing sport. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 35(2), 219–234. Jones, L., & Denison, J. (2017). Challenge and relief: A Foucauldian disciplinary analysis of retirement from professional association football in the United Kingdom. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 52(8), 924–939. Kuklick, C. R., & Gearity, B. T. (2019). New movement practices: A Foucauldian learning community to disrupt technologies of discipline. Sociology of Sport Journal, 36(4), 289–299. Markula, P. (2004). “Tuning into oneself”: Foucault’s technologies of the self and mindful fitness. Sociology of Sport Journal, 21, 302–321. Markula, P., & Denison, J. (2005). Sport and personal narrative. In D. Andrews, D. Mason, & M. Silk (Eds.), Qualitative Methods in Sports Studies (pp. 165–184). Berg.

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Markula, P., & Pringle, R. (2006). Foucault, Sport and Exercise: Power, Knowledge and Transforming the Self. Routledge. Mills, J. P., & Denison, J. (2013). Coach Foucault: Problematizing endurance running coaches’ practices. Sports Coaching Review, 2(2), 136–150. Mills, J. P., & Denison, J. (2016). How power moves: A Foucauldian analysis of (in)effective coaching. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 53(3), 296–312. Reardon, C. L., Hainline, B., Aron, C. M., Baron, D., Baum, A. L., Bindra, A., … & Engebretsen, L. (2019). Mental health in elite athletes: International Olympic Committee consensus statement (2019). British Journal of Sports Medicine, 53(11), 667–699. Sparkes, A. C., & Smith, B. (2002). Sport, spinal cord injury, embodied masculinities, and the dilemmas of narrative identity. Men and Masculinities, 4(3), 258–285.

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The Continuation of ‘Slim to Win’ The Sustained Impact of a Dominant Cultural Ideology on One Athlete Post-sport Jenny McMahon and Kerry R. McGannon

The Swinging Pendulum – The Present Day (Nearly Three Decades  Post-sport) The smooth cool leather of my psychologist’s couch meets with the skin of my legs as I lower myself into it. Across from me, my psychologist sits in a single office type chair. Her face is warm, kind, and welcoming. After the initial standard greetings, she begins to fire a series of questions that immediately bring about a feeling of uneasiness and discomfort. Psychologist: ‘How is your eating?’ Jen: ‘Well, I am eating whatever I like at the moment?’ Psychologist: ‘How much are you eating?’ My body immediately tightens, and I think of how I should respond in a way that will get her to move on from this topic quickly. I really don’t want to talk about this with her. And why is she writing notes? This question has been asked by coaches, my mother, all too often during my swimming career and it was never met with a positive response nor outcome. Nearly 20 years later, my body reacts, and muscles tighten like it is déjà vu. The pressure for me to respond in a way that is met with approval feels no different to when I was replying all those years ago. Jen: ‘I mean, I eat junk food whenever I like but I wouldn’t say it is too excessive’. My psychologist nods and takes more notes, and then moves on to the next question. Am so glad she is moving on. Psychologist: ‘What about exercise, are you doing any now?’ Another topic which makes me feel uncomfortable. I quickly respond, hoping this line of her questioning will stop. Jen: ‘I am not doing any exercise at the moment’. Psychologist: ‘What about your alcohol consumption?’ DOI: 10.4324/9781003276531-7

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Jenny McMahon and Kerry McGannon I try to pepper my response with humour. Jen: ‘I am really drinking fit now lol. I drank half a bottle of vodka yesterday after work, and I don’t even have a hangover today. I feel the best when I am drinking, nothing worries me’. My psychologist again makes notes on her clipboard. She then looks at me for five seconds without saying a word. The silence between us feels awkward. I wonder if she is judging my responses. Now I am thinking that I should have responded differently, untruthfully, in a way that is met with her approval. Finally, she breaks the silence between us. Psychologist: ‘If we liken your diet, exercise and alcohol consumption to a swinging pendulum of a clock, your eating and exercise is either swung too far to the right where you are obsessive and self-injuring by starving yourself, purging your body, exercising excessively and dangerously taking excessive amounts of laxatives and diet pills. Or it is swung too far to the left where you are self-sabotaging yourself and your health by eating whatever you want, drinking excessive alcohol, taking drugs, and doing no exercise whatsoever’. I internally roll my eyes at her as it feels all too much like she wants to ‘fix’ me, just like the coaches and my mother tried to ‘fix’ me.

Introduction Over recent years, a growing number of researchers have begun to investigate athletes’ post-sport experiences in the immediate years (15 years) as stories. I purposely chose to engage with multiple social theorists’ ideas who centre their work on the body, culture, and power (e.g., self-injury literature) which I expand on throughout the chapter to make sense of the complexity within my stories. I chose multiple theorists’ ideas because pigeonholing them into one theory or one framework could potentially limit how they potentially come to be understood.

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Burning Calories and Exercise Addiction – Aged 40 Years

I swim three kilometres, nothing like the usual seven I used to do. Even though two decades have passed, burning enough calories to lose fat still permeates my daily thoughts. I learned as an adolescent from my peers and coaches that landbased sports like running and cycling burn way more calories than swimming does. Time to bike and run then as swimming won’t be enough. So, I head to the gym. ‘You have to bike and run Jen if you want to get that swimmer body’, the words of a former national representative coach ring as I mount the spin bike. Must burn at least 1200 calories! Over the next hour, I ride ensuring my heart rate is in the optimal fat burning range (i.e., 70% of my max heart rate). After an hour on the bike, I look down at the console on the bike and it says that I have only burned 400 calories which is nowhere near the 1200 I need to burn to go into calorie deficit so I can lose fat, another idea that I learned from a former teammate. So, I get off the bike and get onto the treadmill. Over the next hour, I run 11 kilometres, again keeping my heart rate in the ideal fat burning range and burn 700 calories. This means, I have now run 11 kilometres, spent an hour on the bike and swum 3 kilometres, all before work. Will squeeze more in again this afternoon. Laxative Addiction – Age 41 Years

Am finally starting to get some comments about the way that I am looking but must lose more fat. Everyone’s compliments about my body have become like a drug to me. Must keep going and lose more! It is late before I get home as I headed to the gym straight after work. I make a salad consisting of mainly free calories (e.g., lettuce, capsicum, cucumber, carrot). After eating it, I open the lid of the laxative bottle in the bathroom. I keep tipping the bottle until I have ten tablets in my hand. I swallow the ten tablets across three mouthfuls of water. I then head straight to bed as I am exhausted and do not want to be tempted by snacks that my husband is eating on the couch. The laxatives will help me flush calories and nutrients that I have consumed that day and lose more weight. The next morning when I wake, it is still dark. Chris and the kids are still asleep. I immediately become alerted to the feeling of stomach cramps. The tablets from last night are doing their job! For the next two hours, I sit on the toilet until I have passed all the food that I ate the day before. Duromine and Extreme Calorie Restriction – Age 35 Years

The alarm sounds. It is 4.20 am. I quietly climb out of bed trying to not wake Chris and wander sleepily to the bathroom. My muscles are fatigued and tight

The Continuation of ‘Slim to Win’ 77 from running a half marathon on the weekend. I close the door and turn the light on before climbing onto the scales. Another kilogram lighter. Duromine1 and distance running is working so well. I have been taking it for a month now and have already lost six kilograms. I must lose more not only for myself but so I am not judged. I recall running into Casey, a former teammate who was on many national representative teams with me yesterday at the half marathon. As soon as I saw her, I was immediately alerted to her looking me up and down and checking my body out. Luckily, I am quite lean now. After the usual hello and how are you formalities, Casey goes onto inform me which teammates she has caught up with recently. Casey: ‘Yeh, I saw Kirra and Mary at the aquatic centre opening two weeks ago. Gosh, you would not even recognise them. They are huge. They have really let themselves go’. Her judgement of our former teammates makes me feel uneasy, but I am relieved that I am slim at the moment, so I too am not judged. I reorientate myself on the now brushing my teeth thinking about the workday ahead. After I finish in the bathroom, I automatically go to the refrigerator to get breakfast but then I remember that I have a full day of travelling for work today and will not get to exercise. So, I close the fridge. Not long after, as I am getting ready to leave for work, my husband wanders into the kitchen. He asks me what I ate for breakfast and would I like him to make me some eggs. I lie to him so I can avoid eating breakfast. I just don’t love food. It is like food and eating is poison and the more I consume it, the sicker I feel about myself and my body, so I try to avoid at all costs. Analysis

The above stories show how the ‘slim to win ideology’ and practices that I acquired such as excessive laxative and diet pill consumption, severe calorie restriction, constant weight scrutiny that I learned during my time as an elite athlete continued to pervade the way I treated my body and what I practised up to 25 years post-sport. The ‘slim to win’ practices and ideas that I recycled into my adulthood align with Bordo’s (1989) assertion, that my body remains impressed with the practices of the Australian swimming culture. Indeed, engaging with the same ‘slim to win’ body practices that I embodied during my adolescence into my post-sport life exemplifies my continued normalisation of them. However, my continued normalisation of these practices in my post-sport life signalled the extent to which ‘slim to win’ meanings and practices that are openly damaging to my health and well-being (i.e., excessive laxative consumption; extreme exercise and calorie restriction) remained embedded in my life as an adult woman. Hence, my desire for the perceived ideal and fatless ‘swimmer body’ continually reinscribed the power of the coaches and team managers all those years ago.

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My stories also show how the surveillance of my post-sport body continued in several ways. First, surveillance of my body from a former teammate occurred when I saw her at a half marathon running event some two decades after we were elite swimmers. Immediately upon greeting her, she surveilled my body up and down and then congratulated me for keeping my body under check by running. She then proceeded to tell me about some of our fellow teammates that she saw at an aquatic centre opening just recently who had ‘really let their bodies go’. In so doing, my former teammate’s ongoing surveillance of other swimmers post-sport exemplifies her undertaking the position of ‘body police’ (Germov & Williams, 1999). Her comments also reveal her internalisation of cultural imperatives relating to the ‘thin ideal’ which were learned as an athlete to monitor not only herself but also others highlighting a never-ending process of body surveillance as a way of conforming to what the culturally accepted body was (i.e., fatless or slim). Further, through her ongoing surveillance of former teammates’ bodies it also shows how the gaze has constructed people (in this case – a former athlete) as both subjects and objects of power and knowledge, occurring decades later in places outside of the swimming pool. Second, more significant than the gaze and judgement shown by my former teammate is my continuation and acceptance of self-surveillance (Foucault, 1977). I continued to subject my body to health risk practices such as excessive laxative consumption and severely limited my food intake as a way of maintaining or achieving the ideal fatless physique (i.e., no bum, no hips, no fat, slim) set by managers and swim coaches all those years ago. This is because in the two decades since competing in elite sport, thinness to me still represents the ‘good’ athlete, the ‘self-controlled’ athlete, the athlete who has continued to achieve ‘slim to win’ norms (Rich, 2003). Germov and Williams (1999, p. 126) refer to this self-surveillance as the ‘body panopticon’ which is the constant monitoring of my own body that exemplifies a power situation whereby I remained the bearer of my own selfsurveillance (Foucault, 1977). Just like in my adolescence, my shrinking fatless (albeit adult post-sport) body was socially rewarded through others’ admiration of it. My post-sport stories reveal how I was trapped in a vicious cycle, where a fatless body shape became tied to my self-worth. Indeed, the practices associated to the ‘slim to win’ ideology which I experienced, adopted, and embodied as an adolescent retained their impact on my sense of self and the relationship that I had with my body post-sport. I maintained control over my ‘slim to win’ and fatless body shape by continuing to adopt extreme self-regulatory practices (e.g., excessive laxative consumption, running and extreme training practices, extreme calorie restriction), like I did in my adolescence. Further, just as occurred in my adolescence, eating in my adult life remained a ‘corporeal [bodily] sin’ (Evans et al., 2004, p. 126) that was filled with anxiety thus ‘dismantling it as a pleasurable experience’ (Evans et al., 2004, p. 126). Food still resembled an ‘eating toxin’ or the thing that could limit (fat loss) success (Evans et al., 2004) as exemplified, ‘It is like food and eating is poison and the more I consume it, the sicker I feel about myself and my body, so I try to avoid at all costs’. In so doing, when I ate, I become overridden with guilt and toxic thoughts at mealtimes as I continued to engage with ‘slim to win’.

The Continuation of ‘Slim to Win’ 79 My post-sport stories also exemplify how I placed value on taking control over the operations of my body by fighting its natural shape through my engagement with practices that can be classified as indirect forms of self-injury (taking Duromine, and abuse of laxative and anxiety medication and skipping meals) (McMahon & McGannon, 2021). Self-injury is described as non-suicidal injury of one’s own body and can occur in direct or indirect forms and is also known as self-harm, self-mutilation, self-wounding, body marking, self-injurious behaviour, and non-suicidal self-injurious behaviour (Chandler, 2012; Nock et al., 2006). Indirect self-injury is where the self-injurer does not consciously cause damage to one’s own tissue, however, includes harmful acts to the self, such as substance misuse (e.g., prescription medication misuse, excessive alcohol use, taking of illegal drugs) and eating disorders (e.g., binge eating, restrictive eating, and compensatory behaviours) deliberately starving or deliberately vomiting (Pazera, 2012) among other things (e.g., reckless behaviour, abusive relationships). ED behaviours are classified as indirect self-harm because they are considered to cause physical harm because of the behaviour itself (Fox et al., 2019). Moreover, ED behaviours can result in substantial physical damage over both the short term and longer term (e.g., bradycardia, osteopenia, neurological problems, anaemia, organ failure, reproductive issues) (St. Germain & Hooley, 2012). Post-sport and ‘Slim to Win’ – Pendulum Swung Too Far Left

In the next section of the chapter, I present a selection of stories, which, in contrast to my ongoing obsession with ‘slim to win’ as presented in the stories above, denote acts of resistance and defiance (i.e., pendulum swung too far left). Nonetheless, my acts of defiance and resistance to ‘slim to win’ and coaches and team managers’ actions all those years ago still inadvertently exemplify me undertaking health risk behaviours which too could impact my health and well-being. Alcohol Dependent – Age 44

Day after day, night after night, I drink alcohol. Not only does it make me feel good, but it makes a party even better. My obsession with alcohol is so contrasting to the life I had as an elite swimmer where there was no partying, where every single mouthful I consumed I monitored and counted, which was complimented with obsessive and excessive exercise routine. Now, I purposely act in an opposite way, eating what I want, when I want. Likewise, I drink what I want when I want. And nobody can stop me! I feel empowered as I break the rules that have restricted me and constrained me for so long, dictating my every movement. As I break those rules on a daily basis, I accompany it by cursing all those swim coaches and team managers who scrutinised me, punished me and surveilled me for the smallest increases in my weight. Drinking helps me to become defiant and I like being defiant. When I drink vodka, I have the power, not them. One glass after another, after another until I pass out. Similar to vodka, when I consume foods that I used to categorise as evil, I feel like I

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First Gym Visit in a Decade

I am at work and a colleague asks me if I would like to go to the gym with her? I love her company because she is so much fun, but I am not that keen as I think about the five-minute walk from our office to the gym. After my friend really pleading with me just to come just for the walk to keep her company and a look, I cave in and oblige. As we arrive at the gym, the automatic doors at the entrance open and as they do, a waft of men’s smelling deodorant combined with old sweat immediately hit me. A muscularly defined man who works there eagerly greets Cara and I. Cara heads to the change rooms to put her gym clothing on while I mill around the entrance looking at the vending machine wondering if the chocolate protein bars are as delicious as the look. The muscularly gym instructor approaches me while I am staring at the protein bars in the vending machine. Gym instructor: ‘Hey, I am George. It is great to meet you? Have you ever done any sort of gym before?’ Jen: ‘Yes, I have done quite a bit, but nothing for a good ten years’. Gym instructor: ‘You should come along. You can do short memberships like three- or six-month memberships’. I divert eye contact away from him hoping he will read my cues and leave me alone. Instead, I stare at the vending machines at the chocolate protein bars. Realising, that he is not going to leave me alone, I finally respond hoping he will move along: Jen: ‘I don’t feel like I could even commit to a three-day gym pass right now’. The gym instructor giggles assuming I am joking and then proceeds to tell me about pricing. Gym instructor: ‘Well, the three-month pass is $199, and it includes full use of the weights, all classes, and an individualised program. Here is a copy of our class timetable. Take it home and see what you think. If you decide to come along, one of our gym instructors will organise a time with you to talk about your goals, take your weight, measurements and work out your percentage body fat so we can track your progress over the three months’. Without so much as a warning, my heart rate increases, and I become ropable towards his inability to read my cues and his continued persistence. The thought of another male weighing me also fucks me off. I respond, this time more aggressively:

The Continuation of ‘Slim to Win’ 81 Jen: ‘Fuck that. You are not going to take my weight or scrutinise my body. I told you, I am not interested. The only thing I am interested in is partying and you leaving me alone’. I decide the conversation is over, so I walk out without telling Cara where I have gone. Analysis The choices and practices taken up by me as presented in the storied accounts directly above represent acts of defiance and resistance to ‘slim to win’ and were purposeful acts to regain control and autonomy over my body. These purposeful acts enabled me to exercise power which continued to impact my life in what I felt was a constrained way (Coy, 2009). To me, I felt I was reconfiguring the power that coaches and team managers had over me not only during my adolescence, but which also permeated much of my post-sport life. While the self-practices that I engaged with were acts of defiance which led to feelings of empowerment, they were invariably also risky (i.e., liver damage from excessive alcohol consumption, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, high cholesterol) in that they could lead to potential death and/or long-term health consequences (Mohl et al., 2014). This degree of control over my body that I was inadvertently denied throughout my swimming career impacted the autonomy and resilience to ‘slim to win’ in my post-sport life, which resists straightforward notions of passive compliance (Chandler, 2012) via the resources available to me (e.g., alcohol, no controlling of food intake). However, the problem in this rendering of power is that my acts of resistance became entirely reactive to power that was once exerted over me. Indeed, my overreliance on alcohol and no boundaries in relation to my food/calorie intake were acts of resistance and autonomy which I perceived to be successful (empowering) for me in the short term; potential long-term physical health consequences (i.e., kidney disease, liver damage, and mental health impacts) are imminent. Conclusion In this chapter, I have purposely chosen to use storied representations (i.e., narratives) as a way to represent my post-sport lived experiences. This is because stories have been shown to give meaning to life experiences (Douglas & Carless, 2009; McMahon, 2016) by linking one’s past to present which assists with the ‘making sense’ of one’s life (McMahon, 2016; McMahon et al., 2012). My stories presented as part of this chapter offer insight into what occurred for me post-sport exemplifying a marriage between dominant ideologies such as ‘slim to win’ which I experienced as a minor and my subsequent functioning in everyday life (McMahon & McGannon, 2021). It is hoped that by showcasing my post-sport experiences, other former athletes can resonate and vicariously share in my experiences. Relating to the audience, McMahon (2016) explains how storied representations are beneficial

82  Jenny McMahon and Kerry McGannon as they can take on and read from the positions and perspectives of me as a former swimmer and now adult woman in a genre that is familiar to them. My ruminations on the stories included in this chapter show ongoing corporeal and emotional tensions that present challenges in my everyday post-sport. ‘Slim to win’, as demonstrated in the stories told 25 years post-sport, points to a ‘durability’ (Lee & Macdonald, 2010) of this ideology and Australian swimming culture. My stories also show how I have embodied a fractured swimmer identity that continues to pervade me at mealtimes and in the way that I treat my body and self. Behaviours I learned during my adolescence as an elite swimmer are still evident in the way that I treat my body now as an adult, suggesting that my body is impressed with the practices of the Australian swimming culture. My exposure and adoption of ‘slim to win’ practices and behaviours had a sustained lived effect on my health and wellbeing in the three decades since finishing with the sport of swimming. It is therefore impossible to ignore the interplay between the body, power, and knowledge and the effects that culture has on the body both in the short term and long term. While the stories presented in this chapter are uneven in number, a choice made due to word restrictions, I tried to capture the essence of both sides of the swinging pendulum in discreet ways. This does not mean my ongoing conformity and ‘take up of slim to win’ practices are more prevalent than my resistance of them. In closing, I think about my psychologist’s swinging pendulum analogy and realise that when my pendulum is swung too far right, this is my living out swimming culture and the extreme body practices that existed within it, that I was subjected to through my adolescence. This culture encouraged extreme management of my diet, exercise, and body shape which I continued to engage with for much of my post-sport life. However, when my pendulum is swung too far left, it results in me eating whatever I wanted and doing no exercise and drinking excessive alcohol, through an act of defiance and resistance to the Australian swimming culture and ‘slim to win’. While the act of defiance and resistance left me feeling empowered, without realising it, I too again engaged in risky practices which potentially jeopardised my health and well-being. This research raises important questions relating to the enduring impact of sport on athletes after they leave their sport, in particular how it impacts their relationship with food and physical activity. Note 1 Duromine is a weight control drug which contains the active ingredient phentermine. Duromine is usually used to reduce body weight in obese or overweight patients and has common side effects such as increased heartbeat, high blood pressure, restlessness, trouble sleeping, nervousness, tremor, headache, dizziness, fainting, nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea or constipation, stomach cramps, dry or unpleasant taste in mouth, trouble urinating, skin rashes and sexual function problems (NPS, 2022).

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The Continuation of ‘Slim to Win’  83 Bordo, S. (1992). Postmodern subjects, postmodern bodies. Feminist Studies, 18, 159–176. doi:10.2307/3178218. Bordo, S. (1993). The body and the reproduction of femininity. In S. Bordo (Ed.). Unbearable weight: Feminism, western culture, and the body (pp. 90–110). University of California Press. Cavallerio, F., Wadey, R., & Wagstaff, C. (2017). Adjusting to retirement from sport: Narratives of former competitive rhythmic gymnasts. Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health, 9(5), 533–545. doi:10.1080/2159676X.2017.1335651. Chandler, A. (2012). Self-injury as embodied emotion work: Managing rationality, emotions and bodies. Sociology, 46, 442–457. doi:10.1177/0038038511422589. Coy, M. (2009). This body which is not mine: The notion of the habit body, prostitution and (dis)embodiment. Feminist Theory, 10, 61–75. doi:10.1177/1464700108100392. Douglas, K., & Carless, D. (2009). Abandoning the performance narrative: Two women's stories of transition from professional sport. Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, 21(2), 213–230. doi​.org​/10​.1080​/104132009027951​09. Evans, J., Rich, E., & Holroyd, R. (2004). Disordered eating and disordered schooling: What schools do to middle class girls. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 25(2), 123–142. Forster, C. (Producer). (2010). Woman on a mission [Television series episode]. Australian story. Retrieved May 5, 2010, from http://www​.abc​.net​.au​/austory​/specials​/ womanmission​/default​.htm. Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison. Allen Lane. Fox, K., Wang, S., Boccagno, C., et al. (2019). Comparing self-harming intentions underlying eating disordered behaviors and NSSI: Evidence that distinctions are less clear than assumed. International Journal of Eating Disorders, 52(5), 564–575. doi:10.1002/ eat.23041. Germov, J., & Williams, L. (1999). Dieting women: Self-surveillance and the body panopticon. In J. Sobal & D. Maurer (Eds.). Weighty issues: Fatness and thinness as social problems (pp. 117–132). Walter de Gruyter. Grosz, E. (1995). Space, time, and perversion. Routledge. Jones, R., Glintmeyer, N., & McKenzie, A. (2005). Slim bodies, eating disorders and the coach-athlete relationship: A tale of identity creation and disruption. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 40(3), 377–391. Lee, J., & Macdonald, D. (2010). “Are they just checking our obesity or what?” The healthism discourse and rural young women. Sport, Education and Society, 15(2), 203–219. Maglischo, E. (1993). Swimming fastest: The essential reference on technique, training, and program design. Human Kinetics. doi:10.1080/13573320601081500. McMahon, J. (2007). Slim to win: An autoethnography from an Australian elite swimmer. Honours thesis, James Cook University, Cairns. McMahon, J. (2010). Exposure and effect: An investigation into a culture of body pedagogies. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Tasmania, Australia. McMahon, J. (2016). Creative analytical practices. In. B. Smith & A. C. Sparkes (Eds.). International handbook of qualitative methods in sport and exercise. Routledge. McMahon, J., & Barker-Ruchti. (2016). The media’s role in transmitting a cultural ideology and the effect on the general public. Qualitative Research in Sport Exercise and Health, 8, 131–146. doi:10.1080/2159676X.2015.1121912. McMahon, J., & McGannon, K. R. (2021). ‘I hurt myself because it sometimes helps’: Former athletes’ embodied emotion responses to abuse using self-injury. Sport, Education and Society, 26(2), 161–174. doi:10.1080/13573322.2019.1702940.

84  Jenny McMahon and Kerry McGannon McMahon, J., Penney, D., & Dinan-Thompson, M. (2012). Body practices: Exposure and effect of a sporting culture? Stories from three Australian swimmers. Sport, Education and Society, 17, 181–206. doi:10.1080/13573322.2011.607949. Mohl, B., la Cour, P., & Skansden, A. (2014). Non-suicidal self-injury and indirect selfharm among Danish high school students. Scandinavian Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychology, 2, 11–18. doi:10.21307/sjcapp-2014-0. Nock, M. K., Joiner, T. E., Gordon, K. H., Lloyd-Richardson, E., & Prinstein, M. (2006). Non-suicidal self-injury among adolescents: Diagnostic correlates and relation to suicide attempts. Psychiatry Research, 144, 65–72. doi:10.1016/j.psychres. 2006.05.010. Pazera, E. (2012). Hidden stories: Self-injury, hope, and narratives. Unpublished Doctoral Thesis, City University London, London. Rich, E. (2003). Exploring constructions of the body, (ill)health and identity in schools: The case of anorexia nervosa. Retrieved from: http://www​.inter​-disciplinary​.net​/ptb​/mso​/hid​ /hid2​/rich​%20paper​.pdf St. Germain, S. A., & Hooley, J. M. (2012). Direct and indirect forms of non-suicidal self injury: Evidence for a distinction. Psychiatry Research, 197, 78–84. doi:10.1016/j. psychres.2011.12.050. Stambulova, N. (2012). Working with athletes in career transitions. In S. Hanton, & S. Mellalieu (Eds.). Professional practice in sport psychology: A review (pp. 165–194). Routledge. Vertinsky, P. (1985). Risk benefit analysis of health promotions: Opportunities and threats for physical education. Quest, 37(1), 71–83. Walsh, K., Fortier, M. A., & Dilillo, D. (2010). Adult coping with childhood sexual abuse: A theoretical and empirical review. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 15(1), 1–13. doi: 10.1016/j.avb.2009.06.009.

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Finally … for the Joy of It All A Corporeal Reconciliation Narrative of a Former College Distance Runner Ted Butryn

Introduction As Denison (2016) noted, first sentences reveal a great deal about the ontological and epistemological position of the author and the tone of the writing. These important philosophical considerations also set the tone for the argument or statement the author wishes to make. To this end, I guess I can begin with this: My lean, high-performing, technologized runner’s body eventually became both an obstacle and a challenge, a constant reminder of a quantified past that could never again be, and an inspiration for a profoundly different body that would come to be … with some assistance, and at a cost. In this chapter, I lean on Denison’s work on narratives and social theory (2016) and the sport studies work on the phenomenology of the body, and also draw from scholars who have qualitatively examined the experiences of aging bodies (Griffin & Phoenix, 2014; Phoenix & Smith, 2011; Phoenix & Tulle, 2017; Tulle, 2007, 2008). I hope to connect these concepts with a collection of brief vignettes that speak to how I encountered and experienced my body as I went from a 128-pound 10,000-meter runner, to a former Division-I runner and aspiring academic, to a 205-pound, jacked up, mentally unhealthy 40-yearold, and finally to a whatever-and-who-cares-pound 50-year-old man in the final stages of a reconciliation 30 years in the making. In doing so, I attempt to follow Denison’s (2016) thoughtful call for “more obvious presence of social theory in our narratives” (p. 10). By weaving together various stories with social theory, I attempt to make sense of the complex ways in which leaving my high-level athlete identity behind led to unexpected corporeal (and chemical) journeys, and how the ability to nurture my physical and mental health has always been closely tied to the relationship between athlete identity and my body, whether I knew it or not! To be honest, I’ve spent the past ten years reflecting on how to become, quite simply, a fit middle-aged man who hopefully still has a few more decades left to live. This chapter is really a culmination of those years, and I had help remembering my stories by pouring over my old running training logs and photos, and talking with a few significant others who saw the journey as it unfolded. In “academic speak,” Hockey and Allen-Collinson (2016) might call this chapter an attempt at autophenomenology, in which “the researcher subjects her/his own lived experience to sustained and rigorous forms of phenomenological analysis” (p. 231). I think the vignettes that follow speak to these experiences, and hopefully show the DOI: 10.4324/9781003276531-8

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stranglehold that the complex intersections of runner identity, “blue-collar” masculinity, and aging have had on my entire adult life. And with that, I welcome the reader to share a few glimpses into that life. Running Identity and the Influence of Others: Finding My Academic  Self “C-minus. Ted, your running far exceeds your writing.” Yes, this was actual written feedback from my teacher on my senior high school English paper. Years before I’d learn about the importance of having an identity outside of sport, there it was. You are an athlete, and at least in her eyes not a whole lot else! I still had white male privilege, for sure, even though I wouldn’t learn about that for a few years. But to be fair, no one in my entire extended family went to university. My parents passed high school in part by completing each other’s math and English papers. My pedigree … there wasn’t any. If all I had was running, then so be it. It was 1989, and I was off to the University of Tennessee to see if I could swim with the big fishes, as my dad had put it. Or, as my teacher meant to say, to exceed in something I was actually competent at. Conversation in the Tennessee dining hall a month later: All-American teammate: “Here take these fat burners. These too, they’re aminos.” Me: “Ok!” A normal 18-year-old would have probably asked, “Hey man, what’s in these?” But I wasn’t normal. I was a recruited walk-on (i.e. non-scholarship) runner and the person giving me these horse pills was (and this is kind of true) taking me under his wing. I didn’t know what was in them, and I didn’t care because if they were good enough for him, they damn well were good enough for a 9:30 2-miler who was just lucky to secure a place on the team. If I was gonna swim with the big fishes, I was gonna eat and do whatever the big fish did. It’s only now that I can see how consumed I was, from day one, with swimming in the wake of any big fish I encountered, whether in sport or academia, and whether it was healthy or not. “Dr. B, they don’t even do that now,” said one of my grad athletic training students. Yeah, you aren’t supposed to get four cortisone shots in your Achilles for a plantar fascia injury. At least that’s what my amazing students tell me every semester. But that is how it happened. The first one worked for a month, the second for two weeks, the third for a week, and after the athletics department (correctly) wouldn’t get me another one, I begged my father to send me $100, in CASH, which was a big ask for him, and so I got a fourth injection. Doctor: “Son, have you had other shots for this?” Me: “Oh no sir, I heard they’re like super painful!”

Finally … for the Joy of It All 87 Of course, I was less than forthcoming. I had big fish to get back to. But less than a week later, I was walking up the stairs and BAM! There was no more fascia to speak of. Complete rupture. Beginning of the end. I tried to come back, but it was never the same. Soon enough my entire corporeal existence and reason for being was questionable. Why did I eat like I did? Why did I weigh myself almost every day? What was my body supposed to be like? What should I do with all this extra time in the afternoons, the pain made worse by watching my roommates head off to practice? What should I do at night, given that I didn’t have to get up at 6 a.m. for a morning run? What was my body, if it wasn’t meant to run fast and impress my coach? Score points? Run another PR? Who was I, after all this? So, since there were no more 10ks to PR in, one day I figured, “How many beers do I drink a week now that all we have to do is focus on school like normal students?” Problematic conceptions about alcohol aside though, one positive aspect of the experience that did help me cope with my transition out of Division-I sport was the newly discovered abundance of time I had to do “normal” college things, like watch movies and read books for fun. I watched films by the director David Lynch, and we stayed up late watching Easy Rider many times. I also read books on environmental activism like Edward Abbey’s The Monkey Wrench Gang and the prescient writing of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, two books that directly led to my interest in researching the relationship between sporting bodies, nature, and technology. So, while engaging with social theory did help me create a new corporeal fitness identity eventually, ironically it was the loss of my DI athletic identity that primed my future academic work. Somewhere around the time when I was still technically on the team, but simultaneously becoming more interested in the environment and dystopian cyborg futures, Coach Brown called me on the phone: Hey Butryn! How’s it goin’? Just checking in and seeing how the injury is coming, but I also got the team grades and damn man, nice job! Coach Brown was the head coach of the track and cross-country teams, a threetime Olympic steeplechaser, and the NCAA coach of the year. I wasn’t a top-shelf commodity, and both of us knew this. I wasn’t ever going to score more than a few points in the conference meet. But in this confusing moment in time when I was caught in identity limbo, not yet out of the DI running subculture and not entirely sure of where I was headed next, it was this call that finally erased those comments from my old English teacher. Coach Brown called because I wasn’t just a recruited walk-on. Sure, I was “Butryn,” the kid who ran until the wheels came off, the tire imploded, and the end was inevitable. But he didn’t call about my injury and endless hours in rehab, he called to acknowledge my academics. In that moment, while I had already been exploring a new identity as someone whose writing finally exceeded his running, Coach Brown still had the power and cache to validate my academic identity in a way I never really had. He didn’t open my door to a new

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identity on his own, but it was that call that helped me walk through that door and replace at least some of the beers with more of the books. A Brief Detour from the Running Body: Jacked for Sure, but Jacked for What? Before I discuss more about how I made my way to the recreational, health-focused runner I am now, and how social theory helped (or didn’t help) along the way, I turn briefly to an unexpected and dramatic left-turn, both in terms of identity and corporeality, several years into my life in academia. I don’t remember why I started looking into bodybuilding supplements for my ongoing weight training program in 2008. I do remember that it had to do with my mom, who had been a 3:15 marathoner in her 30s and competed in her first natural bodybuilding show at 46. She’d always joke about how lucky I was to have “good genetics,” and when I taught about gender and bodybuilding in my graduate class, I would call her my “X-mom,” a reference to the X-Men Marvel superhero characters. I started wondering what I could do with these supposedly good genes my mom passed on to me. I was still plodding along on the treadmill, but I started buying Muscular Development magazine and hitting the weights harder than I ever had. As a 37-year-old professor who taught about drug use in sport, I was about to dive headfirst into bodybuilding drugs. A couple months into my first experience taking prohormones, which were essentially legal (at the time) steroids, my primary physician called me on a Friday afternoon with the results of my bloodwork. “Hi Ted, it’s Dr. James here. So, it’s pretty much confirmed that there are steroids in the supplements you’re taking, and your liver readings are pretty bad.” I suspect that most people would take this news as a sign to immediately stop taking the pills. But in my head, this was vindication that I had done everything correctly. I had consulted numerous online forums and message boards to see what I should take to gain muscle, and I had put on over 15 pounds by the end of my first cycle. But, muscle for what? Numerous scholars have written about the masculinity and bodybuilding (Denham, 2008; Marshall et al., 2020; Phoenix, 2010), but in retrospect my desire to become more and more muscular wasn’t motivated by hegemonic masculinity as much as it was experimentation, and the drugs were just independent variables in pill form. But in retrospect, the muscles were also about staring ahead at my 40s. In my sociology of sport class, I taught about Waddington’s (2000) model of doping in sport, which argues that one of the main factors involved in drug use in sport was the medicalization of life and sport, and the way that processes that were once framed as natural (i.e., aging) had become pathologized. I don’t remember dreading turning 40, but between the steroid use and other life choices I was making at the time, part of the reason for experimenting had to be related to the knowledge that I was getting older. It was comical, really. I took pictures in my short shorts in my office, posing like no one was looking. Front pose, side pose, crab most muscular pose, back pose and every week I logged my progress. Sometimes I regressed with injury, but I kept

Finally … for the Joy of It All 89 documenting my development. I kept meticulous track of every rep, every set, my weight, my cardio, and how I felt. The ridiculous thing about all of this is that in the life of an academic, pretty much everything you do has a definable purpose. Do X to get tenured, and do Y to show that you’re a citizen of your department. I still have the video I recorded with my iPad of when I bench pressed 275 pounds for the first time. Watching it now, as I’ve mentioned, I was for no discernable purpose at all. More plates on the bar were better, and more plates meant more muscle to be used for nothing productive at all. And then the end came my harsh reality check! “You may choose to retrieve this package, or it will be destroyed.”: Memo from US Governmental Agency Now, you really never want to read words like this. And no, I wasn’t going to rescue my package, a package that I’d successfully had shipped from Hong Kong once previously. “Shit,” I thought. Indeed, that was a loss of over 300 bucks. What was in the package? I guess ultimately it was about 12–15 pounds of lean muscle, but according to the letter from the United States Department of Customs and Immigration (housed under the Department of Homeland Security), it had interdicted (yes, I had to look that one up) ANABOLIC STEROIDS, which was clearly hand typed by an actual human being. Technically, it was oral Turinabol, a wonder drug probably most famous for being what a lot of the East German female runners were supposedly given in the 1970s and 1980s. But either way, that was the end of that pipeline. And in fact, I thought to myself, “Well, ok I guess maybe this is a sign.” And just like that, the identity of a gearhead was gone. The drive to be big for the sake of bigness was gone, and I was searching for yet another fish. But really, how many people get a note from the US customs anyway? Sparkes et al. (2012) used a life history methodical approach to examine the cyclical emotional loop of shame and pride in one bodybuilder, and I can see some similarities to my own experiences. I never had the initial shame in my thin running body, as it served a particular purpose, but once that purpose was in the rearview mirror, there was certainly a desire to see what I could do, as mentioned, with my family genetics (which is not an unproblematic way of thinking to begin with). Following Frank (1991), Sparkes et al. noted that part of the process of putting on significant amounts of muscle is really a form of mimesis. “The body sees a hyper-muscular image, idealizes it, and then seeks to become the image of that image by many hours of intense training each day over a number of years” (p. 113). Of course, the images I was consuming in the Muscular Development magazines were anything but natural, but I knew that, and while it isn’t possible to unpack it here, so did my mom. I was proud of gaining muscle not because it mimicked the magazine guys, but because I followed in my mom’s footsteps, albeit with the aid of unhealthy and expensive help. Of course, while I consulted the academic work that has examined hegemonic masculinity and bodybuilding to help make sense of why I would have sought to

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gain extreme amounts of muscle almost gleefully “unnaturally,” I did not find this work to be all that helpful in making sense of my own experiences. Nor was the significant amount of work that has drawn from Foucault’s notion of surveillance and the athletic body helpful either. As I write this chapter, I struggle to find any theoretical framework that really speaks to my own convoluted experiences, or that I can use wholesale to make sense of why I made the choices I did or failed to diverge from paths clearly marked with landmines. For decades, scholars have written about exercise, muscularity, and body image in men (e.g., Bailey & Gillett, 2012; Klein, 1993). Much of this work for good reason has focused on adolescent and college-aged males, but more recently work has examined the aging athletic or exercising body, and how shifting ideas about age and masculinity have intersected with men’s experiences with various supplements. For example, Bailey and Gillett (2012) interviewed over 30 male bodybuilders that ranged between the ages of 18 and 68, and found that there was a complex relationship between health-related practices (e.g., eating clean, refraining from alcohol consumption), a balance between aesthetics and a healthy, functioning body, and in the case of older men a desire to devolve into the stereotypical body of a middle-aged man. They explained how having a muscular body could mediate the clear evidence of some unhealthy markers and allow them “to construct a healthful masculine identity” (p. 102). The following quote from one of their participants really hit home for me, as I could have written it myself: You know what? I’m 37 and I feel like I hit a bit of a wall … My rotator cuff in one shoulder is bugging me and I got some wrist problems and stuff. As I get older, I don’t recover as well … But my health yeah, I still think if you looked at every 37-year-old you know and did an average I’d probably be better than average I think. Yeah, I’m still in pretty good shape. (p. 102) Indeed, I never remember doubting my 40s and in fact I remember thinking, as many men were doing in the magazines I was reading at the time, 40 is the new 30! This is how even a scholar publishing on performance-enhancing drugs can fail to really engage with social theory when it could have been something to consider. Well, fast-forward a few years, and I jumped off of the supplement train almost completely. As it turned out, after letters from the federal government, multiple injuries, and a realization that my muscularity personal bests were in the rearview mirror, I decided to stop competing with myself in the gym. I stopped keeping track of my workouts, and while I had a sense of whether I was getting stronger, it was more about the experience of just moving the weights than continuing the experiment. It would take several years more, though, before I could finally embrace the concept of “fitness.” Being a college runner was never about fitness, and neither was being a juiced academic. It took the Covid pandemic to get me to that figural finish line.

Finally … for the Joy of It All 91 Turning 50, Exercise Bands, and the Urban Outdoors: A New Running  Identity I started writing this chapter sometime after I turned 50, in the middle of a pandemic, and being neither a high-level athlete nor a supplement-pounding academic. Turning 50 means lots of things to lots of people, and so much has changed since my entire identity centered on being a high-level runner. Turning 50 for me means that my best friend and dad has passed, and that my badass mom is probably in better shape than I am. Turning 50 means I have amazing junior colleagues capable of crushing it, and doing amazing research that reminds me that I need to keep up. Turning 50 has made me vulnerable in a lot of ways. It makes me look at those cremation ads that I get in the mail a little differently, and it makes me look at my significant others differently as well. My partner and I both run, but as much as we try, but in the end love, fitness, and life all collapse into a T-minus X-amount of years countdown that ends the same way. But here I am, and over the past 15 years a number of scholars have examined some of the experiences I’ve talked about in this chapter as I struggled to redefine myself following my life as a competitive athlete (Litchfield et al., 2022). Although some of this research has even looked at how formerly competitive athletes experience their new identities as masters-level competitors (Appleby & Diffenback, 2016; Tulle, 2007), I never engaged with these studies because I never saw myself as “formerly” anything. Even now, the idea of being a masters athlete doesn’t resonate with me at all. I’ve been in that world, and recently I started to engage with scholars who reminded me that I didn’t need to chase a time or a weight, and that those competitive ghosts had often led down the wrong paths over a span of decades. While I had read the work of German scholar Henning Eichberg (1998) many times over the years, turning 50 brought me back to his work on a personal level. Eichberg talked about a concept called the body cultural trialectic, which Bale (2003) explained using running as an example of how we experience and assign meaning to different sporting spaces. At the highest level, there is the achievement space, where the purpose of movement is efficiency aimed at the production of an improved quantifiable outcome or record. Next, there is the recreational/hygienic space in which movement (in this case running) is focused on physical fitness and overall wellness. However, this is still a disciplined practice, “with the stopwatch being used to record performance in the interest of fitness” (Bale, 2003, p. 8). Finally, Eichberg described the experiential space, where running is experienced as a kind of fun or play, and “what they are doing often means something only to them” (p. 7). Most of my life has been spent in Eichberg’s achievement space, whether it was related to running, drinking, academics, or anything else. A longtime friend and colleague told me years ago that I went “all in” on pretty much everything I did, and he was not wrong. If I was going to run, I was going to do it until the wheels fell off. If I was going to gain muscle, I was going to take anything I could to do so, even when it was demonstrably unhealthy. But running during the

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pandemic wasn’t ever about achievement, it was about the experience of being out there, away from Zoom meetings, in what would become my new natural running world. When I was a competitive runner, I always ran outdoors in what we’d consider natural environments. Whether it was a park trail or deep in the woods, my identity as a runner had always been tied to nature. A few years before the pandemic, I had moved into a condo neighborhood that is essentially a 2/3 of a mile (1 kilometer+) loop, and on the “backstretch” there is a long stretch of greenspace adjacent to a creek where people sometimes illegally dump old furniture and other junk, where used masks are thrown onto the road, and where a number of stray cats liked to hang out. During Covid, I started to stop briefly to take pics of them when I saw them on my runs. This might seem pretty trite or mundane, but I would have never done this when I was running 90 miles a week, and even if there were cats in the gym, I wouldn’t have interrupted my last set of bench press for some strays. But now, while the landscape isn’t what I’d have ever considered desirable, it was during this time when I began seeing this running loop as my “new nature.” I started to appreciate the beauty in my surroundings as I trotted along at whatever pace, listening to 1990s alternative rock on my headphones, ironically the very music I listened to in my prime. Running in my neighborhood now relates to what Csikszentmihalyi’s (2008) flow research referred to as an autotelic experience. I don’t have any real goals when I lace up my shows now. It’s about the joy of just being out there. Fifty turns around the sun. And in the end, one foot moves, albeit more slowly, in front of the other. But it wasn’t just about running outside and thinking differently about nature that helped me to finally see myself as a recreational, health-oriented runner. As Tulle (2007) noted, there is a growing body of literature on the “lived experience of bodily ageing” (p. 10), and it was during the pandemic that I started reading this work. More importantly though, I bought into it. Palmer et al. (2021) argued for reframing physical activity and aging as a new career to embark upon, and turning 50 was when I began to fully commit to this new career. Once in a while, I’ll take a small step backwards and find myself almost embarrassed at how slow I’m running or how my body looks. Indeed, as the vignettes in this chapter have shown, social theories can absolutely push you into new experiential spaces. It just took some time to accept my new career as a recreational runner. It reminded me of when I started to work on mindfulness several years ago, and the whole concept of acceptance was something I had a lot of difficulty with. Acceptance was not how I was raised. When something negative happens, you resist, deny, or squash it. Or, in the words of my late father, you “suck it up.” But as I came to find during a pandemic, accepting and even embracing my aging running body was a process worth working at. To this point, one of the more interesting types of studies to come out over the past 15 years involves the idea that, as Bridel et al. (2016) stated, “part of running’s pleasure for many derives from the unquestioned belief that running should hurt and that ‘hurting’ can, in fact, feel good” (p. 6). For the majority of my life the notion of benevolent pain, so to speak, would have deeply resonated with me. In

Finally … for the Joy of It All 93 fact, whether it was pushing the pace on what was supposed to be an easy run, or feeling my legs turn to jelly after a few sets of squats, I loved that feeling because that was evidence of the work you put in. But now, the idea of suffering, at least while running, is something that is almost foreign to me. It isn’t that I don’t understand the need to push it in my runs sometimes to gain fitness, but if the brief stories I have shared here show one thing, it is that I’ve spent my share of time being a glutton for punishment. I don’t need to swim with the big fish anymore, and I’m happy with the pond I’m in. Where I once willingly accepted Foucauldian notions of self-surveillance and the disciplining of the body, I don’t even keep track of mileage or caloric output any more. I look up from my computer, put on my shoes, grab my iPod, and out I go with no real plan other than wondering how many cats I’ll see. So, now that I was finally figuring out how to run in Eichberg’s experiential space, could I do the same with weight lifting? This brings me to the newly discovered world of exercise bands. When I was younger, I saw those multicolored bands as nothing more than a rehab tool. No serious person would ever use those for regular workouts. But in 2020, those bands became a pandemic-induced supply chain blessing in disguise. As anyone who tried to order things for their makeshift home gyms in 2020 knows, there wasn’t much to choose from. All the weights were sold out, and even the pricier cardio equipment had long waitlists. But I knew I needed something, so I begrudgingly ordered a set of exercise bands out of desperation. Again, I had only ever used these bands for rehab. I never uttered the phrase, “real men don’t workout with green bands,” but I probably thought it. I had learned how to enjoy running outside in my new urban nature, but that was easy compared to the idea of “lifting” without weights. There is something about the experience of feeling your hand grip a 30-pound dumbbell, executing a set of bicep curls, and triumphantly dropping it to the mat. But as it turns out, strength training is really all about flexing and extending, and a green band can put up a heck of a fight. What I used to see as merely a rehab implement or the tool of older folks became an obsession, so much so that I bought a second set, and installed a rack to hang them from in my tiny home office (now seconding as my “gym”). I even started travelling with them in the little bag they came with, and most importantly—they worked! On week one, I was relegated to using the lighter yellow and blue bands, but I’ll be damned—in a few months I was doing curls with the almighty red and black bands. Instead of screaming and then tossing the weights down, I started focusing on every rep, and enjoying the feeling of the bands’ resistance. They say necessity is the mother of invention, but during the pandemic I also found it to be the mother of reinvention. Coming from a cultural studies PhD, I certainly understood that, as Phoenix and Tulle (2017) noted, the taken-for-granted nature of biomedical theories of aging can have “damaging implications for the ageing body because it presents ageing as a process of passively getting older rather than actively growing old, and as a body at risk” (p. 265). However, I was not at all familiar with these authors’ work on the phenomenology of aging runners and bodybuilders, and how understanding the lived experiences of these bodies, of

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my body, could help create counterstories that could have helped me resist the perceived inevitable decline in function as something to thoughtfully negotiate rather than battle in the ways I’ve talked about in this chapter. In short, I’ve now grown to truly appreciate those bands I once scoffed at, and Phoenix and Tulle (2017) were right. There is such a thing as healthy or positive aging, and you can encounter this new body out on the roads or in your makeshift home gym. As this last vignette illustrates, my transition from taking those mystery pills in my freshman year of college to proudly installing an exercise band shelf is hopefully complete. I have reconciled the fact that I will never run a 31-minute 10k again, or bench press close to 300 pounds. As I mentioned, yes there are times when I do catch myself looking down to see what my last lap around the neighborhood was, or flexing in the mirror to see if there is any sign of bicep growth. But those times are less frequent and more humorous as the years go by. Conclusion Being an academic, you’d think that using social theory to make sense of your own experiences would be a natural thing. As this chapter clearly shows, that isn’t always the case. I seemed to almost intentionally ignore or dismiss some of the research I taught in my sport psychology and sport sociology classes every semester, and relied on the lessons of my working-class upbringing. Thankfully, and in part due to academic work combined with my partner’s feedback that some of my views about fitness and my body were unhealthy, I started to see running, and exercise in general, through the lens of Eichberg’s experiential space. I still sped up whenever a car drove past, but I slowly stopped caring about how many minutes per mile I was running, or even how far I ran. Rather, I began to show gratitude toward having a body that could still just run. I don’t need to train like a Navy Seal or some castoff from a Joe Rogan podcast, but in reflecting back I always went full in, as my close friends always said I did. From day one—running, drinking, bodybuilding, and steroid use—I was the panopticon, and it was me. In fact, if you asked me one thing I would completely erase from my life, like the “blip” in the Marvel Avengers film series where Thanos snaps his fingers and eliminates half of the earth’s population, it would be that night on the grass infield adjacent to my junior high school, when I thought keeping spits on every beer I drank would lead to anything other than very bad things. That is an entirely different chapter, but suffice to say that while my sense of self-identity shifted over time, I had no idea that 12-ounze curls would remain part of the story, regardless of the pond I was in. As Tulle (2007) noted in a way that resonates deeply, “there is no doubt that the ageing body can pose considerable problems for the conduct of everyday life and for one’s sense of competence” (p. 5). She went on to say that one of the range of ways that we can resist “this ontological vulnerability” (p. 5) is to use various technologies of the body to mask or camouflage the body via surgery or other means. She stated that one of the potential effects of this masquerading project is a move to what Biggs (2004) called inauthentic aging, a kind of corporeal dissonance

Finally … for the Joy of It All 95 between the actual aging body and a sense of agelessness. Biggs argued that a healthier endeavor would be to bring to life the myriad identities which people have developed over the life course and which in the course of a life review can be assessed, kept or discarded in order to forge a suitable, aged, identity, albeit not one necessarily in conflict with the ageing body. (Tulle, 2007, p. 7) In thinking about the various ways in which social theory has helped me in a very real sense to [re]consider the place of exercise in my life following my experiences as a highly competitive athlete, I absolutely feel less dissonance. Tulle and Phoenix (2017) also argued that listening to the stories of athletes of former elite runners (Tulle, 2007) or older natural bodybuilders (Phoenix & Smith, 2011) that resist the dominant biomedical stereotypes of aging “has the potential to generate counter stories through which social actors might develop these ‘resistant’ identities as they age” (p. 4). However, what has not been explored to the same degree are the longitudinal counterstories, fraught with profoundly unhealthy psychological and experiential experiences, and how former highly competitive athletes travel through a series of “epochs of resistance” to finally arrive at a sustainable, health-centered narrative. In thinking about how these stories affected my mental health, I was never skinny enough, I was never big enough, and I was never a big fish. On my refrigerator, I have a small dry erase board. The same message has been on it for over five years. “You are enough. You are here.” Why keep such a trite phrase like that on my fridge for so long? Because as I recently said in a grad class, I wished there had been a focus on sport and mental health when I was an athlete or in graduate school, because some of the research I am currently reading, and that my own students are doing, would have potentially been useful in helping me to at least acknowledge that my mental health was simply unhealthy. I suffered. My body suffered. Others around me had to deal with it. Oh, I had certainly made my mark in Eichberg’s achievement space, but there was a cost. In concluding this chapter, while there has been a rapid and significant increase in sport studies research on athletes’ transition out of high-level sport, it is hopefully clear from this chapter that any attempt to apply a singular theory or conceptual framework to the zigs and zags of over 30 years will inevitably fall short of painting a rich portrait of the experience. While the work of Denison (2016) and others has pushed scholars to connect personal narratives to social theory in innovative ways, the “reversal of sorts” (p. 10) that Denison mentions is still emerging, and at times met with resistance from gatekeepers still seeking “technical writing” in a space where it is altogether uncalled for. If this chapter shows anything, it is that teaching high-level athletes about social theories and how to activate them in their own lives could help them to avoid some of the pitfalls I’ve experienced. No one should have to turn 50 during a pandemic to get where I’m at now.

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References Appleby, K. M., & Dieffenback, K. (2016). “Older and faster”: Exploring elite masters cyclists’ involvement in competitive sport. The Sport Psychologist, 30(1), 13–23. Bailey, B., & Gillett, J. (2012). In A. Locks & N. Richardson (Eds.), Critical readings in bodybuilding (pp. 91–106). Routledge. Bale, J. (2003). Sports geography. Routledge. Biggs, S. (2004). Age, gender, narratives, and masquerades. Journal of Aging Studies, 18, 45–58. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaging.2003.09.005 Bridel, W., Markula, P., & Denison, J. (2016). Critical considerations of runners and running. In W. Bridel, P. Markula, & J. Denison (Eds.), Endurance running: A sociocultural examination (pp. 1–16). Routledge. Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2008). Flow: The psychology of optical experience. Harper Perennial Modern Classics. Denham, B. (2008). Masculinities in hardcore bodybuilding. Men and Masculinities, 11, 234–242. Denison, J. (2016). Social theory and narrative: A point of view. Sport, Education and Society, 21, 7–10. https://doi.org/10.1080/13573322.2015.1076385 Eichberg, H. (1998). Body culture as paradigm: The Danish sociology of sport. In J. Bale & C. Philo (Eds.), Body cultures: Essays on sport, space and identity (pp. 111–127). Routledge. Frank, A. W. (1991). For a sociology of the body: An analytical review. The Body: Social Process and Cultural Theory, 1, 36–102. Griffin, M. & Phoenix, C. (2014). Learning to run from narrative foreclosure: One woman’s story of aging and physical activity. Journal of Aging and Physical Activity, 22, 393–404 Hockey, J., & Allen-Collinson (2016). Digging in: The sociological phenomenology of “doing endurance” in distance running. In W. Bridel, P. Markula, & J. Denison (Eds.), Endurance running: A socio-cultural examination (pp. 227–242). Routledge. Klein, A. M. (1993). Little big men: Bodybuilding subculture and gender construction. SUNY Press. Litchfield, C., Connelly, D. M., Hay, M. E., & Kinsella, E. A. (2022). “Being” an older adult skier: The phenomenology of masters alpine ski racers. Aging and Physical Activity, 30, 177–186. Marshall, K., Chamberlain, K., & Hodgetts, D. (2020). Male bodybuilders on Instagram: Negotiating inclusive masculinities through hegemonic masculine bodies, Journal of Gender Studies, 29(5), 570–589. https://doi.org/10.1080/09589236.2020.1722620 Palmer, V. J., Bowness, J., & Tulle, E. (2021). (Re)conceptualizing physical activity participation as a career. Ageing & Society, 41, 936–954. https://doi.org/10.1017/ S0144686X19001430. Phoenix, C. (2010). Auto-photography in aging studies: Exploring issues of identity construction in mature bodybuilders. Journal of Aging Studies, 24, 167–180. Phoenix, C., & Smith, B. (2011). Telling a (good?) counterstory of aging: Natural bodybuilding meets the narrative of decline. The Journals of Gerontology, Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, 66(5), 628–639. Phoenix, C., & Tulle, E. (2017). Physical activity and ageing. In J. Piggin, L. Mansfield, & M. Weed (Eds.), Routledge handbook of physical activity policy and practice (pp. 264–273). Routledge. Sparkes, A. C., Batey, J., & Owen, G. J. (2012). The shame-pride-shame of the muscled self in bodybuilding. In A. Locks & N. Richardson (Eds.), Critical readings in bodybuilding (pp. 107–121). Routledge.

Finally … for the Joy of It All 97 Tulle, E. (2007). Running to run: Embodiment, structure and agency amongst veteran elite runners. Sociology, 41, 329–346. Tulle, E. (2008). Ageing, the body and social change: Running in later life. School of Law and Social Sciences. Paper 112. Available at: http://researchonline.gcu.ac.uk/lss/112. Waddington, I. (2000). Sport, health, and drugs: A critical sociological perspective. E & FN Spon.

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Moving in Different Circles Darryn Stamp

Running, Sprinting, Twisting, Turning, Jumping, Tackling, Passing, Shooting … Teammates, Opponents, Coaches, Managers, Physios, Analysts, Media, Supporters … Adored yet Ignored, Admired yet Mocked, Valued yet Castigated, Idolised yet Pitied … Joy then Dismay, Elation or Frustration, Pleasure and Anger, Pride, Humiliation … Highs and Lows, Uncertainty, Vulnerability, Insecurity, Unpredictability … And yet, we never questioned why …

Looking Forward, Looking Back (May 2021) It’s only now, when I am able to take a significant step away from the game, that I am able to see my own rollercoaster ride through the career of a professional footballer. At the heart of this rollercoaster is a bizarre relationship with exercise. A relationship that I felt unable to change if I wanted to succeed. To play in the first team, I had to be physically fit (or, at least as physically fit as I possibly could be), remain injury free and be in form from a performance perspective. To achieve these goals, I trained every day – often twice a day and even spent some afternoons doing yoga and strange movements with my feet and my toes, as the ‘foot coach’ explained the benefits of taking care of our ‘tools’. Our days were planned for us and our sessions were designed to maintain and improve our performances and we accepted that. Sometimes, we’d join together and question what we were doing or mock the standard of the sessions but only in the relatively safe confines of the team changing room. Nobody would ever raise their concerns or share their dissatisfaction with the coaching staff – heaven forbid anybody be that brave or stupid! Only after stepping away from the game do I realise that exercise was just something that I ‘did’. Something that we, as professional footballers, ‘did’ on a daily basis. I never exercised with other people, apart from the odd round of golf with friends I never imagined exercising with anybody else, least of all my family. Yet, as a professional footballer, I exercised unquestioningly, in an attempt to not only play in the first team but to win games, to win leagues and to savour the wide range of benefits that came with being successful. The higher the league meant more prestige and a higher status in the footballing world. The higher the league meant more money; DOI: 10.4324/9781003276531-9

Moving in Different Circles 99 maybe even a longer contract if I was one of the lucky ones or the ‘key players’. More money meant the bigger house or the nicer car and holidays. When things were good, things were great! When things were bad, things were awful! Why isn’t the manager playing me? Why have we just signed another forward? Will my contract be renewed in the summer? Where will I go now? I’m running out of clubs that will take me! The ‘exercise’ and ‘physical activity’ were lost in the culture of expectation and judgement. Not only was everything 100 miles an hour but I was always conscious of the need to consistently perform amidst almost impossible circumstances. Towards the end of my career, I made the step into semi-professional football and combined playing with studying for a degree in Sports Coaching and Performance at the University of Hull. I dreaded exiting the full-time ranks of the game in fear of the unknown but can honestly say it was one of the best moves I made. Wrestling with various disciplines and a range of academic theories while still playing presented me with a new understanding of professional football and one that I gradually began to question more and more. The social theories that I engaged were fascinating and led to a complete shift in my thought processes and sense-making that was only accentuated as I embarked on my doctoral research study (Stamp, 2017). Now, in my academic role, I encourage sport, exercise and coaching science students to challenge dominant ways of thinking and critically consider the role of other stakeholders and cultural discourses in sporting careers. Throughout this educational journey, the work of Crossley (2011) and Burkitt (1999, 2014a, b) has been instrumental in shifting my interpretations away from myself as an individual and towards my relationships with others. In light of the above, I now offer an embodied, relational and emotional perspective of my own relationship with exercise. Towards a Relational Understanding of Sports Transitions Engaging with social theory has enabled me to make sense of my relationship with exercise and physical activity in a number of ways. This engagement has offered a ‘re-storying’ of myself (Carless & Douglas, 2009) as a retired sportsman and strengthened my own understanding by the respective theoretical interpretations (Denison, 2016). Here, I reflect on contrasting approaches to exercise during and post-career where the work of Crossley (2011) and Burkitt (1999, 2014a, b) has provided me with a theoretical lens to interpret my experiences from an embodied, emotional and relational perspective. It is from this viewpoint I argue that the term mental health and well-being does a disservice to the nature of my relationship with exercise and physical activity and that my experiences would be more effectively considered in light of my relational health and well-being. In this respect, my physical sensations and emotional responses were borne out of my interactions and relationships with a range of significant others, as well as the links that I made to ‘my world’. Only through these social exchanges was I able to fully explore and understand my health and well-being. Constructing his case for relational sociology, Crossley (2011) argued that sociological research should focus on evolving and dynamic networks of interaction and

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relations instead of the individual or the collective. Crossley’s thesis closely aligns with interactionist beliefs surrounding the nature of social life (Potrac, Nelson & O’Gorman, 2015). With the majority of his work focused on social networks and network analysis in the United Kingdom, Crossley (2011) argued that analysing networks provides researchers with the ability to explore important contemporary debates on ‘complexity’, suggesting that, too often, social researchers return to the atomistic individual. Thus, Crossley’s (2011) work could be seen as an attempt to disclose further social complexities of a person’s lifeworld; one that accounts for the multitude of competing roles and identities that are mutually interdependent on relationships. To this extent, Crossley (2011, p. 163) suggests that ‘our identity at any point in time depends upon who we are interacting with and, no less importantly, which social world we are orienting to in our interaction’. Crossley (2011) argued that rather than being individual agents, we are always ‘agents-inrelation’. That is, instead of being self-contained or self-sufficient atoms, we are social beings who exist within various networks of relationships (Crossley, 2011). According to Crossley (2011, p. 15), individuals exist in ‘historically specific circumstances … in “positions” within networks of relations to other human beings, with the various identities, interests, interdependencies and practical engagements that such positions entail’. In this respect, Crossley (2011, p. 15) suggested that ‘individuals, or rather actors, are formed and continually re-formed in and through interaction’. Placing social relationships at the forefront of his conceptual drive, Crossley (2011) defined a social relationship as ‘the lived trajectory of iterated bouts of interaction between actors’ (p. 35) or as ‘lived histories of interaction with tacitly projected probabilities of future interaction’ (p. 60). Here, Crossley (2011, p.180) noted how these social relations ‘enable and constrain action’ in such a way that ‘roles and identities are not “about” the individual but rather about their relations to others’. Possessing many similarities to the work of Crossley (2011), Burkitt (2014a, p. 16) believes that social relations are ‘the very essence of what it is to be a self: an individual with an identity amongst others’. Here, Burkitt (2014a) placed interaction and dialogue as key ingredients of an individual’s identity. It is through these interrelationships that ‘we come to identify our self through the image of some of the selves around us, with some of what they represent, while setting our self against the images of others’ (Burkitt, 2014a, p. 188). To this extent, Burkitt (2014a, p. 165) suggested that rather than having an identity ‘in fleeting, everchanging social configurations, identity is something that is continually made on the spot, in situ’. Only through our interactions with others in specific networks of relations are our identities validated and afforded (Burkitt, 2014a). Interestingly, Burkitt (1999) suggested that social science research often ignores the embodiment of human experience. Burkitt (1999, p. 76) argued that the sense of being a person is inseparable from bodily practices within social relations whereby ‘the sense of self we develop is primarily based on the feel we have of our body and the way it connects us to the world’. Burkitt (2014b, p. 62) also believed that meaningful experiences must be felt before they can be understood, whereby ‘there has to be a bodily feeling in the utterance of words for us to understand the emotion

Moving in Different Circles 101 a person is experiencing’. Describing feelings as the embodiment of interactions and social relations, Burkitt (1999, p. 110) also noted that ‘all human feelings are characterised by pattern rather than quantity’. Thus, Burkitt (1999) explained how embodied feelings are also linked to patterns of relationship: between their multiple selves and between self and other and self and the environment. That is, embodied feelings are an essential part of our relationships with others depending upon our biographical trajectories (Burkitt, 2014b). Arguably then, the ‘words and actions of others in-form us not only in a cognitive sense, in the way we think about ourselves, they in-form our very bodily dispositions in the world’ (Burkitt (2014b, p. 82). Time to ‘Hang Them Up’ (January 2017) Towards the end of my football career, I became player/assistant manager for a local, non-league club. Having recently gained my first role in academia, my physical fitness began to suffer as I dedicated less and less time to keeping fit and preferred to lead sessions rather than take part – something that was exposed in the most embarrassing of ways during my last ever (semi-)professional game: YES, YES, OVER THE TOP! NOW! DO IT! As the ball is played over the top of the last defender on the halfway line, I sense my moment to change the game. My chest swells as I outsprint the centre half. WTF! I’ve never ever done that in the 15 years that I’ve played! My mouth widens as I’m incapable of masking how amazed I am that, at 38, I have beaten somebody for pace. Now it’s just me and the keeper and the 40 yards between us: He’s through. Stamp is through. He’s one-on-one. He knocks the ball out of his feet and the gangly striker lengthens his stride. The stride looks awkward. The stride is buckling. Stamp crumples to the floor in a heap like a horse being shot. The ball rolls through to the keeper who, with a wry smile on his face, picks the ball up and launches it downfield. That’s one that Stamp will not want to see again. The crowd don’t know whether to laugh or heckle. The strange murmurings reverberate around the ground for seconds as supporters struggle to come to terms with what has just happened. The lump in my throat grows exponentially as I swallow repeatedly and search for solace. It doesn’t come. One teammate shakes his head vigorously. Another avoids eye contact. The manager retreats from the dugout and takes his seat on the bench inside and out of view. I don’t know where to look. My ribs squeeze inwards, as though somebody is trying to lift me up. My breathing remains short and shallow as I shake my head in disbelief. I manage a chuckle but can’t stop shaking my head. My thighs feel like they are going to collapse again. There’s nothing in the tank! As I walked off the pitch, I was greeted by a loyal supporter and one who I held a good relationship with; somebody who I felt able to have an honest an open

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conversation about the team, the players and the club whether positive or negative. Approaching the tunnel, he looked across and chuckled to himself: ‘I think it’s time to hang ’em up Stampy!’ I laughed with him and, in a weakened voice, agreed: ‘You’re not wrong. I think that’s my body’s way of telling me my playing days are over’. The words sent a shiver across my shoulders and up the back of my neck as the realisation hit home. I’ve always been a jovial character in any team changing rooms that I have been in and so this didn’t change, and I made a joke about what had happened with the lads. Some laughed; some were too pissed off to laugh as we had lost yet another game; some looked gutted for me. I squirmed into the bar after the game – face red, forehead dripping with sweat. The regular supporters were generally great and made light of the situation. Behind me, the manager held a conversation with another group of supporters. With no intended malice, his words were damning. ‘I can remember my last ever game’, he said. My body sank an inch. That was all it needed. For the next three years, I enjoyed being able to say no to exercising. Unless my two sons wanted a kick about over the road, or my mates fancied a game of golf, I refused any invitations. Another group of friends were desperate to involve me in a local five-a-side league, but it never interested me. The banter on the group text always made me laugh but was not enough for me to agree. As I look back, I question whether part of this was due to the possibility of me breaking down again and crumbling to the floor or picking up an unnecessary injury. The fact that I could refuse and stay indoors instead of venturing out late on a cold winter’s evening was satisfying. Only now, do I realise that, for three years, I was as unfit as I have ever been and never considered the impact alternative, and far less intense (and less scrutinised) exercise could have on my mental health. The Exercise Network of My Career – A Commentary As I reflect back on my earlier relationship with exercise, I would argue that being a professional footballer provided me with an exercise network (Crossley, 2011). Apart from a rare round of golf with friends, my exercise was confined within a professional football network. From Crossley’s (2011) perspective, this was my social world that I was orienting to when I engaged with any physical activity. Within the changing rooms and the team environment, each of us was forming and re-forming through our interactions – a place where our fitness and performance levels would determine whose actions were enabled or constrained (Crossley, 2011). Similarly, our relationships with exercise would thrive or suffer depending on our relations to others, such as the management team or fellow teammates. At times, this extended beyond the localised team changing room and to media, supporters and opponents. The opening poem illustrated the challenges I associated with my role as a professional footballer, where the rollercoaster of emotions was tied to a range of other stakeholders against the backdrop culture of uncertainty and insecurity. Although much previous research has highlighted professional football as an unpredictable career (e.g. Roderick, 2006; Nesti,

Moving in Different Circles 103 Littlewood, O’Halloran, Eubank & Richardson, 2012; Roderick & Schumacker, 2017), Crossley’s (2011) work helps to explain how my relationship with exercise, and indeed my role and identity as a professional footballer, was not about me but about my relations with others (Stamp et al., 2021). Regardless of whether I remained physically fit and performed well, the decision whether I would represent the club in their next game remained outside of my control. I would also argue that my mental health would be affected by these decisions, as I relished the opportunity to play in a top of the league battle for promotion but then hated not being in the squad for a relegation six-pointer, where I would question where my career was heading. To this extent, Crossley’s (2011) work presents me with a new perspective of my mental health during my professional career – one that I would more effectively describe as relational health. Indeed, only through my interactions and relationships with others was I able to interpret and understand my own career and well-being. The transition into the player/assistant manager role had an impact upon my relationship with exercise whereby I ‘left the playing to the players’. I became so focused on leading the training and ensuring that the team were prepared for upcoming fixtures that my final appearance exemplified the knock-on effect this had on my own physical fitness. From an embodied perspective, I had ‘nothing in the tank’ and my physical sensations were the respective connections that I made to my world (Burkitt, 1999). According to Burkitt (1999), these feelings were an integral and unavoidable feature of my experience and one that developed in relation to the people around me. My biographical trajectory had been one where I had been able to commit wholeheartedly, and my body previously accepted the challenge, but this was different, and everybody knew it. The mutterings and reverberations around the ground, the player avoiding eye contact and the manager taking his seat in the dugout were all signs that my performance stopped short of their expectations. My ribs squeezing inwards and the short and shallow nature of my breathing evidenced the respective doubt and concern raised by my crumpling to the floor. In this respect, I identified my self through the image of some of the selves around me and my identity as a professional footballer was changing (for the worse) in situ (Burkitt, 2014a). Leaving the pitch and entering the bar further confirmed that my time as a player was nearing the end, as the supporter and the manager both made their feelings clear in both obvious and less obvious ways. These comments initiated feelings that I understood from a sociological perspective as embarrassment and humiliation (Roderick, Smith & Potrac, 2017). However, the feelings also highlighted that my identity as a (semi) professional footballer was no longer being afforded to me and the validity of this was expiring (Burkitt, 2014a). While previous research has highlighted how athletes may cynically dis-identify with their identity as a professional footballer (Roderick, 2014) or feel that they have more to give in their respective sports (Agnew, Marks, Henderson & Woods, 2018), my experiences were tied to an embodied and relational understanding of my inadequacy. The words and actions of others had in-formed me in a cognitive sense and affected my very bodily disposition to the world (Burkitt, 2014a). According to these interactions, my career was finished.

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Exercising Differently Is a Walk in the Park (March 23, 2020) Gathered around the TV we hear the words … Stay at Home … Protect the NHS … Save Lives … Nobody must leave the house other than for essential shopping or for ‘one bout of exercise per day’. Rachel’s smile eases the tension in the room. ‘No school, boys’! Their awkward frowns suggest they will need more convincing that this is a good thing. I tend to agree. ‘Don’t worry, we can go for long walks … bike rides … runs if you want to … this will be brilliant for us’. Rachel was right, the lockdown was brilliant for us as a family in many ways. We’ve never walked so far, locally. We’d never been on lengthy bike rides in fear of the boys falling off or causing mayhem with the traffic. We’d never spent so much time together outdoors doing such basic exercise! I’ve never really thought of walking or biking as exercise and have absolutely no idea why. To me, exercise was always 100% – full-on; intense workouts. It was always something that tested you or challenged you to push yourself as far as your breathing would allow. There had to be an aim or an end goal in mind and I could never see one in walking. The fact that the prime minister had spelled it out to the whole country that we could only walk locally for an hour is something that I will always be grateful for and something that changed my perspective on exercise forever. Exercise now offered me (and my family) a chance to clear our minds and be present with each other: Dark, dusky clouds hover above the City landscape, yet the view is unspoilt. The smell of the nearby horses and sound of the nearby traffic fade into the background as we stroll through the wispy grass of the local countryside. He’s fully invested in the conversation … I just listen and ask follow-up questions … like the qualitative researcher that I am. Every word gleefully springs into my ears and I’m intrigued by the tactical wisdom of an average Fortnite player. His passion is astonishing. Our conversation turns to the future and what lies ahead as he approaches his 13th birthday. He’s good at sport, he’s handsome (although I can’t tell him that for fear of being weird!), he’s very intelligent and his future looks amazing. As we pick up the pace of our walk, the countryside air appears to cleanse my protruding chest while the talk turns to football; ‘what was it like Dad … being a professional footballer?’ he asks. It’s a question that brings a smile to my face and a lightness to my steps. I’m always conscious of not wanting to brag about being a professional footballer and so rarely discuss my previous career. Unless people ask, or unless I feel that it would benefit the students studying my degree, I would rather focus on the here and now. But this was different … this was sewing the first seeds of a dream. The fact that we are walking as we talk is somewhat irrelevant yet equally important. The TV isn’t on. We are not scrolling through our mobile phones, delivering sessions via Microsoft Teams, or playing video games. Our bodies are moving. Steps in sync. Our minds focused on each other. I explain about the highs and the lows but how I have memories that I will never forget … memories that I hope he (and his brother) can replicate if not

Moving in Different Circles 105 beat. I explain about the commitment and the dedication that is needed and the countless different ways that football affects your life. As I talk, the shiver across my shoulders and tingling up the back of my neck signify the magnitude of my words and how lucky I have been. But I also share the holidays that I missed with my friends aged 17 … the Friday nights out with the lads that I had no option but to turn down … the countless afternoons spent on the sofa; following team orders to rest and prepare for the game at the weekend. A game that I never knew whether I would be in the starting eleven or sat in the stands … each game initiating elation or vulnerabilities and insecurities. The more I share the more my face muscles tense and my eyes widen as I feel that I’m deterring him rather than encouraging. But I don’t. As he walks taller, shoulders back, his excitement shines through, ‘That sounds great, Dad … I hope I get to be a professional footballer one day’. How It’s Working Out? (August 2022) I used to hate workouts! They always suited the bigger, stronger and fitter players and I never belonged in any of those camps. Yet, we all worked out together and all had to do the ‘sets of 50’ or the two-minute plank. I swear there must be mathematical reasoning that could prove why performing the plank exercise is harder for taller players. The distance between elbows and toes can be significant but as the smaller players cruised through their two minutes, I would move uncomfortably through a range of ungainly positions to make sure my stomach didn’t touch the ground. No matter how hard I tried, it was never enough. ‘Come on Stampy … get that arse down’! Retirement offered me a sense of relief around not having to engage in group workouts and not having to feel that the maximum I could do wasn’t good enough. I was no longer anxious about how I’d compare to the rest. No longer did I have to laugh my way through how much worse I was than most. I now question whether it was the environment that I hated instead of the workout itself – a point that was brought to life one sunny afternoon: What’s happening? Beads of sweat are dripping down my face and chest and I love it! There’s nobody else around. The music belting out of my nearby iPhone seems to have taken control of my body, as I nod along and ‘dance’ to the 90’s music in between exercises. My blood is on a mission as it frantically pumps around my upper torso. I feel energised. I feel ready to push myself. I feel amazing! 42 …. 43 ….. 44 ………… come on! You can do this! 45 ……. Bollocks ….. I really can’t! My screaming stomach and shaking arms confirm my decision to slump to the floor. ‘Don’t worry!’ I tell myself … a strong 45-second plank is better than a 2-minute plank-dance and who cares that you couldn’t do 2 minutes?

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Unfolding Exercise Networks – A Commentary Although retired, I would argue that I am still involved in an exercise network, but this now consists of my family, as it is they who I orient to (Crossley, 2011). That said, this only materialised when faced with a national pandemic and subsequent lockdown. Having enjoyed engaging in minimal exercise from the infamous last appearance, I was offered the perfect opportunity to re-exercise through daily walks and bike rides with my family. In comparison, exercise was now seen as a leisure activity where I no longer felt the fear of being judged by multiple stakeholders (Jones, Avner & Denison, 2022). As the walking extract demonstrated, exercise offered me an escape from the hours spent in a bedroom, where I would stare for hours at a computer screen to deliver multiple online sessions to locked-down students. A daily walk or bike ride provided us with welcomed family time and a chance to breathe in the countryside air and not only talk but, more importantly, listen to each other. The fact that we were invested in the conversations evidenced the value we attached to this time. To this extent, I felt as though the walking and exercise were concealed behind our discussions of Fortnite and professional football while, simultaneously, improving our mental (or relational) health. There was no fear of judgement. Nobody questioned whether I met or exceeded expectations with my walking performance. My family no longer relied on me to be picked for the first team or earn a new contract, as my career as an academic was not affected by my ability to perform physically. Interestingly, I now question whether exercising solely with my family is as healthy as I first thought. My previous work (Stamp et al., 2021) has shown me how important it is for people to have multiple identities and therefore multiple social networks during their careers to support their exit from the game. Combining my family network with my exercise network arguably limits my interactions with others and may not give me the range of social relations that I need to maintain my relational health in respect of my multiple identities. Engaging with the work of Burkitt (2014a, b) and Crossley (2011) has provided me with a theoretical lens that extends beyond my career and retirement by showing me the impact interactions have on my multiple identities and the effect that I can have on others. From a father, son, brother, friend or colleague perspective, I am able to see how my words and actions have the ability to enable and constrain action (Crossley, 2011), affect somebody’s identity on the spot, in situ (Burkitt, 2014) and in-form their very bodily disposition in the world (Burkitt, 2014a). Despite illuminating many of the challenges tied to insecurity, uncertainty and vulnerability, our conversation during the countryside walk appeared to ignite a dream and give my son something to aim for. The walking taller, shoulders back response suggested that he would relish the opportunity and that my words had a positive impact; his self had been validated in my presence (Burkitt, 2014a). Engaging with social theory has also helped me to understand my first ‘workout’ and showed me the impact that my environment can have on my mental health; that my mental health will not only be affected by other people but also by the links that I make to my surroundings and ‘my world’ (Burkitt, 2014b). The beat of the retro dance music brought an instant smile to my face and energised my entire

Moving in Different Circles 107 body as each press-up and each sit-up became strangely enjoyable. I suspect that the ownership I had of this ‘workout’, and the removal of watching teammates and management, will paint a bodyweight exercise routine in a completely different light – one where the expectations are on my terms and if I feel the need to stop, I can without any repercussions. For me, the fact that I was able to perform a 45-second plank was amazing and better than an uncomfortable two minutes of shifting, manoeuvring and ungainly fidgeting. Maybe this will be short-lived, and I will become bored, but my mental health may be affected by the music that I listen to while exercising whereby my positive bodily feelings stem from the relationship I develop between myself and my environment (Burkitt, 2014b). Given that I have completed one bodyweight exercise to date, I am intrigued to see where this engagement takes me moving forward. However, what this has shown me is that my exercise network will undoubtedly change over time (Crossley, 2011) and that the ‘others’ that join this network will be crucial, as it will be their words and actions that in-form both my cognitive and bodily dispositions in my world (Burkitt, 2014b). Conclusion This chapter has offered an alternative understanding of my sporting and postsporting life where there appears to be a clear discord between my respective relationships with exercise and physical activity and the roles played by significant others. I argued that my mental health and well-being would be more effectively described as relational health and well-being, due to the relational nature of feelings and emotional experiences. As a professional footballer, exercise was something that I just ‘did’, unquestioningly and accepted that being judged on a daily if not hourly or minutely basis was par for the course. Embedded within this culture was an expectation that my physical performances would meet the standards expected of teammates, managers, opponents, supporters and wider media and that I would maximise my effort to do so. As I reflected over my career, it became clear that I was not in control and that my career would depend on my interactions and relationships with these stakeholders – people that I included in my exercise network (Crossley, 2011). My final game further demonstrated how the words and actions of others affected my ability to perform where my (semi-)professional footballer identity was expiring in front of me (Burkitt, 2014a). Post-sport, I now exercise in a completely different way and enjoy the relaxed and non-judgemental nature of this. Although I questioned whether combining my exercise and family networks was as positive as I first thought and recognised the importance of maintaining relationships with multiple networks, walking has emerged as my favourite exercise. Furthermore, my first ‘workout’ has tentatively suggested that I may improve my mental health by exercising alone and making a positive connection between my self and my environment (Burkitt, 2014b). What these experiences have shown me is that my exercise network (and therefore relationship with exercise) will undoubtedly change over time. My engagement with the work of Crossley (2011) and Burkitt (1999, 2014a, b) has not only provided me with a theoretical understanding

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of my relationship with exercise but also of how my changing social networks may affect this relationship throughout the rest of my life. References Agnew, D., A. Marks, P. Henderson, & C. Woods (2018). “Deselection from elite Australian football as the catalyst for a return to sub-elite competition: When elite players feel there is ‘still more to give’”. Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health 10(1): 117– 136. doi: 10.1080/2159676X.2017.1380074. Burkitt, I. (1999). Bodies of Thought: Embodiment, Identity and Modernity. Sage. Burkitt, I. (2014a). Social Selves: Theories of Self and Society 2nd ed. Sage. Burkitt, I. (2014b). Emotions and Social Relations. Sage. Carless, D., & K. Douglas (2009). ‘We haven’t got a seat on the bus for you’ or ‘all the seats are mine’: Narratives and career transition in golf. Qualitative Research in Sport and Exercise, 1: 51–66. Crossley, N. (2011). Towards Relational Sociology. Routledge. Denison, J. (2016). Social theory and narrative research: A point of view. Sport, Education and Society 21(1): 7–10. Jones, L., Z. Avner, & J. Denison (2022). ‘After the dust settles’: A narrative exploration of retired athletes’ ‘re-orientation’ to sport and exercise. Frontiers in Sports and Active Living: The History, Culture, and Sociology of Sports, 267. https://doi.org/10.3389/fspor .2022.901308 Nesti, M., M. Littlewood, L. O’Halloran, M. Eubank, & D. Richardson (2012). Critical moments in elite premiership football: Who do you think you are? Physical Culture and Sport Studies and Research 56(1): 23–32. Potrac, P., L. Nelson, & J. O’Gorman (2015). Exploring the everyday realities of grass-roots football coaching: Towards a relational perspective. Soccer & Society 17(6): 910–925. Roderick, M. (2006). The Work of Professional Football: A Labour of Love? Routledge. Roderick, M. (2014). From identification to dis-identification: Case studies of job loss in professional football. Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health 6(2): 143–160. Roderick, M., & J. Schumacker (2017). “The whole week comes down to the team sheet”: A footballer’s view of insecure work. Work, Employment and Society 31(1): 166–174. doi: 10.1177/0950017016672792. Roderick, M., A. Smith, & P. Potrac (2017). The sociology of sports work, emotions and mental health: Scoping the field and future directions. Sociology of Sport Journal 34(2): 99–107. doi: 10.1123/ssj.2017-0082. Stamp, D. (2017). Understanding the relational and emotional dimensions of transitions in elite sport: professional footballers' tales (Doctoral dissertation, University of Hull). Stamp, D., P. Potrac, & L. Nelson. (2021). More than just a “Pro”: A relational analysis of transition in professional football. Sport, Education and Society 26(1): 72–86. doi: 10.1080/13573322.2019.1694503.

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Moving Afresh A Narrative and Foucauldian Analysis of Transitioning to New Movement Practices Joseph Mills

The world’s a funny place, no? Full of ironies. I spent my entire athletic career “busting my behind”, failed, and when ending found far easier ways for moving that could have helped me realize my dreams, and others realize theirs. Yet no one is interested, and social theory explained why. This is that story. I look across my class of athletes lying on the floor, deeply yet privately irritated at the disordered look of the bodies. “You’re supposed to be serious athletes,” I think, “you’re supposed to try, to care, you’re supposed to be expert movers but you have no efficient integral lines in your body, at all”, and repeat for the umpteenth time: Now. Even though I’ve explained how your body is not where you think it is, and that what “feels right” in your body is more likely wrong, and what “feels wrong” in your body is more likely right, I guarantee, that in a few seconds I’ll be correcting you into the position I actually described, not the one you feel I described, and the one you have moved to. And to reinforce this point, every time I have to gently correct you, you owe me a dollar, and we’ll see if I have enough for a coffee … so take as much time as you need to check that you’re in the position I described. I left the session with enough money for dinner. I didn’t take the money, it was all a bit of fun, but the point was made: the athletes in front of me were so disembodied they couldn’t even move into the simple positions I’d described, which given their high-achieving aims is a problem with no end of implications. First sentences, Denison (2016) explained, are important. They reveal so much. Disposition, bias, the extent of imagination. Colour, texture, tone, and scope of what is coming up, or as Denison resigned, a “what I am in for”. For Caulley (2008) first paragraphs are important. Direction, mood, encouragement. Is there a hook? I should know about hooks, my father is a television screenwriter. Except, in typical loving father–son relationships, I never listen (apparently), so I don’t (know that much about hooks). I do know my father is right though. I have a son who never listens too. As I start my retirement narrative, I am also mindful of Richardson and colleagues’ words (2005, p. 959), “for years I had yawned my way through numerous supposedly exemplary qualitative studies”, which likely explains Denison’s foreboding. DOI: 10.4324/9781003276531-10

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One qualitative approach that avoids boredom, argued Caulley (2008), was the short story, a narrative, which has the advantages of bringing forward experiences that would otherwise be marginalized. I am with the reveals, but less sure about narratives not being boring, for I have yawned my way through endless short stories too. Stories the speaker thought were fun but that were excruciatingly painful to hear, to respond to, and that left me with overriding caution to make sure I was never in that situation again. First sentences and paragraphs I conclude can be fun but seem in tension with the need to “get on with it”. Make the point, make it a good one, and get the hell out. I am already worried I have taken too many liberties with the reader. But this is my start, for so subtle, multilayered with so many things hidden are my feelings and thoughts about my experiences, I do not have the language to articulate what I want, for as St. Pierre (1995, p. 209) quite beautifully reminds us, data escapes language. What about all that data that cannot be textualized but that hovers around the words on the page and flavors the cadence of a sentence or the choice of an adjective? I wish you could hear the voices of these southern women. I wish you could see the fat sunlight of the rosy crepe myrtles on Hester Road. I wish you could taste the vinegary pit-cooked barbecue and the crunchy hush puppies made with a touch of onion at Joe’s Pit-Cooked Barbecue. That sensual data of the body is somewhere here among these words if you look for it. I wish then, you could see what I have seen. I wish you could feel what I have felt. Because for athletes to excel, the “sensual data of the body” is important, and no end of critical movement qualities remain hidden. I will say it again then, I wish you could see what I have seen. And I wish you could feel what I have felt. I wish you could. Retirement: Moving On There is chalk and then there is cheese. There is night and there is day. There are the movements I did ad nauseam as a high, but not high enough, performing track athlete, and the movement practices I found by chance as I was leaving track. Newer fresh movements that made me realize I, and others, could have been higher [performing], which is why I trained, licenced, and started teaching them. Yet no one listened. Critically, these movements lay outside sports’ conventional wisdoms and bio-scientific instrumental rationalities. And I needed to know why. Retiring out of sport presents athletes with a host of challenges, in that sense the sports retirement literature is unequivocal. But I am lucky. I do not feel retired. I had a hook, my own hook. A hook for moving better, and as a result, doing sport better. Which is why I never felt any regret or mourned any loss, and why the new movement practices I found bridged my time with track spikes on to the theoretically driven thoughts and words I use now. I transitioned rather than retired, from performer to practitioner to Foucauldian post-structural scholar, at which point I finally understood and keep understanding

Moving Afresh 111 more, why and how sports’ conventional and instrumental movements are so limiting and problematic. I wonder then, why the sport retirement literature even uses that “R” term. Retire. Stop. Put your feet up. Except, in most cases athletes are too young. Athletes do not retire, they transition. They have to, they have 50, 60, 70 years of life left. And so my retirement was more exciting entry point than traumatic end. I may not have run as fast as I wanted, or deserved, but way more exciting were the new movements I found in that transition, that [I felt] no one would listen to. Which is why narratives have such potential, they give voice. Combined with social theoretical analysis revealing some of the multiple varied complexities that would otherwise go unseen because they fall through what scientists call “cracks” and social theorists call “chasms”, it is hoped, as Denison (2016) asserted, that narratives do something and move others to act: even if it is a narrative inspired by stopping, by retirement. To be clear then, my retirement narrative was one of transition because I found a better way for moving that no one was interested in or felt they were already doing, which was a confusion explained by a Foucauldian analysis of the power relations surrounding those new movements. Social theoretical analyses thus have the capacity to reveal layers and complexities for articulating broader conceptualizations of movements for doing sport better. At least I hope they do, for that is my aim. Starting Somewhere among the Multilayers Rational instrumental bio-scientific discourses saturate, circulate, and drive sport (Andrews, 2008; Bush et al., 2016; Theberge, 2007). We all know that. I have written that statement countless times in countless papers and quite frankly, I am beyond bored of it. I see little change though. Yet, instrumental bio-scientific discourses do not just define sport, they mark it as such, stamp it like bullies in the playground. They are cats who have marked their territory so no other ways can take hold. Andrews (2008) called sports’ instrumentalism its “inconvenient truth”. They prevent other discourses from circulating. Grants, jobs, promotions, research studies, and peer-reviewed publications, or what Foucault referred to as “entire machineries”, all pointing in the same sense-making directions and leaving residues of immense proportions behind. Less watery and sprinkly [easy to shake off], more thick and gloopy so something always sticks and no end of scrubbing can remove so that we forget it is even there. We just get used to the instrumentality, and do not even know we are using it, even though as post-structural scholars we often refute that we are. And that is one of my problems: saying we are one thing but being another, because we are unaware of how deeply our instrumental rationales have penetrated our own conceptions of movement. Of course, as a gradually hardening post-structural scholar, or at least I hope so, not all of that gloopy instrumental residue is bad. Much good is contained within or at least can be. One understated issue, however, is that some of that “much good” is hidden. And I know it is hidden because I now know what power relations are, what they do, and how they work. And they do work. Magnificently so. Which is why I was so taken by Foucault’s (1977, p. 148) words about how his Genealogy

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aimed to “expose a body totally imprinted by history and the process of history’s destruction of the body”. It was not just the term “imprinted” that intrigued me, although I have already noted, positivism stamps the body. Instead, it was the consequences of those marks that I was drawn to, because of the powerful phrase, “destruction of the body”. I had seen, felt, and experienced that destruction and all that came with it. The destruction, the despair, the heartache. Yet here was a theoretical toolkit that could, maybe, reveal that destruction. I was excited. The Body Destroyed The modern sciences, Foucault (1978) explained, were created to “know” (wo) man. But the knowing meant reducing, which is not then knowing at all, as the ancient Chinese philosopher K’ung Fu-tzu’s metaphor described. The body, for Fu-tzu, was connected just as a knife is connected to its cutting edge. A cutting edge without a knife is inconceivable and a knife without a cutting edge lacks the most essential feature inherent in the concept of a knife. Modern science reduces so that it knows “about”, and as a result the knowing is what someone else tells you about you. It is knowing parts of the body, parts of such often microscopically small size the naked eye cannot see them. The body as jigsaw puzzle because that is how science works; reduction guarantees precision, accuracy, and robust knowledge. And I am admittedly often grateful. It is that microscopic vision producing a vaccine enabling the world to slowly and healthily move out of a global pandemic. There are consequences, however, if reduction is the only way we know the body because our nature becomes a cut up, disconnected series of micro-dot parts. Disconnected because when exercise physiologists and coaches measure and analyze athletes’ VO2 maxes, or lactate threshold, they do not talk or think about other parts of the body. Not only that, if you reduce the parts being measured, everything else reduces too: what is seen, thought, done, what the problems and solutions are, and what progression and advancement looks like. And if one starts by thinking that small is big, doing better is also small, just one or two parts and not very far at all. Doing better dilutes. More importantly, with so many micro-dots, finding what you need is almost impossible and too much is hidden. Not the body as a jigsaw puzzle, the body as a jigsaw puzzle that no one has the ability to complete. The body as a chaotic brickyard of a being (Forscher, 1963). A body that ancient Indian blind men fight over to understand. A body confused and misunderstood, but a body assumed to be understood at the same time. For the prefix “dis” means “opposite of” and so the word “disconnect” by very definition means contradiction, tension, or lack of understanding. The known body’s nature thus connotates misunderstanding, and from this point it is not too far an intellectual leap to understand how bodies start to be destroyed. It is not only science that constructs the body of course. Bodies do not magically appear out of a vacuum or freely float free to earth from space. They are inscribed by their socio-cultural-historical patterns of living. And for all of us in modern society, those patterns are disciplinary. Or what Weber (1905, p. xvi) termed an iron cage of rational calculation, control and efficiency trapping bodies in a “polar night

Moving Afresh 113 of icy darkness”. “Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons?” Foucault asked (1995, pp. 227–228) when outlining the disciplinary framework stamped on modern prisons, to so beautifully transform the “evil-doer” into [disciplined] “show-up-shut-up-maximal-worker”. Uncompromising, austere, and fixed yet also unseen, subtle, and microscopic times, spaces, and movements gripping bodies to their iron girders, like spiders grip to their webs. Meaning that understanding “what” [knowledge] is inserted into discipline’s framework [practice] is critical, because once in, the “what” [knowledge] is trapped, it does not get out, and it does not change. Normalizing judgement, just one of many disciplinary powers, working to fill the spaces “formal laws left empty” (Foucault, 1995) to normalize specific social values. “What” [knowledge], then, is in the discipline of the body? Given discipline’s need to produce “show-up-shut-up-maximal-workers” who produce, and profit, as much as possible, the ability to apply maximum effort without question is paramount. And for those tasks only the strong thrive. In other words, strength, physiologically defined as the ability to apply maximum force, coalesces with capitalism. The body as machine, articulated in science only after it had been articulated in relation to capitalist production. Science and capitalism. Positivism and discipline. Knowledge and practice. Each grappling like prize fighters forcing each other to produce truth, observed Deleuze (1988). Or, as I have expressed in a previous study (Mills et al., 2020), the body as maximum-working, strength-based, scientifically compartmentalized, and systematically structured. Back to My Narrative: Why Transition Not Retirement Doing better is my default, which is one reason I do not feel retired. My mum tells me I was born with a ball at my feet, and drove her to distraction carrying it with me wherever I went. Intrigued I guess, at how to make the ball do “better” things, the magnet sucking me in was the “doing better”. I honestly, until now, haven’t given it too much thought. But I do know, it was the persistent theme helping me negotiate my life’s tapestry. A sport’s tapestry. For anything I did was about doing sport better. Be that dreaming about soccer, practising no end of experimental golf shots until my hands bled, or be that in the sport I seemed to do best at, running, doing track workouts in the morning and cross-country races in the afternoon, starting at the back and then chasing down as many runners as I could with super tired legs. I just always sort of felt, that no matter the sport, it was always about finding ways to “do better”. While those explorations were fine for most sports or disciplines it was not fine for track. In track I was part of the community. I was immersed deep, knowing almost everything and everyone. I was in discipline. In the other sports I was an outsider and could always do my own thing. But in track, and I know now, I was subject to the rhythms and movements of disciplines’ powers. Normalized. Hierarchized. Examined. Constrained to specifically controlled minutely brokendown spaces, incredibly strict times, and always the same movements. Always. The only progression coming if those movements were a little quicker. I mean,

114 Joseph Mills okay, I described running a track session and then a race not long after, but the hell I copped for it. And not just from my coach. There always seemed to be a group of “normalizers” telling me off. My own punishing punishable universality, perpetual penality, constant pressure to conform by repressing and limiting my behaviours. Training partners, other coaches, other athletes in other training groups, team managers, parents of athletes, wives, girlfriends, husbands and boyfriends of athletes; anyone circulating, all getting me “back on track”. A whole micro-penality of time (lateness, absences, interruptions of tasks), of activity (inattention, negligence, lack of zeal), of behaviour (impoliteness, disobedience), of speech (idle chatter, insolence), of the body (incorrect attitudes, irregular gestures, lack of cleanliness), of sexuality (impurity, indecency). At the same time, by way of punishment, a whole series of subtle procedures was used, from light physical punishment to minor deprivations and petty humiliations (Foucault, 1995, p. 178). Normalizing judgement was why my errors – training in beach shorts, extra workouts, starting races or reps at the back – were so obvious that so many people were so intent on normalizing me. And so the point I am making, is how damn hard it is to not follow normal. Not adhering is, well, it is hard to find the words. Normal is what normal does, and normal always does. You cannot break normal. Social Theory, Science, and New Movement Practices Science is social. An inherent yet overlooked nature of science. Not only do humans not live in laboratories, it is humans working in those laboratories. A whole series of social forces, pressures, and processes surround everything humans do before they enter the laboratory, and when they leave: constructing what scientists already think, and then stopping, distorting, or promoting any knowledge, depending on the contexts, at any and every moment after the knowledge leaves. As I stated, capitalist production required the body to be a maximal working, systematically structured capitalist one, explained and made more reliable as a rational, instrumental, bio-scientific vessel. Reduction meets production. And the body has no choice but to move in up-down linear ways: bench, bicep, shoulder press. Always move somewhere else, always from A to B, to express the energy that drives it, that motivates it. Which is awfully ironic because the term “motivation” comes from the Latin, “movere”, meaning to move, and the concept “motivation” is the most researched topic in psychology and allied disciplines, yet movement is [likely] the very thing humans evolved and are therefore designed to do. Don’t move, don’t eat, don’t survive. A lot of research is conducted into finding the best ways to make humans do what they are actually already designed to do anyway. And the awful ironies continue. As all the rational, instrumental, bio-scientific research, grants, publications, promotions, conferences, dinner discussions actually produce the most sedentary, inactive, and non-moving of humans in history. In fact, the more highly developed a nation is, the more likely its people need rehabilitating services to mend broken bodies so movement can start again. Do I need to provide recent statistics? The Canadian Chiropractic Association report that in any six-month period over the

Moving Afresh 115 last few years, 50% of Canadians suffer back pain contributing to medical costs of $12 billion; by the age of 40, 50% of Canadians would have sought treatment for a mental health problem, at a cost of $79.9 billion in 2021; and in my sport, track, it is notable that records had generally stagnated until last year when shoe and track technologies changed. Meaning, since sport science [kinesiology] developed significantly in the 1980s, track and field athletes have not improved as a result of the science. Are we allowed then, to connect to Foucault, and boldly state, that the modern body, in spite of the instrumental science progressing and advancing it, is actually destroying it? Movement thus requires social theoretical analysis in conjunction with laboratory science. For example, Foucault (1981) in the essay “Order of discourse” revealed various discursive processes of power shaping, filtering, producing but also distorting knowledge to retain truth, “normal” or society’s dominant values and themes. Retaining truth is then important. Truth is where it [doing better] is at. Truth is where the sun rises and then sets hours later. Truth is where informal discursive procedures such as taboo, distinctions between the mad and the sane, and classifications of true and false hide, waiting to exclude any practice or value not seamlessly fitting with truth. In addition, Foucault (1981) elaborated internal procedures in the exclusionary aspects of discourse. Commentary refers to the fact that the commentator [person speaking or writing] uses words unintended by the author. That is, the commentator, paradoxically, uses words he/she believes the author said, not those words the author actually said. And the commentator’s version of the author’s words more likely corresponds to truth. “The commentator must say for the first time what had, nonetheless, already been said, and must tirelessly repeat what had, however, never been said” (Foucault, 1981, p. 58). Author was the grouping of all texts written by a particular author, so readers assume similar things are being said. As they also do because of the boundaries established by the particular discipline the text is written in. The new practice is already known by the frames and expectations of whatever discipline that new practice is articulated in. Only the statements that are held to be true, or that fit with other [normal] statements authorized by that discipline, will be circulated (Mills, 2003). “One would only be in the true, however, if one obeyed the rules of some discursive policy that would have to be, reactivated every time one spoke” (Foucault, 1972, p. 224). Taken together, the new movement practices I experienced were not then new. They were already known: normal. Known by however they had been experienced, and also known through power’s relations, rhythms, and waves. Which is why I am not giving them a name, just describing what they do. And of course, when this knowledge is carried out in discipline, practical instruments such as normalizing judgement’s subtle, petty humiliations, and the examination mixed with hierarchical observations always reinforcing the “rightness” in truth and normal, dilute any new movements back to some version of “maximum-working, strength-based movements”. Knowledge is thus re-shaped or strategically elaborated back to the dominant social value. A new practice seen, and then practised through the values of the old, not their “newness”. Which is why, after two years as unwitting novice to experienced participant, and then an 18-month licencing education programme

116 Joseph Mills in those new movement practices, I was so taken aback when the numerous athletes and coaches I approached were so confident that they already knew and already did that. Movement is “maximal strength work”, no matter how new the movements. Well Joe, Wendy could already stick her legs in the air, so well, we left, it was boring; yeh Joe, I can stand on a swiss ball so I’m pretty stable; I know the extension plane is important, that’s why I make my athletes do backstroke swimming too. Huh! Except and as I am about to explain, “maximal strength work” is almost the diametric, polar, binary opposite – the anti-Christ even – for the new movement practices that had such transformative effects on me. Which is why I want to develop what social analyses can do. My analysis is not just focused on what social forces do to science, the analysis has to develop what science is not able to do for itself. Science maybe social but it is rarely articulated that way. And so, when a robust scientific claim is made, science is not able to explain what that claim means. That – explaining what is meant in any longer standing way – is not science’s job. Science produces claims and rarely explains or translates them. Science states. End. “Truth” or “normal” does the rest, which means the scientist has to hope the claim will be accepted by whatever normal is, because if it isn’t, it gets rejected. And so, when science states a claim, we wonder what those claims might mean for practice, but do not know because we are not scientists. Does anyone know? Do the scientists making the claims even know? Do they follow through and wonder what the extended consequences of the scientific claim might be? Exactly as Foucault (in Dreyfus & Rabinow, 1983, p. 87) stated: “People know what they do; frequently they know why they do what they do; but what they don’t know is what they do does”. And that includes scientists. Science and new movement practices. Errors, or the potential for uncovering errors in science’s truth claims, are built into quality science. Good scientists know that. That said, there are three scientific theories of the body intuitively robust enough to be relied upon that in my movement and academic experiences I came to understand remain hidden, presumably in science’s chaotic brickyard but that have enormous consequences for new movement practices. The first is the theory of muscle balancing. It is not a new theory but has been evidenced over the last 50 years of texts involving muscle testing and function research (e.g., Hodges & Richardson, 1996; Janda, 1983; Kendall et al., 2005; Morris, 1995; Richardson et al., 1999; Sahrmann, 1987). In brief, muscles are theorized to work in teams. Agonist muscles produce movement, which means another muscle, an antagonist needs to “pay out” or lengthen to allow that movement. Synergist muscles purify the movement, refining and adding correct alignment, while stabilizing muscles that lie deeper in the body ensure the agonist works from a stable base. For each movement there is an ideal combination of recruitment, or sound recruitment pattern, which usually involves the stabilizing muscles firing first, to allow the most efficient movements to take place. But if one muscle in these complex teams does not function correctly,

Moving Afresh 117 other muscles have to do more work for the now less efficient and effective movement to occur: a faulty motor recruitment/movement pattern has been established. Critically, the second scientific theory explains why muscles are unable to function in their designed ways. Mis-use, or not doing what the body was designed to do – which as hunter-gatherers we can infer meant a lot more moving than modern humans – atrophies stabilizing muscles that ensure agonist/antagonist/synergist muscles work from stable bases (e.g., Hodges & Richardson 1996; Janda, 1983; Kendall et al., 2005; Morris, 1995; Richardson et al., 1999; Sahrmann, 1987). Hippocrates, the Ancient Greek physician generally recognized as the founder of Western medicine and the Hippocratic oath medical doctors take today, iconically stated: “that which is used develops, that which is not used wastes away”. Sedentary living patterns atrophy stabilizing muscles, thereby establishing not one, but a myriad of faulty motor recruitment patterns. Yet the third scientific theory is the most important for my argument. The concept of relative flexibility states that a body’s movement occurs along a path of least resistance (Clark, Lucett, & Sutton, 2012). In other words, the body moves using a faulty motor recruitment pattern but does not indicate the inefficiency in the pattern. Faulty recruitment motor patterns mean dysfunction and therefore, overworking or excessive effort in movement. Over time, continual underworking in the stabilizing muscles and overworking in the agonist muscles change length in those agonist muscles because they are doing more than they should. As a result of altered muscle lengths, changes occur in the structural positions of the joints and bones (misalignment). For example, if muscles shorten in length they pull joints onto each other producing wear and tear. Yet because of relative flexibility – moving via paths of least resistance – the body never knows of any of the occurring faults: inefficient motor recruitment patterns, altered muscle lengths, and subsequent compromised structural positions. Given the resulting bewildering complexities of inefficient muscle activations, muscle lengths, structural positions, and restricted joints, turning inefficient movement patterns to efficient ones requires the body to find correct structural position/ muscle length first, then activate the stabilizing followed by agonist/antagonist/ synergist muscle teams, as well as deactivating the overworking agonist/antagonist/synergists. Otherwise the body reinforces inefficient patterns of such a kind that the inefficiency simply spreads elsewhere. In other words, efficient movement is indelibly tied to perfect posture [structure]. “Posture follows movement like a shadow” (Janda, 1983, p. 89). The body then, as my experience at the beginning of the chapter described, can be asked to move into a perfect postural position, such as “feet hip width and parallel”, and it will get nowhere close because: where the body thinks it is, is not where it is. What the body thinks it looks like, is not what it looks like. What the body thinks it is doing, is not what it is doing. The body feels upright, like the Empire State Building, but is far closer to the Leaning Tower of Pisa. And it never knows.

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Try it. Try it now. The position will “feel” right to the body doing the feeling, but is highly unlikely to be. And I can prove it. I can prove it simply, and I do not even need a sophisticated $10,000 VALD Force-plate machine to do so, because you just need to look at and compare the body’s position to the perfect symmetrical postural standards. For example, from side-on, a plumbline running through the centre of the ear, shoulders, spine’s curves, hips, just behind the knee, and just in front of the ankle: as much of the body either side of the plumbline. Or from face on, level lines across the ankles, knees, hips, and shoulders. Pelvis, spine, and scapular all in neutral, feet pointed straight forward, palms of hands facing the thigh’s sides. Or I can prove it by asking you to sit or stand as tall as possible. If you rise, your body is not where you thought because you should have already been at your lengthened postural maximum height to begin. And it is only when the differences between where the body thought it was and actually is, are pointed out that the body becomes aware, usually to great shock. The modern body, by virtue of the knowledge it has no choice to be subjected to and also the environment it has no choice to live in, is to varying degrees being destroyed and life made harder as a result. But no one can feel it, until of course the pain is overwhelming and it is too late. The body’s baseline has moved but few scientists account for it, and so we have the slightly absurd reality of professional high-performing sports teams spending millions of dollars on the best instrumental science and technology to improve the body yet not seeing the obvious: the professional athlete’s body being nowhere close to the [perfect postural plumbline] state – lengthened symmetries – of optimal health and performance, or doing anything to get closer to it. Endless consequences. As a result of relative flexibility, an unknown inefficiency is deeply ingrained into the body’s motor recruitment patterns. The body feels efficient movement as inefficient, and it also feels inefficient movement as efficient. Which of course, also means the body feels effective movement as ineffective and ineffective movement as effective. The body actively resists efficienteffective movement and fully embraces inefficient-ineffective movement. And every time it moves without addressing sound motor recruitment patterns, the unknown inefficiencies are imprinted, reinforced, and ingrained deeper, making movement far harder than needs be. Recruitment, alignment (postural position), and movement all off, and moving further, and further, and further, and further away. Which, for an athlete intent on the highest possible performance, a coach intent on helping the athlete reach that height, and a sport scientist intent on the best explanations, are problems with no end of consequences. Consider a high-performing golfer. Millimetres determine success from failure, and often these millimetres are expressed in alignment. If a golfer is 300 yards or 6 feet away from her target, lining up to the ball and setting that ball on a path – she thinks is correct, but is not correct because she does not know her body is in a different position to the one she feels – even one millimetre out of line, is setting that ball on a path nowhere close. Golfers spend hours working on their alignment with all kinds of technical gadgets helping them, and they even call this training

Moving Afresh 119 “fundamental”, but are never taught the pre-fundamental: your modern disembodied body is not where you think. Consider a gymnast learning a technical skill. As with the golfer, millimetres determine success from failure, and a vast amount of coaching time is spent not just telling the gymnast what to do, and where to be, but also asking for feedback as to how the execution of the skills felt. But if neither the coach or gymnast knows the gymnast feels something that looks different to what the coach sees, they are talking across purposes. And while the critic may wonder to what degree the differences between what is seen and felt matter, let us remember, in gymnastics or any sport, it is millimetres determining success from failure. In fact, sports logic is achieving the highest possible standards, not “near-misses” or “close-enoughs”. Consider the motor skills scientist who studies proprioception [the perception, conscious or not, of the position of different parts of the body]. Assumed in these studies is the functioning of a normal baseline body. A body with no compromises, not a dysfunctioning body with no end of compromises, dysfunctions, and compensatory processes, which to varying degrees of course, all modern bodies are. And so, what knowledge is transferred when those studies turn to education and then practice. “What” makes up the differences? Consider the soccer player needing more strength. Squatting, Olympic lifting, bicep curling, and chest pressing without putting her body into the correct postural position or muscle recruitment patterns. To some degree her increases in strength overcome her movement inefficiencies. But at some point, the inefficiencies build enough to restrict movement, increase wear, likely cause injury, but most importantly of all simply reinforce or concrete in inefficiencies throughout her body. Consider the marathon runner. The runner needing every single possible drop of oxygen to get to the line a little faster, who feels confident he is running as fast as his physiological capacities allow, and does not feel the immense inefficiencies in his movements. Such as an excessive kyphotic thoracic spinal curve (round-back) ironically compressing his inner [physiological] organs – the heart and lungs so critical to pumping energy-inducing oxygen around the body, or the concept all endurance running coaches base their training one – and as a result is completely unaware how much time and effort those inefficiencies are costing him: like running every inch of his marathon uphill. Consider any sports scientist, coach, or new movement practitioner. Lastly, consider the experts – yoga, core, Pilates – who sets programmes or teaches exercises aiming to produce better movement but whose education does not include these scientific theories and their effects on the body. Undoubtedly some movement benefits occur, for example yoga practitioners lengthening athletes’ shortened muscles or strength coaches increasing athletes’ ability to produce force. But judiciously prescribing movement instructions [what to do] overlooks the nuances, subtleties, and specificities in movements [how to do] – correct postural positions, muscle lengths, and sound motor recruitment patterns throughout movement needed to avoid ingraining inefficiencies. Atrophying stabilizing muscles do not magically “come on”, they have to be consciously recruited. And in not feeling, and then being aware of postural and movement discrepancies in themselves, those

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practitioners likely entrench further the movement inefficiencies in others. All of which occurs in the name of better movement. Re-programming sound recruitment patterns, because of relative flexibility, requires tremendous care. That is, guidance, awareness, gentle stabilizing muscle recruitments, absolute precision, and most importantly of all, another set of eyes. None of which occurs when [normal] maximal strength work is the body’s focus. Yet, this nuanced care and complexity in movement does not mean every move has to be so precise. There is no magic number of sound recruitment moves one can make. The more one does, the better one gets. As long as a few movements a day or several a week are sound [precise], the body re-programmes efficient movement slowly transferring into every movement. Normal/truth does not have to be broken then, it has to be added to, collaborated with, and done in conjunction with maximal strength work. But when re-programming efficient movement is the aim, no residue from normal/truth can remain. Final Thoughts There are many other layers of social analytical complexities in movement that I have been unable to touch on: highlighting how new movements are not replacing typical values of strength or becoming a new dominant “right” way, but complementary additions to typical values and broader practices offering more choices; sifting out sports’ dominant social values of strength and maximal effort in the body’s conditioning; highlighting how seemingly opposing values such as gentle, aware, thought, embracing awkward, minimal efforts are fundamental to new movements; making foundations in thought and practice the site of intervention and showing why it is important to do so; using social theoretical analysis to reveal broader issues such as inscribed living patterns for natural scientists to consider; educating coaches to see, value, and adopt postural plumblines as a baseline standard for movement; reconciling how as a post-structural scholar I can recommend a baseline (I can, I need more words to do it); and rafts of positivist natural science and post-structural social science research that collectively broaden conceptions, education, and practice of new movements. But I am at the end. Data escapes language, and I had a restricted language, both in word count but also words chosen. I did the best I could. Data hovering around the words on the page is lost (St. Pierre, 1995). But so too is data hovering around movement. And just as data escapes language, so too does data escape movement. I can, then, not articulate what I want. I cannot articulate what new movement practices feels like. But in articulating relative flexibility and the theory’s consequences for the body, among just some of the multiple, layered, and varied complexities central to new movement practices, I hope at the very least I have, in Denison’s (2016) spirit, moved you to act. Moved you to check in with where your body is if you ever pass a reflection in a big window, computer screen, or mirror, and return it to an efficient postural position. Moved you to gently activate the stabilizing muscles and deactivate the overworking agonists/antagonists/synergists to return

Moving Afresh 121 that position. Moved you to always check. There is, then, much work to be done. For me and you. Onward. References Andrews, D. L. (2008). Kinesiology’s inconvenient truth and the physical cultural studies imperative. Quest, 60, 46–63. Bush, A., Silk, M., Andrews, D., & Lauder, H. (2016). Sports coaching research: Context, consequences, and consciousness. Routledge. Caulley, D. N. (2008). Making qualitative research reports less boring. Qualitative Inquiry, 14(3), 424–449. Clark, M. A., Lucett, S. C., & Sutton, B. (2012). NASM essentials of personal fitness training (4th ed.). Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. Deleuze, G. (1988). Foucault. Athlone Press. Denison, J. (2016). Social theory and narrative research: A point of view. Sport, Education and Society, 21(1), 7–10. https://doi.org/10.1080/13573322.2015.1076385 Dreyfus, H. L., & Rabinow, P. (Eds.) Michel Foucault: Beyond structuralism and hermeneutics (2nd ed.). University of Chicago Press. Forscher, B. (1963). Chaos in the brickyard. Science, 142, 3590, 339. https://doi.org/10 .1126/science.142.3590.339.a Foucault, M. (1972). The archaeology of knowledge. Vintage. Foucault, M. (1977). Nietzsche, genealogy, history. In D. F. Bouchard (Ed.), Language, counter memory, practice selected essays and interviews by Michel Foucault (pp. 139– 164). Cornell University Press. Foucault, M. (1978). The history of sexuality, volume 1: An introduction. Vintage. Foucault, M. (1981). The order of discourse. In R. Young (Ed.), Untying the text: A poststructural anthology. Routledge & Kegan Paul. Foucault, M. (1995). Discipline and punish (2nd ed.). Vintage. Hodges, P. W., & Richardson, C. A. (1996). Inefficient muscular stabilization of the lumbar spine associated with low back pain. A motor control evaluation of transversus abdominus. Spine, 21(22), 2640–50. https://doi.org/10.1097/00007632-199611150-00014. Janda, V. (1983). On the concept of postural muscles and posture in man. Australian Journal of Physiotherapy, 29(3), 83–84. Kendall, F. P., McCreary, E. K., Provance, P. G., Rodgers, M., & Romani, W. (2005). Muscles: Testing and function with posture and pain (5th ed.). Lippincott, Williams & Wilkins. Mills, J., Denison, J., & Gearity, B. (2020). Breaking coaching’s rules: Transforming the body, sport and performance. Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 44(3). https://doi.org/10 .1177/0193723520903228 Mills, S. (2003). Michel Foucault. Routledge. Morris, C. M. (1995). Spinal stabilisation: 4. Muscle imbalance and the low back. Physiotherapy, 81(3), 127–138. Richardson, C. A., & Jull, G. A., Hodges, P. W., & Hides, J. A. (1999). Therapeutic exercise for spinal segmental stabilization in low back pain: Scientific basis and clinical approach. Churchill Livingstone. Richardson, L., & St. Pierre, E. A. (2005). Writing: A method of inquiry. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), The Sage handbook of qualitative research (pp. 959–978). Sage Publications Ltd.

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Sahrmann, S. A. (1987). Posture and muscle imbalance: Faulty lumbar-pelvic alignment and associated musculoskeletal pain syndromes. Postgraduate Advances in Physical Therapy, 67, 127–138. St. Pierre, E. A. (1995). Arts of existence: The construction of subjectivity in older, white southern women. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, The Ohio State University, Columbus. Theberge, N. (2007). It’s not about health: It’s about performance. In J. Hargreaves & P. Vertinsky (Eds.), Physical culture, power and the body (pp. 176–195). Routledge. Weber, M. (1905). The protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism. Penguin.

Conclusion Zoë Avner, Luke Jones, and Jim Denison

As editors, we have long recognised the benefits of socio-cultural analyses of sport which marry sensitive narrative writing with social theory (Denison & Markula, 2003; Denison, 2016). Indeed, this approach has proven particularly helpful in our own examinations of a range of aspects related to the sports retirement experience (Jones & Denison, 2019; Jones et al., 2022). Given our enthusiasm for this approach, we were intrigued by how our invited contributors, also social theorists of sport with backgrounds in high-performance sport, would respond to the challenge and invitation to combine narrative writing with theoretical analysis to provide novel insights into the sport retirement phenomenon and post-high-performance sporting lives in particular. We were not disappointed. In this volume, those uniquely qualified to do so have used a progressive and accessible means of representation to provide a sensitive, enjoyable, and expressive account of some of the more opaque, complex, and paradoxical aspects of the high-performance-sports’ retirement experience, particularly as it relates to their ongoing involvement in a range of movement practices. Thanks to the efforts of our contributors, this volume illuminates the previously underexplored and intricate relationship between exercise, movement, and well-being in retirement and a range of social factors experienced both during and after high-performance athletic careers – a link that has, with some exceptions (Jones & Denison, 2017; Jones et al., 2022), seldom been examined in any kind of depth. As such, we feel the compilation of this volume has been an important and novel exercise helping to shed light on previously undertheorised aspects of retirement in engaging, interesting, and previously unarticulated ways. Specifically, this volume is the first of its kind to bring together sociologically informed accounts of the complex experiences and implications of retirement for the post-sporting lives of former high-performance sportspeople. In doing so, it has highlighted the affordances of socio-cultural analyses when examining the multiple and varied complexities of the sports retirement experience. We are confident that the agility and breadth of social theory (as displayed throughout our chapters) indicates how crucial a socio-cultural approach is to the exposition of the sports retirement experience. Precisely, our chapters have shown how former sportspeople versed or familiar with social theory have been able to move forward with their engagement with physical activity in ways that are arguably healthier, more sustainable, and more rewarding. Our contributors’ grasp of social theory, when DOI: 10.4324/9781003276531-11

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married with their courage in writing their stories, has demonstrated the potential of this combination to facilitate a more critical and aware engagement with the necessary discernment that this particular life experience seems to universally demand. Chapter Takeaways Taken together the chapters provided in this project suggest, despite popular wisdom, that high-performance sport might not be the ideal environment or training ground for becoming a healthy moving body later in life as it is so often perceived. Our contributors’ chapters, in their own way, all make that point, and, thanks to each author’s willingness and bravery to embrace narrative writing and social theory, each demonstrates how they (as former high-performance athletes) have identified and reimagined the ways that they perceive themselves, their bodies, and what health and physical activity and movement mean to them in their post-sport moment. In line with previous research (Jones et al., 2022), our contributors’ chapters also show that the process of problematising the disciplinary legacy of high-performance sport and reimagining what movement, exercise, and well-being can be is anything but linear and straightforward. As Douglas commented, ‘as if I could disentangle six decades of experience, desire, wonder, and interconnection’. Indeed many of our contributors discussed how they continue to wrestle, arguably with various degrees and intensities, with the legacy of having ‘lived in high-performance sport’. This legacy manifested in different ways. For some it manifested in an inability to breakaway or let go of dominant cultural ideologies experienced within their respective high-performance sporting contexts. For example, McMahon continued to pursue ‘slim to win’ long after her high-performance swimming career was over and despite significant implications for her long-term health and well-being. Toner has continued to think and experience his body and movement exclusively in objective terms – a pattern of thought that has followed him throughout his life. Even now he rarely moves ‘without wondering what is wrong with his body’ leading to a ‘fixation with improving’ his movement efficiency to the eventual detriment of his physical health. Butryn experimented with a number of different movement practices and substances all the while struggling to accept his ageing body and secure a sense of self. As he put it, this process could best be characterised as a succession of ‘disordered behaviors’ and an elusive pursuit which involved ‘near constant pain and emotional turmoil’. Similarly, Kuklick’s initial transition into coaching saw him continue to uncritically reproduce many of the dominant cultural norms around ‘hard work’, ‘discipline’, and ‘playing through pain’ that he had been continuously exposed to during his own professional baseball career. For others, this undertaking exposed how deeply connected experiences of exercise remain to the social networks they occupy, as Stamp identified when he noticed ‘the clear discord between my respective relationships with exercise and physical activity and the roles played by significant others’. As these legacy narratives

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show, the pressure to conform and continue to embody and ‘live by’ dominant performance norms, narratives, and discourses is immense. In her chapter, Douglas refers to this as a form of ‘narrative entrapment’, that is ‘when the story about what a person can be, is so narrowly defined, it commits symbolic violence’. The ‘undoing’ of dominant high-performance sport cultural norms, discourses, and ideologies is therefore best understood as an ongoing process which requires constant vigilance and attentiveness. For Howe, the legacy of his leaving performance sport felt akin to the ‘loss of an invisible shield’ – a shield that had, during his career, somewhat mitigated the stigma he experienced as someone living with cerebral palsy. The exercise he does now is shaped to a ‘far greater degree’ by what he calls his ‘imperfect body’. Losing the shield of performance running meant that the ‘simple jog into the sunset’ he anticipated of his retirement from high-performance running became, instead, a complex ‘conundrum’ replete with tensions regarding the changing weight of his physical body and his distaste with the commodification of the running industry. However, the chapters in this volume also go beyond showing the legacy of high-performance sport for our contributors’ current movement, exercise, and well-being practices; they also illustrate the pivotal role that various social theoretical perspectives played in supporting their problematisation of this legacy and for subsequently reimagining what healthy, rewarding, and sustainable movement and exercise might be. For Stamp it was being exposed to Crossley’s (2011) and Burkitt’s (1999, 2014a, b) relational theorising which allowed him to start to question how exercise and physical activity had ‘become lost in a culture of expectation and judgement’. This process subsequently allowed him to embrace an arguably more accurate and helpful understanding of his relationship to exercise and physical activity, no longer as individual but rather as relational and networked. Moreover, interactionist theorising allowed Stamp to better appreciate how his physical activity and exercise were intimately tied with his relational health and well-being. For Douglas, it was her encounter with narrative theory that illuminated the importance of developing ‘counter-narratives’ to resist and undermine the power of dominant narratives. Specifically, Douglas used and continues to use narrative theory to confront totalitarian narratives ‘head on in the world’ and to disrupt narrow understandings of performance, ageing, and female participation in sport. These days she ‘doesn’t run to be good’ but rather, sensitised to the affordances of counter-stories, runs new stories all the time. For Howe, in retirement his training as a runner and as a social anthropologist collides and his ‘3 musketeers of Bourdieu, Merleau-Ponty and Foucault’ help him to make sense of his days gone by and those to come. Now, when he exercises his knowledge of social theory it has helped him to ‘pick and choose what habits to maintain, and which to put out to pasture’. For Gerdin, Kuklick, and Mills it was their engagement with Foucauldian theory and Foucault’s concepts of problematisation and ethical care of the self as a practice of freedom in particular which enabled them to start to question the disciplinary legacy of high-performance sport and, as a result of this questioning, led them to form new, arguably healthier and more sustainable movement and exercise practices informed by a different post-structural logic. These new movement

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practices included seeking ‘heterotopic’ spaces (Foucault, 1967) away from the disciplinary technologies and discourses of performance, competition, and winning while ‘tramping’ and snowboarding for Gerdin; releasing the ‘vice grip’ of hard work and toughness through new creative spatial and temporal exercise and movement practices for Kuklick; and problematising sport’s conventional wisdoms and bio-scientific instrumental rationalities through movement practices emphasising seemingly opposing values such as ‘gentle, aware, thought, embracing awkward, and minimal efforts’ for Mills. While we have previously argued that the disciplinary legacy of high-performance sport (Denison et al., 2017) may be a significant obstacle for ‘developing alternative meanings for exercise’ (Jones & Denison, 2019, p. 841) post-high-performance sport, our authors’ contributions demonstrate that social theory can, at the very least, provide a helpful heuristic towards forming new relationships to the self, the body, exercise and movement in the post-sport moment – relationships and practices that are arguably healthier, more sustainable, and rewarding. Despite the theoretical breadth and depth of the chapters presented in this volume we believe that we have only scratched the surface of the importance and relevance of social theory for illuminating previously under-examined and undertheorised aspects of the sports retirement experience. Moreover, we firmly believe that social theory, perhaps more so than sport psychology, has much to offer in terms of providing retired athletes with a suite of conceptual tools to critically make sense of their athletic experiences and move forward with their engagement in sport and physical activity in new, arguably more positive ways. This is because social theory, unlike sport psychology, also challenges sport’s norms, truth games, and established traditions and practices. As such, it offers important tools ‘to push back’ against sport’s dominant cultural norms, discourses, and ideologies and explore alternative modes of being and practising sport and physical activity. Accordingly, we feel that this volume has exemplified the affordances of thinking about the residual effects of occupying high-performance sport spaces with social theory. Indeed, the diverse tools, frameworks, and perspectives appropriated herein have shown that social theory can allow for the ongoing consideration of effects, ethics, and relations so that new more effective practices have the possibility, the oxygen and flexibility, to emerge. So what are the next steps? We hope that in reading this volume the reader is provoked by the affordances of social theory when searching to better understand the numerous complex experiences associated with movement away from high-performance sport. We believe that seeing these new affordances will provide retirement scholars with a broadening means of analysis with which to examine and appreciate with greater depth that retirement experiences remain deeply connected to the relations of power that typified athletes’ career experiences (Jones et al., 2022). What is more, we encourage scholars intimate with the problematic workings of the modernist formations of high-performance sports arrangements to tell new stories, and importantly, do so in ways that embrace alternative lenses mined from the rich ground of socio-cultural theorisation. In doing so, we are confident that new and different ways of moving and knowing about exercise in

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retirement from sport will surface and contest the oftentimes problematic exercise narratives of our times. References Burkitt, I. (1999). Bodies of Thought: Embodiment, Identity and Modernity. Sage. Burkitt, I. (2014a). Social Selves: Theories of Self and Society. 2nd ed. Sage. Burkitt, I.( 2014b). Emotions and Social Relations. Sage. Crossley, N. (2011). Towards Relational Sociology. Routledge. Denison, J. (2016). Social theory and narrative research: A point of view. Sport, Education and Society, 21, 7–10. Denison, J., & Markula, P. (2003). Moving Writing: Crafting Movement in Sport Research. Lang. Denison, J., Mills, J. P., & Konoval, T. (2017). Sports’ disciplinary legacy and the challenge of ‘coaching differently’. Sport, Education and Society, 22(6), 772–783. Foucault, M. (1967). Of other spaces. Diacritics, 16(1986), 22–27. Jones, L., & Denison, J. (2017). Challenge and relief: A Foucauldian disciplinary analysis of retirement from professional association football in the United Kingdom. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 52(8), 924–939. Jones, L., & Denison, J. (2019). Jogging not running: A narrative approach to exploring ‘exercise as leisure’ after a life in elite football. Leisure Studies, 38(6), 831–844. Jones, L., Avner, Z., & Denison, J. (2022). ‘After the dust settles’: Foucauldian narratives of retired athletes’ ‘re-orientation’ to exercise. Frontiers in Sport and Active Living, 267. doi.org/10.3389/fspor.2022.901308

Index

Note: Page numbers followed by “n” refer to notes. Abbey, E. 87 acts of resistance 65–66 aesthetics of existence 22–26, 29, 30 ageing 93–95 Aggerholm, K. 39 agonist muscles produce movement 116 alcohol consumption 79–80, 87 Allen-Collinson, J. 85 Amoroso, J. 60 anabolic steroids 89 Ancient Greeks’ emphasis 22, 24 Andrews, D. L. 111 anxiety 7, 23, 72, 78, 79 Aromaa, J. 43 athlete-centred approach 25 Australia 21 Australian Football League (AFL) 22 Australian swimming culture 77, 82 autoethnographic approach 45–46 autophenomenography 46 Avner, Z. 25

Brave New World (Huxley) 87 Bridel, W. 92 Burkitt, I. 99–101, 103, 106, 107, 125

Bailey, B. 90 Bale, J. 50, 91 Barthes, R. 26 baseball 60, 62, 63, 67, 124 Biggs, S. 94–95 Biles, S. 22 bio-power 51–53 bodily knowledge 43 BodyPump 40 The Body Silent (Murphy) 45 body surveillance, process of 78 Bohl, M. 73 Bordo, S. 77 Borg, B. 21, 26 Bourdieu, P. 49, 53, 125; practice theory of 48

Daily Express (newspaper) 11 Deleuze, G. 26, 113 Denison, J. 1, 25, 85, 95, 109, 111, 120 Denzin, N. K. 21, 31, 38 depression 2, 7, 21, 24, 66, 72 depressive disorders 23 direct self-injury 79; see also specific self-injury disciplinary power 23–26 disciplinary technologies 23, 27–31, 52, 126 Douglas, K. 8, 124, 125; golf practice of 14; narratives in sport 9–13; swell of 14–16 Dow, J. M. 39 Duromine 76–77, 79, 82n1

Canadian Chiropractic Association 114–115 Carless, D. 7, 10 Caulley, D. N. 109, 110 cerebral palsy 45, 51, 125 chronic pain 2 coaching practices 24, 25, 35, 37, 40–42 Coakley, J. 22 corporeal schema 49, 53 “counter” narratives 11 Covid pandemic 90, 92 Crocket, H. 25 Crossley, N. 49, 99, 100, 102, 103, 106, 107, 125 Csikszentmihalyi, M. 92 ‘cumulative’ epiphanic moment 21, 28

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Easy Rider (drama) 87 eating disorders (ED) 23, 72, 79 Edberg, S. 21, 26 Eichberg, H. 91, 93, 94 elite sport: disciplinary power of 21, 22; ethics of 21; technologies of 21 embodiment, concept of 47–48, 100, 101 ‘eternal recurrence,’ process of 30 ethical self-creation: ethical substance 59; ethical work 59; telos 59 ethical substance 25, 59; of hard work 62–63; of toughness 62–63 ethical work 25, 29, 59, 63–65; as coach 65–66; as retired athlete 66 ethnography 45 exercise practices 3–4; bands 91–94; bench presses 40; forms of 40; pain 40–43; squats 40; walking in park 104–105 exercise watches 29 fatigue 2 fitness testing 24 fitness trackers see movement trackers football 14, 98–99, 102–105 Foucault, M. 2, 21, 23, 25–30, 53, 57–59, 65, 67, 111–113, 115, 116, 125; actions of refusal 64; Ancient Greeks’ emphasis 22, 24; disciplinary power 23; heterotopias/heterotopic space 27, 126; points of resistance 64; power forces 62; power relations and truth, ideas of 58, 66; problematizing 63; theory 25 Frank, A. W. 7, 9, 12, 89 Gard, M. 8 Gerdin, G. 125, 126 Germov, J. 78 Gillett, J. 90 golf 8, 10–13, 16, 18, 98, 102, 113; coaching session in 35 Grant, A. 8 Great Sport Myth 22 gym 40, 66, 76, 80–81, 90, 92–94 gymnastics 119 hardwork: acts of resistance 65–66; ethical substance of 62–63; loosening of 65–66; retired athlete coaching with 63–65; truth games of 60–62 hegemonic masculinity 88, 89 heterotopias/heterotopic space 27, 126 Heyes, C. 43 Hickey, C. 21

high-performance runner 44–46, 48–50 high-performance sport: disciplinary legacy of 124–126; mental distress during 7; opaque, complex, and paradoxical aspects of 123; participation for retired athletes 2; retirement from 1, 23; social arrangements of 3 Hippocrates 117 Hockey, J. 85 Huxley, A. 87 ‘illuminative’ epiphanic moment 21, 28 indirect self-injury 79; see also specific self-injury “intra-geographical” training methods 67 jogging see running Jones, L. 23–25, 31 Kelly, P. 21 Kimayer, L. J. 47 Kuklick, C. R. 60, 124–126 K’ung Fu-tzu 112 Kupfer, J. 42 Larsen, S. H. 39 Leder, D. 36, 41 Lynch, D. 87 Major League Baseball (MLB) 60 marathon 119 Marvel Avengers (film) 94 Mauss, M. 35 McMahon, J. 72, 81 mental health issues 2, 7, 10, 22, 68, 95, 103, 106, 107 Merleau-Ponty, M. 36, 53, 125; corporeal schema 49 Mills, J. P. 125 mode of subjection 25, 59, 64, 65 The Monkey Wrench Gang (Abbey) 87 motivation, concept of 114 movement trackers 51–53 Murphy, R. 45, 54n1 Muscular Development (magazine) 88, 89 narrative entrapment 8, 125 narrative inquiry, use of 26–30 narrative theory 8–11, 18, 125 Nelson, L. 7 neurodegenerative diseases, development of 2 new movement practices 116–118

Index New Zealand 21, 27 Nietzsche, F. 30 non-suicidal self-injurious behaviour 79 Olympics 22, 47, 73 Orlick, T. 9 Osaka, N. 22 pain 40–42; retired athlete coaching with 63–65 Palmer, V. J. 92 Paralympic Games 44, 50 Parviainen, J. 43 personal stories 9; see also storytelling process phenomenological analysis 35–38 Phoenix, C. 93–95 prestigious imitation 35 Pringle, R. 25, 30 prohormones 88 psychological distress 23 psychologist’s couch 71–72 Ravn, S. 39 relational health 99, 103, 106, 125 relational sociology 99 relative flexibility 117, 118, 120 ‘relived’ epiphanic moments 31 retired athlete coaching: guilt 63–65; hard work 63–65; pain 63–65; toughness 63–65; see also sports retirement; well-being post-retirement Richardson, C. A. 109 running: anthropologists armchair 53–54; body 88–90; high-performance 47; identity 86–88, 91–94; nature of 47; in outdoors 91–94; practices of 48; time and space 46–47 science 116–118 self-consciousness 40 self-ethnography 45–46 self-harming 7, 79 self-negotiation process 62 self practices 22–23 self presentation, process of 45 self-reflecting 45–46 self-reflexive process 22 self-remembering 45–46 self-synthesis, form of 39 self-transformation process 25, 26, 59 sexual abuse 10 Shilling, C. 50

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sleep interruption 2 slim to win ideology 72; alcohol dependent 79–80; burning calories 76; calorie restriction 76–77; cultural knowledge of 75; Duromine restriction 76–77; exercise addiction 76; food intake 78; gym 80–81; laxative addiction 76; swinging pendulum 75, 76; weight monitoring and management 74 smartwatches 52 snowboard slopes 27, 28 social theory 1, 3, 85, 87, 88, 90, 94, 95, 99, 106, 114–116 socio-cultural approach 123 Sparkes, A. C. 89 sports retirement: exercise in 3–4; issues 26; mental health issues 2; physical health issues 2; well-being in 3–4; see also retired athlete coaching; well-being post-retirement Stamp, D. 125; exercise network 102–103, 106–107; sports transitions of 99–102; walk in park 104–105; workouts 105 storytelling process 9–13 St. Pierre, E. A. 110 substance abuse 2, 72 substance misuse 79 suicide 2, 22, 25 swimming 51, 71, 73–78, 81, 82, 86, 116, 124 swinging pendulum analogy 71–72 symbolic violence 8, 12, 125 synergist muscles movement 116 telos 25, 29, 59, 65–67 tennis 21–22, 26–27 The Three Musketeers (Dumas) 53 toughness: acts of resistance 65–66; ethical substance of 62–63; loosening of 65–66; retired athlete coaching with 63–65; truth games of 60–62 tramping tracks 28, 29 transformation, process of 41 truth games: of hardworking body 60–62; problematizing 58–59; of tough 60–62 Tulle, E. 92–95 undoing of discipline 31 “variable geographic” training methods 67 Waddington, I. 88 Weber, M. 112

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weight training 40, 46, 88 well-being post-retirement 124, 125; shortand long-term health impact on 22; in sports retirement 3–4; see also retired athlete coaching; sports retirement Werthner, P. 9 Wilander, M. 21, 26

Williams, L. 78 Wimbledon 22 work of art 23–26 yoga 98, 119 Zanker, C. 8