The purpose of this study is to explore the causal relationship among athlete gratitude, athlete engagement, athlete burnout by cross-lag analysis of longitudinal associations. Two questionnaire surveys were conducted on 352 Chinese athletes with an interval of 1 year using gratitude questionnaire, athlete engagement questionnaire and athlete burnout questionnaire. The analysis yielded four main findings. The overall level of athlete gratitude and athlete engagement was high in China. Chinese athletes at (...) master level had higher levels of gratitude and athlete engagement than athletes at I and II grades. Athlete gratitude is a significant negative predictor of athlete burnout, and also a significant positive predictor of athlete engagement. Athlete engagement and athlete burnout are mutually causal and can be mutually predicted. Athlete gratitude indirectly affects athlete burnout through athlete engagement, and also indirectly affects athlete engagement through athlete burnout. The results of the current study demonstrated the important value of gratitude in the growth process of athletes, and clarified the mechanism of gratitude affecting athlete engagement and athlete burnout. These findings have important implications for athlete development by raising athlete gratitude, motivating athlete engagement levels and relieve athlete burnout. (shrink)

Time perspective theory provides a robust conceptual framework for analyzing human behavior in the context of time. So far, the concept has been studied and applied in multiple life domains, such as education, health, social relationships, environmental behavior, or financial behavior; however its explanatory potential has been completely neglected within the domain of sport. In the present paper we provide a deepened theoretical analysis of the potential role of temporal framing of human experience for sport-related attitudes, emotions, and athletic performance. (...) We propose a conceptual model in which time perspectives influence psychological functioning and performance of athletes via three major mechanisms: 1) magnitude and persistence of sport motivation and resulting athlete engagement, 2) regulation of affective states during sport performance, and 3) appraisal of one’s performance and coping with resulting emotions. We support the theoretical considerations based on the major assumptions of time perspective theory with research findings regarding the regulatory role of time perspectives in other life domains. We also highlight potential research paths that would allow us to empirically test the present model and determine the actual role of temporal perspectives in shaping crucial aspects of athletes’ psychological functioning, as well as levels of their sport performance. (shrink)

Federations are concerned about attracting new sportsmen and sportswomen and increasing the number of members. The purpose of this research was to describe karate federations' strategies for attracting and retaining members through happiness. The analysis was carried out by designing a structural equation modeling, which allowed to analyze the main variables that influenced the happiness of the karate athlete and consequently to study their effect on people's loyalty to sports federations. In particular, Partial least squares SEM was applied in (...) an overall model when it was possible to understand the happiness role in relation with other traditional relevant variables on loyalty. The data were obtained through primary sources employing a survey sent to the autonomous federations in the discipline of karate, obtaining a sample of 682 federated members in Spain. The results of the model revealed that consumer satisfaction, engagement, and meaningful influence on consumer happiness, but engagement was the most important and relevant variable for affecting this variable. Finally, consumer satisfaction and consumer happiness influence loyalty, and consumer satisfaction was the most important variable, but consumer happiness showed a real alternative for improving loyalty in karate sports federations. Then, one of the implications of this work was that it helped to explain how the federations can be managed to achieve loyal consumers together with a more considerable increase in the number of federated members. (shrink)

Few studies have examined how groups of individuals enact different patterns of gender relations within and across contexts. In this article, I draw upon nine months of fieldwork and 15 semistructured interviews conducted with eight- to 10-year-old swimmers on a co-ed youth swim team. During focused aspects of swim practice, gender was less salient and structural mechanisms encouraged athletes to interact in ways that illuminated girls’ and boys’ similar athletic abilities, undermining categorical, essentialist, and hierarchical gender beliefs pertaining to athleticism. (...) However, in the swimmers’ unfocused free time, the salience of gender was high and structural mechanisms encouraged swimmers to engage in “borderwork.” In this context, similarities between the genders were obscured and girls and boys instead interacted in ways that affirmed essentialist and categorical—but nonhierarchical—meanings of gender. By paying attention to structural mechanisms and the variable salience of gender, we can thus see the various conditions under which children deploy different patterns of gender relations, and how less oppressive gender relations can potentially “spill over” from one context to the next. (shrink)

Some studies show that athlete students are more likely to engage in health-risk behaviors with negative health consequences, while others suggest that they lead a healthier life than their non-athlete peers. Given these inconsistent results, this study aims to compare health behaviors, depression, and perceived health status between athlete and non-athlete students, and explore the associations between health behaviors and health outcomes. An online questionnaire survey including Heath Habits Scale for five health-risk behaviors and five health-promoting (...) behaviors, Patient Health Questionnaire-9, and 5-point scale for perceived health status was conducted in Beijing Sports University in March 2021. Data from 372 athlete students and 252 non-athlete students aging from 18 to 22 were included in this study. Chi-squared tests and t-tests were used to determine differences between athlete and non-athlete samples, and logistic regression analyses were conducted to examine the associations of health behaviors with depression and perceived health status. The significance level was p < 0.05. The results show that compared with non-athlete students, athlete students perform better in health habits, report lower proportion of depression and higher proportion of good health. Health behaviors, such as getting adequate sleeping, participating in vigorous physical activity, overeating, and smoking, were significantly associated with health outcomes of athlete students. The findings may contribute to the better understanding of health behaviors in athlete students and warrant continued attention on mental health and health habits in this population. (shrink)

In the Panathenaic Games, there was a torch race for teams of ephebes that started from the altars of Eros and Prometheus at Plato’s Academy and finished on the Acropolis at the altar of Athena, goddess of wisdom. It was competitive, yes, but it was also sacred, aimed at a noble goal. To win, you needed to cooperate with your teammates and keep the delicate flame alive as you ran up the hill. Likewise, Plato’s philosophy combines competition and cooperation in (...) pursuit of the goal of wisdom. On one level, agonism in Plato is explicit: he taught in a gymnasium and featured gymnastic training in his educational theory. On another level, it is mimetic: Socratic dialogue resembles intellectual wrestling. On a third level, it is metaphorical: the athlete’s struggle illustrates the struggle to be morally good. And at its highest level, it is divine: the human soul is a chariot that races toward heaven. This volume explores agonism in Plato on all of these levels, inviting the reader—as Plato does—to engage in the megas agōn of life. Once in the contest, as Plato’s Socrates says, we’re allowed no excuses. (shrink)

This study aimed to investigate the student-athletes' capability to face the academic, sport, and social challenges during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) lockdown and to disclose novel aspects of dual careers. A 32-item online survey encompassing demographic characteristics, sport and university engagement, support and dual-career benefits, physical activity, sitting time, and the time deemed necessary to recover the previous level of performance was developed. Four hundred sixty-seven student-athletes (males: 57%, females: 43%) from 11 countries, competing in 49 different sports (...) (individual: 63.4%, team: 36.6%) at regional (17.5%), national (43.3%), and international (39.2%) levels, and enrolled at high school (21.9%) and university (78.1%) levels completed the survey. During the lockdown, the respondents decreased the time dedicated to sport and academics, although they maintained an active lifestyle. Student-athletes from countries under severe contagion were more likely to train at home, dedicate to academics, and receive support from the coach but less likely receive support from their teachers. With respect to their team sport counterparts, athletes competing in individual sports trained more and were more likely to receive support from their coaches. International athletes showed the highest training time and support from their coaches and as student-athletes. High school students received more support from their coaches and teachers, whereas university students were more likely considering dual careers useful to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic. This study substantiates the relevant role of competitive sports participation in the maintenance of active lifestyles, with student-athletes considering home training and e-learning valuable resources during the lockdown. Furthermore, their sport and academic commitments helped student-athletes cope with the emergency of the COVID-19 pandemic. (shrink)

A common refrain in and outside academia is that prominent sports figures ought to engage more in the public discourse about political issues. This idea parallels the idea that athletes ought to be role models in general. This paper first examines and critiques the “athlete as role model” argument and then applies this critique to the “athlete as political activist” argument. Appealing to the empirical political psychological literature, the paper sketches an argument that athlete activism might actually (...) do more harm than good. (shrink)

In light of the World Anti Doping Agency’s 2013 Code Revision process, we critically explore the applicability of two of three criteria used to determine whether a method or substance should be considered for their Prohibited List, namely its (potential) performance enhancing effects and its (potential) risk to the health of the athlete. To do so, we compare two communities of human guinea pigs: (i) individuals who make a living out of serial participation in Phase 1 pharmacology trials; and (...) (ii) elite athletes who engage in what is effectively ‘unregulated clinical research’ by using untested prohibited or non-prohibited performance enhancing substances and methods, alone or in combination. Our comparison sheds light on norms of research ethics that these practices exacerbate with respect to the concepts of multiplicity, visibility, and consistency. We argue for the need to establish a proper governance framework to increase the accountability of these unregulated research practices in order to protect the human guinea pigs in elite sports contexts, and to establish reasonable grounds for the performance enhancing effects, and the risks to the health of the athlete, of the methods and substances that might justify their inclusion on the Prohibited List. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Philosophy may be accused of being an exclusive theoretical enterprise. Although it is concerned with the important issues of life it may appear to be a purely academic matter pursued by few educated scholars and therefore somehow detached from everyday way of being of people uneducated in philosophy. In the field of the philosophy of sport, the essential ambition is to provide relevant insights into a vast area of sport that will promote our philosophical understanding and knowledge of the (...) relevant topics. This paper offers another perspective on the role of philosophy in sport. I argue that philosophy is not just about reflecting from an academic distance, but the process of philosophizing could be situated within the sporting practices. This type of relationship between philosophy and sport is already apparent in ancient Greece where philosophers (such as Pythagoras or Socrates) liked to be engaged in physical exercises and to combine them with philosophical discussions with athletes. The article explores a practical role of philosophy in sport, namely the process of philosophical thinking and dialogue with athletes and their coaches. It offers insights into methodology, goals, benefits, and limits of using philosophy in practice. I reflect on my personal experience of being a mental coach and philosophical consultant in sport in the Czech Republic. The aim of this article is to demonstrate the relevance of using philosophy (philosophical practice) in the sporting environment. In doing so, I reflect on the nature and purpose of philosophical thinking and its possible relation to sport psychology and mental coaching. (shrink)

This paper sets out from the hypothesis that the embodied competences and expertise which characterise dance and sports activities have the potential to constructively challenge and inform phenomenological thinking. While pathological cases present experiences connected to tangible bodily deviations, the specialised movement practices of dancers and athletes present experiences which put our everyday experiences of being a moving body into perspective in a slightly different sense. These specialised experiences present factual variations of how moving, sensing and interacting can be like (...) for us as body-subjects. To use of these sources inevitably demands that qualitative research methodologies – especially short-term ethnographical fieldwork – form part of the research strategy and qualify the way the researcher involves a second-person perspective when interviewing dancers and athletes about their experiences. In the subsequent phases analysing the data generated, I argue that researchers first strive to achieve internal consistency of empirical themes identified in the case of movement practices in question thus keeping to a contextualised and lived perspective, also denoted as an emic perspective. In subsequent phases phenomenological insights are then actively engaged in the exploration and discussion of the possible transcendental structures making the described subjective experiences possible. The specialised and context-defined experiences of ‘what a moving body can be like’ are accordingly involved as factual variations to constructively add to and potentially challenge phenomenological descriptions. Lastly, I exemplify how actual research strategies have been enacted in a variety of projects involving professional dancers’, golfers’ and sports dancers’ practices and experiences, respectively. (shrink)

BackgroundFor a long time, in sports, researchers have tried to understand an expert by comparing them with novices, raising the doubts if the visual search characteristics distinguish experts from novices. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to review and conduct a meta-analysis to evaluate the differences in visual search behavior between experts and novices in team sports athletes.MethodsThis systematic review with meta-analysis followed the PRISMA 2020 and Cochrane's guidelines. Healthy team athletes were included, which engaged in regular practice, (...) from any sex or competitive level, specifically classified a priori as expert or novice in the original research. We considered only research published in peer-reviewed journals, with no limitations regarding date or language. It was considered healthy team sport athletes engaged in regular practice. The scenarios could be in situ or film-based. The databases of EBSCO, PubMed, Scopus, SPORTDiscus, and Web of Science were used to perform the searches. The risk of bias was calculated through the RoBANS tool.ResultsFrom a total of 6,257 records, of which 985 were duplicates, titles and abstracts of 5,272 were screened, and 45 required full-text analysis. Of those, 23 were excluded due to not fulfilling the eligibility criteria regarding participants. In the end, 22 studies were selected, however, as two studies were part of the same trial and were analyzed conjointly.DiscussionExperts showed to be older and with more years of practice. The ability to distinguish experts from novices was not so clear regarding the variables analyzed. This could be due to the strategies chosen in each study, which were specific to each scenario, and when grouping all together, it was lost information within non-representative averages. The distinction between experts and novices was not clear, showing a lot of heterogeneity in the included studies. The expert classification itself may have been the conditioning aspect for these results, retaining the doubt and the need for more studies in the field.Systematic review registrationThe protocol was pre-registered in OSF. (shrink)

White matter tracts are known to be susceptible to injury following concussion. The objective of this study was to determine whether contact play in sport could alter white matter metabolite levels in female varsity athletes independent of changes induced by long-term exercise. Metabolite levels were measured by single voxel proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy in the prefrontal white matter at the beginning and end of season in contact and non-contact varsity athletes. Sedentary women were scanned once, at a time equivalent to (...) the Off-Season time point. Metabolite levels in non-contact athletes did not change over a season of play, or differ from age matched sedentary women except that non-contact athletes had a slightly lower myo-inositol level. The contact athletes had lower levels of myo-inositol and glutamate, and higher levels of glutamine compared to both sedentary women and non-contact athletes. Lower levels of myo-inositol in non-contact athletes compared to sedentary women indicates long-term exercise may alter glial cell profiles in these athletes. The metabolite differences observed between contact and non-contact athletes suggest that non-contact athletes should not be used as controls in studies of concussion in high-impact sports because repetitive impacts from physical contact can alter white matter metabolite level profiles. It is imperative to use athletes engaged in the same contact sport as controls to ensure a matched metabolite profile at baseline. (shrink)

We argue the dearth of research on elite ciswomen athletes’ reproductive health is because athletics remains associated with masculinity, and female athletes therefore do not adhere to normative femininity and motherhood. In choosing a masculine career, it is assumed that elite athletes will reject other feminine activities, such as motherhood. We further argue that female athletes are considered especially ineligible for motherhood because their career choice violates normative motherhood by engaging in “risky” behavior (i.e., physical activity). By continuing with their (...) career, athletes are accused of being “bad” mothers by not adhering to the gender norm of mothers as self-sacrificing. (shrink)

In this paper, I engage in the debate on the definition of the cyborg. I identify the two defining components of the traditional definition of the cyborg: the symbiotic relationship between human nature and technology; and the embodiment of a superhuman or inhuman feature or ability. Then, I trace these two components in the scholarly debate on the cyborg. To conclude, I explore the role the scholarly view of the cyborg plays in the debate on cyborg-athletes in the philosophy of (...) sport. (shrink)

Participation in sports such as football puts youth athletes at high risk of injury. helmets cannot protect players from the possibility of traumatic brain injury, and repeated concussive injuries can lead to chronic traumatic encephalopathy later in life. in light of such facts, the morally appropriate role of physicians who treat patient-athletes comes into question. i argue that pediatricians ought to be committed to a high level of shared decision making, whereby their goal, rather than being to provide the medically (...) best advice (which, let’s be honest, would be to not play football at all), would be to provide the medically best advice in light of patients’ honestly professed plans and goals. if patient-athletes see their doctor as an ally, who wants them on the field as much as they want to be there, they will be more likely to trust their pediatrician to help in the realization of those goals, even if they report an injury. while this approach could feel like a medical betrayal, in that the physician could feel complicit in helping a patient to continue engaging in high-risk behavior, i argue that medical outcomes will be better than if patientathletes see physicians as an obstruction to their athletic goals. (shrink)

BackgroundPrevious studies suggest that engagement in any type of physical activity can be protective against mental health issues, whereas elite-level athletes can endure various mental health challenges. The aim of this study was to determine variations in the prevalence of psychological distress among elite sambo athletes and their recreational counterparts.MethodsA sample consisting of 245 athletes was chosen. Out of the total sample, 105 were elite-level athletes while 140 were recreational athletes. Participants were accessed via the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales-21 (...) to determine their stress in various domains at a given time.ResultsData indicated that all tested differences between elite sambo athletes and recreational athletes were statistically significant; recreational athletes had a higher score on the depression scale, anxiety and stress, and a general distress score than sambo athletes. Although there are no gender differences in psychological distress in the total sample of athletes, elite sambo athletes achieve significantly lower scores in all tested variants than recreational ones. Women who engage in recreational activities have stood out as a vulnerable subsample in psychological stress.ConclusionFuture epidemiological and interventional studies should explore optimal strategies to identify mental health needs based on specific sport activity, especially in terms of gender. There is a need to place special emphasis on psychological distress in the context of combat sports. (shrink)

The South Korean elite sport system is facing a wide range of problems that account for the high dropout rate among college student-athletes. However, research on dropout rates of student-athletes is so far been limited, which amplifies the actual voices of this group, their dropout experiences, and their challenges, while they were in the career transition process. Therefore, this study used a critical phenomenological approach as a primary methodological lens to gather information on 15 formal Korean male college student-athletes on (...) dropping out of team sports, exploring their life challenges during their career transitions out of the sport. The result showed two main thematic categories with sub-themes, which include factors affecting burning out and terminating athletic careers: injury and failure of rehabilitation and bullying and abandonment; and factors hindering post-retirement career advancement: prejudice and exclusion and absence of mentors and counselors. This study used Social Cognitive Career Theory to explore the participants' progression through specific interventions that engage and empower. Overall, the current study calls upon researchers, counselors, and administrators to continue exploring advocacy efforts with this population to alter policy and practice. (shrink)

On March 23rd, 2020, elite soccer academies in the UK closed in compliance with the government enforced lockdown intended to contain the COVID-19 pandemic. This forced parents, players, and coaches to reconsider how they interacted with, and supported, one another. The aims of the present study were to explore the perceptions of players, parents, and coaches regarding how they interacted and collaborated with one another during the COVID-19 pandemic to support wellbeing and performance, and; to identify opportunities to enhance workings (...) of those within the athletic triangle resulting from adaptions made following enforced lockdown. Using an interpretive description methodology, semi-structured interviews were conducted with five coaches, six players, and six parents from an English elite academy soccer club. Interviews were analyzed using thematic analysis. Findings highlighted the importance of support and the different means of communication used between members of the athletic triangle to facilitate such support; the increased understanding of each member of the athletic triangle, leading to enhanced relationships, and; how members of the athletic triangle adapted practice to facilitate relationship development during the pandemic and beyond. The identification of these considerations has implications for coach and parent education initiatives to allow for optimal functioning of the athletic triangle as elite academy soccer clubs return from lockdown. These include the importance of continued communication between coach, athlete and parent; increasing understanding of each individual within the athletic triangle; and utilizing key interpersonal and technological skills learnt during the lockdown to further facilitate engagement within the athletic triangle. (shrink)

Background and purposeJapanese elementary school children are trained in arts and crafts, music, arithmetic, the Japanese language, life environment studies, physical education, and so on. Children must learn through doing as they develop physically, because the range of activities in their daily lives is still narrow. Subject learning is inseparable from daily life. Teachers should plan lessons with an awareness of the physicality of activities. Therefore, this study clarified the relationship between the ability for skillful and quick physical movement and (...) subject learning among Japanese elementary school students.MethodsFor the second to fourth grades of elementary school, the measurement results and subject evaluation were compared at the individual level. Students were divided into a group with high grades in subject learning and one with middle and lower grades, and a t-test was conducted to observe if there was a significant difference in the records of two physical activities: repeated side jump and softball throw.Main findingsSignificant difference was found for repeated side jumps depending on whether the arts and crafts grades were high for all children in grades 2–4. Additionally, there was a significant difference in softball throwing records between the second and third graders, depending on whether the children’s performance in arts and crafts was high. Conversely, there was no significant difference between the second to fourth grade children’s musical scores and repeated side jump records. There was a negative correlation between sophomore and senior year music performances and the softball throwing record. Thus, the development of children’s dexterity is related to subject learning.ConclusionConsidering that elementary school teachers spend sufficient time with children on a daily basis teaching subjects such as physical education and music, it may be beneficial for them to be aware of dexterity’s importance across multiple subjects. Furthermore, it allows for an approach that engages children in physical activities from early childhood which can help in preparing them for learning a variety of subjects in school. (shrink)

Alan C. LoveDarwinian calisthenicsAn athlete engages in calisthenics as part of basic training and as a preliminary to more advanced or intense activity. Whether it is stretching, lunges, crunches, or push-ups, routine calisthenics provide a baseline of strength and flexibility that prevent a variety of injuries that might otherwise be incurred. Peter Bowler has spent 40 years doing Darwinian calisthenics, researching and writing on the development of evolutionary ideas with special attention to Darwin and subsequent filiations among scientists exploring (...) evolution . Therefore, we would expect that when Bowler engages in a counterfactual history—imagining a world without Darwin—he is able to avoid historical injury and generate novel insights. My assessment is that the results are mixed. Before we can see why, it is necessary to walk briskly through the main contours of his argument.Bowler begins with an apologia for a counterfactual appr .. (shrink)

Excellent performance in sport involves specialized and refined skills within very narrow applications. Choking throws a wrench in the works of finely tuned performances. Functionally, and reduced to its simplest expression, choking is severe underperformance when engaging already mastered skills. Choking is a complex phenomenon with many intersecting facets: its dysfunctions result from the multifaceted interaction of cognitive and psychological processes, neurophysiological mechanisms, and phenomenological dynamics. This article develops a phenomenological model that, complementing empirical and theoretical research, helps understand and (...) redress choking. It aims at describing the experience of choking as experience, and to discuss strategies to palliate or prevent its onset at the pragmatic level at which athletes engage the phenomenon experientially. An overview of current empirical research and theoretical models highlights key ideas and points out contentious issues. The model describes the common structure of the choking experience. It identifies four core constitutive elements: A) disruptive proprioceptive and kinesthetic dynamics, B) a malfunctioning background or Jamesian fringe of consciousness, C) dislocated time dynamics, and D) emotional disturbances. The novelty of the remedy is that it is designed to cross disciplinary boundaries between phenomenology, historiography, and hermeneutics, and moreover connects theory to praxis as it looks at Japanese dō, practices of self-cultivation. It focuses on actual do-or-die situations, not putative ones such as important business deals or competing for a medal. To this effect, it examines medieval Japanese swordsmanship and training manuals and also engages risk sports, where death is indeed a real possibility. The manuals, which arise in the context of choke-inducing life or death duels, and risk sports, afford keen phenomenological observations and practical advice that prove invaluable for today’s sports world and beyond. (shrink)

The Concussion in Sport Group guidelines have successfully brought the attention of brain injuries to the global medical and sport research communities, and has significantly impacted brain injury-related practices and rules of international sport. Despite being the global repository of state-of-the-art science, diagnostic tools and guides to clinical practice, the ensuing consensus statements remain the object of ethical and sociocultural criticism. The purpose of this paper is to bring to bear a broad range of multidisciplinary challenges to the processes and (...) products of sport-related concussion movement. We identify lacunae in scientific research and clinical guidance in relation to age, disability, gender and race. We also identify, through multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary analysis, a range of ethical problems resulting from conflicts of interest, processes of attributing expertise in sport-related concussion, unjustifiably narrow methodological control and insufficient athlete engagement in research and policy development. We argue that the sport and exercise medicine community need to augment the existing research and practice foci to understand these problems more holistically and, in turn, provide guidance and recommendations that help sport clinicians better care for brain-injured athletes. (shrink)

Excellent performance in sport involves specialized and refined skills within very narrow applications. Choking throws a wrench in the works of finely tuned performances. Functionally, and reduced to its simplest expression, choking is severe underperformance when engaging already mastered skills. Choking is a complex phenomenon with many intersecting facets: its dysfunctions result from the multifaceted interaction of cognitive and psychological processes, neurophysiological mechanisms, and phenomenological dynamics. This article develops a phenomenological model that, complementing empirical and theoretical research, helps understand and (...) redress choking. It aims at describing the experience of choking as experience, and to discuss strategies to palliate or prevent its onset at the pragmatic level at which athletes engage the phenomenon experientially. An overview of current empirical research and theoretical models highlights key ideas and points out contentious issues. The model describes the common structure of the choking experience. It identifies four core constitutive elements: A) disruptive proprioceptive and kinesthetic dynamics, B) a malfunctioning background or Jamesian fringe of consciousness, C) dislocated time dynamics, and D) emotional disturbances. The novelty of the remedy is that it is designed to cross disciplinary boundaries between phenomenology, historiography, and hermeneutics, and moreover connects theory to praxis as it looks at Japanese dō, practices of self-cultivation. It focuses on actual do-or-die situations, not putative ones such as important business deals or competing for a medal. To this effect, it examines medieval Japanese swordsmanship and training manuals and also engages risk sports, where death is indeed a real possibility. The manuals, which arise in the context of choke-inducing life or death duels, and risk sports, afford keen phenomenological observations and practical advice that prove invaluable for today’s sports world and beyond. (shrink)

As evidenced in recent literature in moral philosophy, commending actions on their propensity to develop enduring moral traits is not the province of the virtue theorist alone. For however we understand the moral goals of human beings and the nature of right action we recognize that a temperate, just or beneficent person is more likely to conform to the demands of morality than one lacking in these virtues. If this idea is used as a standard for assessing the worth of (...) activities generally and engaging in sporting activity particularly it becomes clear that the highest level of athletic engagement, that is, professional sports, is often morally problematic. The not uncommon phenomenon of athletic underperformance once a sizable, secure contract has been achieved, the expanding quantity and severity of verbal abuse directed at officials and other athletes, as well as the increasing incidence of on-field violence, raise concern that developing moral virtues is no longer a goal of professional sporting activities. This conclusion, however, is not a result of the concept of sport itself or even the idea of professional sport. Both amateur and professional sport are capable of promoting moral development in their participants by making possession of certain virtues a condition for success in that activity. So the problem lies not in the conceptual details of sporting activity but rather in the formulation or prosecution of the rules and expectations governing the sport in question. The essay argues that not only is sport capable of being a worthwhile activity but that there is a sport that in fact generally meets the conditions for being a worthwhile activity, namely professional cricket. In defending this claim it is shown that it is not an essential feature of professional cricket that garners our moral commendation but rather a complex set of contingent features: the Laws of Cricket, the enforcement of those laws and the historico-social context in which the game is set. (shrink)

The purpose of this study was to understand the perceptions of highly skilled and less skilled volleyball players about the influences that parents, coaches, and peers had on their sport development and performance achievement. Highly skilled (n= 30) and less skilled (n= 30) volleyball players participated in semi-structured retrospective interviews to explain how parents, coaches and peers may have influenced their sport participation. Data was analyzed through a process of content analysis. Results indicated that parents, coaches, and peers had an (...) important influence in player's sport development but differing according to players' expertise level. Concerning to parental influences, tangible support during the early years of development was mentioned by all players. However, parents' level of involvement and parenting styles revealed interesting differences between highly skilled and less skilled players. Highly skilled players perceived a moderate parental involvement and an autonomy-supportive parenting style, while less skilled players referred a excessive parental involvement in players' sport participation. Coaches influences showed to have some similarities in the early years with all players mentioning coaches as caring and recognizing their value as an athlete. However, highly skilled players described a different training environment characterized by a demanding coach, individualized instruction, and specific goal setting. Regarding peers' influence, all players recognized that friends were not only one of the main reasons to start playing volleyball, but also an important source of support to remain engaged and staying motivated to do sport. Highly skilled players, however, mentioned the importance of teammates' positive push and critiques during practice for enhancing their motivation, team cohesion and friendship. They also highlighted the importance of friends outside of sport in the later years of their career by acting as an escape from all the pressure that emerged from volleyball training and competition demands. Overall, these findings highlight different social influences according to the players' expertise level suggesting the need to examine more extensively the nature of significant others' support on athlete and talent development. (shrink)

Ethics is a skill set. But what skill set is it? An answer to this question would help make progress for both theory and moral agency. I argue that moral performance may best be understood on the model of athletic performance; both moral and athletic performance are rule-structured unions of efficiency and inefficiency, enabling us to engage in the wholehearted and autonomous pursuit of goals subject to constraints. By understanding how athletics demands embodied performance, we better understand moral demand and (...) wrongdoing: less moral psychology, more moral kinesiology. (shrink)

Many experienced runners consider the use of wearable devices an important element of the training process. A key techno-utopic promise of wearables lies in the use of proprietary algorithms to identify training load errors in real-time and alert users to risks of running-related injuries. Such real-time ‘knowing’ is claimed to obviate the need for athletes’ subjective judgements by telling runners how they have deviated from a desired or optimal training load or intensity. This realist-contoured perspective is, however, at odds with (...) sociological research indicating that users of wearables engage in active ‘data sense-making’ that is highly contextualised. To investigate how athletes use (or not) algorithmic analysis to understand, make sense of, and improve their performance in real-time, we undertook qualitative interviews with distance runners to explore lived experiences of running with wearables. The runners described how they actively interpreted data from wearables, drawing on their own experience, ‘somatic knowledge’, and embodied ways of knowing. This allowed them to assess the relevance and usefulness of data in relation to their own goals, intentions, and feelings. Our findings challenge the techno-utopic promises of real-time and predictive analytics. (shrink)

Athletic participation provides a unique forum for the practice of spiritual disciplines. Central to Dallas Willard’s robust theory of spiritual formation is the critical role the body plays in effectively engaging in spiritual disciplines and thereby cultivating Christlikeness. I outline the central themes of Willard’s theology and philosophy of spiritual disciplines, with particular attention to how they bear on athletic participation. I distinguish between classical and novel spiritual disciplines and show how the latter are usefully appropriated towards the ordinary activities (...) of daily life, and particularly towards the arena of athletics. Using basketball as a case study, I show in detail how this activity can be fruitfully reappropriated as a set of novel spiritual disciplines. (shrink)

I argue that athletes should neither be taken as role models nor present themselves as such. Indeed, they should resist any attempt to take them as such on the grounds that seeing athletes (or other celebrities) as role models abrogates the existential and ethical responsibilities of both parties. Whether one takes on the role of being a model to others or whether one chooses to model one’s own behaviour on that of another, except in respect of the development of technical (...) skill, one engages in bad faith and fails to act in an existentially ethical way. To this end, I consider the inclination to influence and admiration, as well as self-respect, agency, motivation, and envy. I argue that while celebrity sportspersons and similar others do not have duties that others do not have just by virtue of their notoriety alone, they may have situational responsibilities commensurate with their social reach. More importantly, however, since social influence is not a transformation of inert matter, there are also responsibilities belonging to their audiences, those who merely observe and those who choose to imitate. (shrink)

Suppose that a young athlete has just become quadriplegic. He expects to live several more decades, but out of self‐interest he autonomously chooses to engage in physician‐assisted suicide (PAS) or voluntary active euthanasia (VAE). Some of us are unsure whether he or his physician would be acting rightly in ending his life. One basis for such doubt is the notion that persons have dignity in a Kantian sense. This paper probes responses that David Velleman and Frances Kamm have suggested (...) to the question of whether participating in PAS or VAE to benefit oneself, as the young man might, respects the dignity of persons, specified in an orthodox Kantian way. Velleman claims that it does not, while Kamm insists that, in certain circumstances, it does. I argue against Kamm's position. I go on to contend that while orthodox Kantianism might provide a basis for moral concern regarding the case of the young quadriplegic, it suffers from two serious shortcomings. First, it implies that terminally ill patients are wrong to request VAE or engage in PAS to avoid intense suffering, at least when this suffering has not yet overwhelmed their reason. Second, orthodox Kantianism implies that it is wrong for physicians to withdraw such patients from life‐sustaining treatments, even if they request it. To remedy these shortcomings, I sketch an unorthodox Kantian account of respect for the dignity of persons. This account promises to capture the idea that it would be morally problematic for doctors to help the young quadriplegic to die, but to avoid the shortcomings of an orthodox Kantian account. (shrink)

There has been recent interest in the idea that speakers who appear to be having a verbal dispute may in fact be engaged in a metalinguistic negotiation: they are communicating information about how they believe an expression should be used. For example, individuals involved in a dispute about whether a racehorse is an athlete might be communicating their diverging views about how ‘athlete’ should be used. While many have argued that metalinguistic negotiation is a pervasive feature of philosophical (...) and everyday discourse, the literature currently lacks an account of this phenomenon that can be situated within a ‘mainstream’ view of communication. I propose an independently motivated account where individuals reconstruct metalinguistic propositions by means of a pragmatic, Gricean reasoning process. (shrink)

Social psychologists often describe “implicit” racial biases as entirely unconscious, and as mere associations between groups and traits, which lack intentional content, e.g., we associate “black” and “athletic” in much the same way we associate “salt” and “pepper.” However, recent empirical evidence consistently suggests that individuals are aware of their implicit biases, albeit in partial, inarticulate, or even distorted ways. Moreover, evidence suggests that implicit biases are not “dumb” semantic associations, but instead reflect our skillful, norm-sensitive, and embodied engagement (...) with social reality. This essay draws on phenomenological and hermeneutic methods and concepts to better understand what social-psychological research has begun to reveal about the conscious access individuals have to their own racial attitudes, as well as the intentional contents of the attitudes themselves. -/- First, I argue that implicit racial biases form part of the “background” of social experience. That is, while they exert a pervasive influence on our perceptions, judgments, and actions, they are frequently felt but not noticed, or noticed but misinterpreted. Second, I argue that our unreflective racial attitudes are neither mere associations nor fully articulated, propositionally structured beliefs or emotions. Their intentional contents are fundamentally indeterminate. For example, when a white person experiences a “gut feeling” of discomfort during an interaction with a black person, there is a question about the meaning or nature of that discomfort. Is it a fear of black people? Is it anxiety about appearing racist? There is, I argue, no general, determinate answer to such questions. The contents of our unreflective racial attitudes are fundamentally vague and open-ended, although I explain how they nevertheless take on particular shapes and implications—that is, their content can become determinate—depending on context, social meaning, and structural power relations. (If, for example, a perceived authority figure, such as a politician, parent, or scientist, encourages you to believe that your uncomfortable gut feeling is a justified fear of other social groups, then that is what your gut feeling is likely to become.). (shrink)

When the 2022 FIFA Men’s World Cup was awarded to Qatar, it raised a number of moral concerns, perhaps the most prominent of which was Qatar’s woeful record on human rights in the arena of migrant labour. Qatar’s interest in hosting the event is aptly characterised as a case of ‘sportswashing’. The first aim of this paper is to provide an account of the nature of sportswashing, as a practice of using an association with sport, usually through hosting an event (...) or owning a club (such as Newcastle United, owned by Saudi Arabia), to subvert the way that others attend to a moral violation for which the sportswashing agent is responsible. This may be done through distracting away from wrongdoing, minimising it, or normalising it. Second, we offer an account of the distinctive wrongs of sportswashing. The gravest moral wrong is the background injustice which sportswashing threatens to perpetuate. But the distinctive wrongs of sportswashing are twofold: first, it makes participants in sport (athletes, coaches, journalists, fans) complicit in the sportswasher’s wrongdoing, which extends a moral challenge to millions of people involved with sport. Second, sportswashing corrupts valuable heritage associated with sporting traditions and institutions. Finally, we examine how sportswashing ought to be resisted. The appropriate forms of resistance will depend upon different roles people fill, such as athlete, coach, journalist, fan. The basic dichotomy of resistance strategies is to either exit the condition of complicity, for example by refusing to participate in the sporting event, or to modify one’s engagement with the goal of transformation in mind. We recognize this is difficult and potentially burdensome: sports are an important part of many of our lives; our approach attempts to respect this. (shrink)

The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is commonly viewed as a safety net for individual athletes, for universities, and for inter-collegiate sports programs. They help reduce injury to athletes, they participate in the marketing of athletic events, and they continue to change the rules of college sport to make it more fun for the spectators. There is another view that argues the NCAA is a buyers' cartel or monopsonist that engages in price-fixing for colleges and universities. The prices they fix (...) are the wages of student athletes and they accomplish this through regulations that prohibit the athlete from receiving any income other than in-kind scholarship payments. Students who receive other kinds of scholarships are not subject to these same restrictions. For example, students who receive scholarships in music can and do augment their income by performing for pay. It is the opinion of some that these price fixing scholarship agreements limiting the income of student athletes discriminates against a whole class of scholarship recipients. They also believe that this kind of behavior on the part of colleges and universities that make up the membership of the NCAA is highly unethical and may even be illegal. (shrink)

Sport builds character. If this is true, why is there a consistent stream of news detailing the bad behavior of athletes? We are bombarded with accounts of elite athletes using banned performance-enhancing substances, putting individual glory ahead of the excellence of the team, engaging in disrespectful and even violent behavior towards opponents, and seeking victory above all else. We are also given a steady diet of more salacious stories that include various embarrassing, immoral, and illegal behaviors in the private lives (...) of elite athletes. Elite sport is not alone in this; youth sport has its own set of moral problems. Parents assault officials, undermine coaches, encourage a win-at-all costs mentality, and in many cases ruin sport for their children. (shrink)

Whether it's conkers in the schoolyard, kicking a football in the park, or playing tennis on Wimbledon Centre Court, sport impacts all of our lives. But what is sport and why do we do it? Colin McGinn, renowned philosopher , reflects on our love of sport and explores the value it has for us and the part it plays in a life lived well. Written in the form of a memoir, McGinn discusses many of the sports he has engaged in (...) - from pole-vaulting and gymnastics to windsurfing and tennis - and describes the athletic experience from the inside, as a participant, articulating what is uniquely valuable about sport as an activity. Sport, argues McGinn, takes us to our fullest potential as human beings, it's what we fling at mortality to keep it at bay, a holiday from the Unbearable Heaviness of Being. "Sport" expresses our nature, it bears upon our self-realization. If a happy life consists in one that expresses fully our natural faculties, then sports must play an essential role in our lifes. Mind-body unity, the nature of practical knowledge and physical skill, success and failure, the ethics of competition, peak experiences, the spectacle of professional sport, aesthetics and death, McGinn discusses these and many other issues while telling of his own sporting mishaps and adventures. To use the vernacular of philosophy, "Sport" captures the phenomenology of sport - what it's like to do it - and in doing so shows how sport is a way of expressing and understanding who and what we are, way beyond whether we are a good sportsman, a bad loser or a team-player. For anyone who has ever thought that there must be less humiliating ways to enjoy yourself than being thrashed on the tennis court, "Sport" will reassure you that it's time not wasted. (shrink)

This paper addresses the possibility of robots engaging in sports. Recently, several movies like Ex-Machina, Chappi, and Transcendence challenge the spectator to think of the consequences of creating artificial intelligences. Although we refer to athletes who have outstanding sporting performances as machines, for example, in cycling people say ‘the cyclist looked like a machine with wheels,’ the potential participation of such AI in sport has not been addressed. For our argument’s sake, we will assume that the creation of human-like robots (...) who will mirror human athletes’ behavior in the playing field will be possible. Recent advances in cybernetics and robotics point in this way. As argued in the literature on philosophy of mind, the fact that intelligent robots seem to be doing something does not imply they are actually doing it. Understood in this way, sport can be conceived as a particular ‘imitation game’ or Turing test, which permits us to distinguish between an artificial intelligence... (shrink)

A difficult question in the philosophy of sport concerns how winning athletes should perform in uneven contests in which victory has been secured well before the competition is over. Nicholas Dixon, the protagonist in the ongoing debate, argues against critics who urge following an 'anti-blowout' thesis that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with running up the score. We engage this debate, providing much needed distinctions, and draw on Aristotelian resources to explore a framework by which to understand competing claims found (...) within the literature. (shrink)

This is the first book to offer a philosophical engagement with microaggressions. It aims to provide an intersectional analysis of microaggressions that cuts across multiple dimensions of oppression and marginalization, and to engage a variety of perspectives that have been sidelined within the discipline of philosophy. The volume gathers a diverse group of contributors: philosophers of color, philosophers with disabilities, philosophers of various nationalities and ethnicities, and philosophers of several gender identities. Their unique frames of analysis articulate both how (...) the concept of microaggressions can be used to clarify and sharpen our understanding of subtler aspects of oppression and how analysis, expansion, and reconceiving the notion of a microaggression can deepen and extend its explanatory power. The essays in the volume seek to defend microaggressions from common critiques and to explain their impact beyond the context of college students. Some of the guiding questions that this volume explores include, but are not limited to, the following: Can microaggressions be established as a viable scientific concept? What roles do microaggressions play in other oppressive phenomena like transphobia, fat phobia, and abelism? How can epistemological challenges around microaggressions be addressed via feminist theory, critical race theory, disability theory, or epistemologies of ignorance? What insights can be gleaned from intersectional analyses of microaggressions? Are there domain-specific analyses of microaggressions that would give insight to features of that domain, i.e. microaggressions related to sexuality, athletics, immigration status, national origin, body type, or ability. Microaggressions and Philosophyfeatures cutting-edge research on an important topic that will appeal to a wide range of students and scholars across disciplines. It includes perspectives from philosophy of psychology, empirically informed philosophy, feminist philosophy, critical race theory, disability theory, philosophy of language, philosophy of science, and social and political philosophy. (shrink)

Whether it's conkers in the schoolyard, kicking a football in the park, or playing tennis on Wimbledon Centre Court, sport impacts all of our lives. But what is sport and why do we do it? Colin McGinn, renowned philosopher, reflects on our love of sport and explores the value it has for us and the part it plays in a life lived well. Written in the form of a memoir, McGinn discusses many of the sports he has engaged in - (...) from pole-vaulting and gymnastics to windsurfing and tennis - and describes the athletic experience from the inside, as a participant, articulating what is uniquely valuable about sport as an activity. Sport, argues McGinn, takes us to our fullest potential as human beings, it's what we fling at mortality to keep it at bay, a holiday from the Unbearable Heaviness of Being. "Sport" expresses our nature, it bears upon our self-realization. If a happy life consists in one that expresses fully our natural faculties, then sports must play an essential role in our lifes. Mind-body unity, the nature of practical knowledge and physical skill, success and failure, the ethics of competition, peak experiences, the spectacle of professional sport, aesthetics and death, McGinn discusses these and many other issues while telling of his own sporting mishaps and adventures. To use the vernacular of philosophy, "Sport" captures the phenomenology of sport - what it's like to do it - and in doing so shows how sport is a way of expressing and understanding who and what we are, way beyond whether we are a good sportsman, a bad loser or a team-player. For anyone who has ever thought that there must be less humiliating ways to enjoy yourself than being thrashed on the tennis court, "Sport" will reassure you that it's time not wasted. (shrink)