ABSTRACT
In this chapter we turn to consider the embodied practices of sport, that is to say how sport is experienced through bodily movement. In doing so we provide a cultural study to an area within sport studies that has traditionally been dominated by physiologists concerned to measure and quantify human movement as a means towards the improvement of sporting performance.1
Meier (1995: 93) argues that under the gaze of sports assessment methods based in physiology, the body is ‘reduced to the status of an object to be altered and manipulated or an obstacle to be surmounted … in preparation for athletic endeavours the body is drilled, trimmed, strengthened, quickened and otherwise trained to improve its fitness and functioning’.We hold no such interest, our concern being with how to understand the significance of movement made by people during sporting engagement. This largely involves the difficult task of trying to understand sporting bodily movement from the perspective of the participant.This involves more than just asking the participant about their bodily movement as such explanation usually escapes articulation, as our examples from professional sportspeople show.We turn to the philosophical area known as phenomenology to help us gain understanding of how sports participants make sense of their bodily practices within the sportive experience.
