ABSTRACT
Athletes’ bodies are the tool or instrument for playing the game, breaking a record or winning a competition, and are thus treated as objects where training focuses on skill development leading to circumstances where the athlete can reproduce results with consistency. This approach is explored here through the work of Bergson and others, where the body is not seen as a neuromuscular object, but as a lived, emotional and relational subject. It becomes clear that a human being has a body and is a body at the same time and that the body, with its body memory, is always in dialogue with the world around it. In this chapter I argue that the physical body, including skills developed through training, is only part of the game and that the invisible body is the body that is actually playing the game. Alongside the visible elements of limited time, space and fixed rules, playing is above all a lived experience of those elements. It is in that lived experience that the invisible play-elements such as fun, tension and freedom are shaped.
