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“You always wanna be sore, because then you are seeing results”: Exploring positive pain in competitive swimming

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journal contribution
posted on 2020-06-30, 09:04 authored by Gareth McNarry, Jacquelyn Allen-Collinson, Adam B Evans
Pain has long been associated with sports participation, being analyzed variously as a physical phenomenon, as well as a sociocultural construct in sport sociological literature. In this article, the authors employ a sociological–phenomenological approach to generate novel insights into the underresearched domain of “lived” pain in competitive swimming. Analytic attention is paid to specific aspects of pain, including “discomfort” and “good pain,” and how these sensations can be positively experienced and understood by the swimmers, as well as forming an integral part of the everyday routines of competitive swimming. Here, training is seen as “work” in the pursuit of athletic improvement. Discomfort and good pain thus become perceived as by-products of training, providing swimmers with important embodied information on pace, energy levels, and other bodily indicators of performance.

History

School

  • University Academic and Administrative Support

Published in

Sociology of Sport Journal

Volume

37

Issue

4

Pages

301 - 309

Publisher

Human Kinetics

Version

  • AM (Accepted Manuscript)

Rights holder

© Human Kinetics, Inc.

Publisher statement

Accepted author manuscript version reprinted, by permission, from Sociology of Sport Journal, 2020, 37 (4): 301-309, https://doi.org/10.1123/ssj.2019-0133. © Human Kinetics, Inc.

Publication date

2020-12-01

Copyright date

2020

ISSN

0741-1235

eISSN

1543-2785

Language

  • en

Depositor

Mr Gareth McNarry . Deposit date: 30 June 2020

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