New Movement Practices: A Foucauldian Learning Community to Disrupt Technologies of Discipline

Abstract

Sociologists of sport and coaching have repeatedly drawn upon the theoretical tools of Michel Foucault to map and critique the negative effects of coaches’ use of disciplinary practices. Three SCCs and two coach developers participated in multiple learning community meetings interrogating Foucault’s concepts to understand how power moves, create new, less disciplinary practices, and address the problems produced by too much discipline. The findings present new conceptual tools to train and move differently by disrupting disciplinary practices:spasmodic tempo training,atemporal training,variable geographic training,variable intra-geographic training,fluid and fragmented periodization,explorative coaching, andstrength coach as sage. We call for an appreciation of poststructural informed sport coaching and the development of a discursive sociology of sport coaching praxis.