Sport and Physical Education: The Key Concepts

Tim Chandler, Wray Vamplew, Mike Cronin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2007
• ISBN:
  9781134114559
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Physical Education

An accessible and fully cross-referenced A-Z guide, this book has been written specifically for students of sport studies and physical education, introducing basic terms and concepts. Entries cover such diverse subjects as coaching, drug testing, hooliganism, cultural imperialism, economics, gay games, amateurism, extreme sports, exercise physiology and Olympism.

This revised second edition, including fully updated further reading and web references, places a greater emphasis on sports science, with new entries on subjects such as:

• aerobic and anaerobic respiration
• blood pressure
• body composition
• cardiac output
• metabolism
• physical capacity.

A complete guide to the disciplines, themes, topics and concerns current in contemporary sport, this book is an invaluable resource for students at every level studying Sport and Physical Education.

SPORT AND PHYSICAL EDUCATION

The Key Concepts

ADMINISTRATION

The field of sports administration is one that has grown rapidly throughout recent decades. With the emergence of modern competitive and organised sport, committees were formed to ensure the smooth running of any given sport, to draw up rules, organise fixtures and competitions and to discipline unruly elements. These early sports administrators were usually drawn from the upper or middle classes. At the national level they were to be found in organisations such as the Royal and Ancient Golf Club at St Andrews to oversee golf, the MCC to run cricket, or at the Football Association to control football. In this early form, administration relied heavily on former members of the public schools, or else, as Mason and Collins have demonstrated with respect to football and rugby, local businessmen. Whatever the social origins of such committees, the overwhelming majority of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century sports administrators were amateur. As sports clubs and organisations developed and were increasingly run as businesses, so paid secretaries and other administrators were appointed. At the highest level, sports associations began paying salaries and employing officers to take care of areas such as press relations, marketing and sponsorship. Since the 1960s, sports administration has been a definite career choice, and one that is often made after studying aspects of the subject at college and university level. With the growth of allied areas within the sports business, such as law, economics, marketing and the media, sports administrators have continued to become more numerous and ever more important. They are vital in sports organisations, such as Sport England, in lobbying government for funding, and in administering whatever money they do receive.

See also: bureaucracy, leadership, management

Further reading: Collins (1998), Mason (1980)

ADVENTURE SPORTS

There is an ever-broadening array of activities that are outside the traditional mainstream of organised, codified, rationalised sport, termed ‘adventure’, ‘risk’ and ‘extreme’ sports. They differ from traditional sporting and physical activities in terms of their location, equipment, emphasis on endurance, and/or the degree of danger involved. The fact that a number of these ‘extreme’ activities have been termed ‘outlaw’ sports is because they have been banned in certain places due to their level of danger. The terms ‘adventure’, ‘risk’, ‘extreme’, and ‘outlaw’ all bear witness to the search for thrills and the underlying ethos of freedom from authority and authority figures (such as coaches, managers, trainers and administrators who control traditional sport), which best exemplify both the motivations and the attitudes of many extreme athletes.

The list of adventure/risk/extreme sports continues to grow as such activities become more widely practised. Among the best known adventure sports are eco-challenge and sport climbing, both of which pit individuals against nature and the environment. In ecochallenge, contestants traverse difficult and unfamiliar terrain, using canoes, rafts, kayaks and even mountain bikes as they challenge themselves over a number of days to complete a course. This test of man against nature is often conducted in exotic and ‘out of the way’ places, where control of the environment is limited and where predictability of outcome is very limited. By contrast, sport climbing, while closely related to rock climbing, requires participants to climb artificial rocks, thereby standardising the events and offering some degree of uniformity of contest among participants who compete in tests of speed, strategy and difficulty.

Amongst the major risk sports are those which have developed from recreational activities such as bungee jumping, sky surfing and even barefoot water ski jumping, where points are awarded on the basis of ‘stunts’ or tricks performed during the activity. In bungee jumping, this involves ‘diving-type’ moves such as twists, turns and somersaults, on which a performer is judged. Inspired by the vine jumpers of Pentecost Island, and first attempted in Britain with jumps off the Clifton Suspension Bridge in 1979, this sport is thought to have developed in Australia. Sky surfing, which involves athletes being videotaped by a team-mate as they perform stunts on a surf-board whilst free falling from about 4,000 metres, was developed in France. However, while many Western nations, including Britain, have influenced the growth and development of extreme sports, none has been more influential than the United States. In the 1970s and 1980s, a teen culture of risk and rebellion against the established and traditional institution of sport was largely responsible for the growth of extreme sports, from recreational activities of a few ‘outlaws’ to the proliferation of such sports and the organising of them into festivals and games such as the X-Games and the Gravity Games.

Activities such as BMX dirt biking and jumping, in-line skating, mountain-biking, street-luge, skate-luge and skateboarding, were largely developed as sports in California, where the landscape and the climate afforded opportunities for such activities and where the surfing culture of the 1960s was transformed with the development of technology of a different sort to produce a broad array of on-land activities. BMX dirt biking, which got its start on the trails and fire roads of Mount Tamalpais, involves racing, jumping over and off dirt mounds and riding on vertical ramps. Competitors are judged for difficulty, style and amplitude. In-line skaters compete in three types of events over three different courses. The vertical event uses a horseshoeshaped half-pike ramp in which skaters perform jumps, twists, turns, spins and flips, earning points for the quality and style of their performance. On the ‘street’ course, performers have to manoeuvre down obstacles such as stairs, along railings, up and down ramps and over walls, again earning points for style and difficulty of stunts. The downhill course uses streets or roads, as do street and skate-luge competitions.

While the World Wide Web has enabled extreme sports enthusiasts to communicate more readily and thus develop a base of support for their activities, it has been the influence of the media through the development of the X-Games and Gravity Games, alongside the exploitation of these emergent sports and their appropriation by corporations such as McDonalds and Disney, which have changed these ‘outlaw’ activities into increasingly mainstream sports. As Pope and Rinehart note, enthusiasts in search of a unique recreational experience pioneered most of these sports. They developed local contests and championships as a means of testing their skills against others. It was only in the late 1980s that such activities began to attract media attention, and with this came sponsorship and career possibilities. The inclusion of snowboarding in the 1996 Winter Olympics typified the incorporation of extreme sports into the mainstream. Thus activities that began as recreational outlets for some of society’s ‘outsiders’ have increasingly become formalised, institutionalised sports with their own corporate sponsors, national and international competitions, records and heroes, and as such part of mainstream sport in many Western nations.

Further reading: Allen (1993), Bane (1996), Donnelly (2006) Karinch (2000), McMillen (1998), Pope and Rinehart (2001), Wheaton (2004)

ADVERTISING

Advertising is the publicising of goods with the aim of increasing sales. It is the most visible sign of sport’s commercialisation, with sports stars being used to endorse sports equipment and also non-sporting goods. This is nothing new. In the late nineteenth century the famous cricketer W. G. Grace was used to advertise not only cricket bats but also Colman’s mustard, and in 1934 the FA Cup finalists promoted trousers, shoe polish and Shredded Wheat. Whether the public really believes that sporting success can be associated with and derived from buying the advertised product is a moot point. The development of televised sport has led to an expansion of the relationship between sport and advertising, with product logos on team shirts and playing surfaces, eye-catching revolving hoardings around grounds, and Formula One race cars becoming virtually mobile advertisements.

See also: endorsement, sponsorship

Further reading: Andrews and Jackson (2004), Groves (1987), Johnes (2000)

AEROBIC EXERCISE

The American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) defines aerobic exercise as ‘any activity that uses large muscle groups, can be maintained continuously, and is rhythmic in nature.’ (1998) Aerobic means with oxygen and refers to the need for oxygen in the process of generating energy in muscles. The benefits of aerobic exercise include improvement in heart and lung functioning, (such as lower heart rate and blood pressure,) increased VO2 Max, reduced body fat, improved weight control, and improved psychological well-being.

See also: anaerobic exercise, exercise, fitness, periodisation

Further reading: Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, 30, 6 June 1998.

AESTHETICS

Aesthetics is that part of philosophy which studies those values associated with beauty and ugliness. Beauty in sport is generally not rewarded save for appreciation by the cognoscenti. Most established sports have a ‘classical’ way of performing such as the timing of a drive in cricket, the smooth golf swing or the delicate drop shot in tennis. Yet these do not guarantee a win, for victory often goes to those who develop their own style, which may be less graceful but more effective. In some sports, however, such as ice-skating and synchronised swimming, marks are awarded for artistic interpretation. This raises the major issue of subjective judgement as there is no clear definition of artistry in sport.

Further reading: Best (1995)

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

Affirmative action policies embrace the idea of positive discrimination to increase the participation of groups previously marginalised or discriminated against. This has been central to United States sport since 1972, and European Union law now has provision for the introduction of such measures. So far it has not occurred in Britain, where attempts to challenge sex discrimination in sport have generally used normal employment law to oppose such practices as unequal salaries for male and female administrators.

See also: discrimination

Further reading: McCardle (1999)

AGEISM

Sport has often been seen as the preserve of the young and the fit. Developmental theory once emphasised the importance of the period of childhood and adolescence as central to the successful development of the adult. It was as a result of such thinking that much of the effort in promoting sport was centred on the young. Whether in nineteenth-century English public schools, or through the modern educational curriculum, sport was used to teach young people good values and bring about fitness and physical strength. For many older people, especially prior to the 1960s, active sporting participation was rare. There were no leagues for senior players, and no encouragement of the elderly to keep fit through sport. It was argued by many supporters of developmental theory that as adults were already fully formed, they would not benefit from the positive effects of sport as they need no further development. An additional problem for many willing older sports participants were the arguments of many in the medical profession. Prior to the Second World War many health specialists argued that sport was too rough and involved over-exertion that would damage the ageing body.

Thankfully these negative views of the ageing body and sport have changed. People live longer, and most Western industrialised societies now have a dominantly elderly population that lives well beyond retirement age. The medical profession now argues that an active life, including sport and exercise, will give good or improved health to the elderly. The embrace of sport by the ageing population has been assisted by the rapid growth in the number of gym clubs across the Western world, and the provision of public facilities such as swimming pools. Role models have been provided by senior leagues in sports such as tennis and golf, which receive money from sponsorship and are regularly aired on television. Olympics-style athletics gatherings that are based around the elderly allow for competition and record setting, as competitors are classified on the basis of their age. The most important effect of the embrace of sport by the ageing has been to challenge the assumption that old age necessarily means a life of inactivity and illness. This has been the most central challenge to the ageist argument that old age leads to the end of physical activity and sporting competitiveness.

See also: discrimination

Further reading: Wearing (1995)

AGENTS

Players are often at a disadvantage in negotiations with experienced management over the terms and conditions of their contracts. Additionally, some players feel that direct negotiations might harm their working relationship with club management. In recent years both these factors have led to the employment of agents, specialised in the area, who represent their clients in discussions with clubs and other employers, usually obtaining a commission from any deals that they negotiate. They are in a fiduciary relationship with their clients and must always act in their best interest. Hence, for example, they can only act for one party within a negotiation. Although in the United States some agents have been guilty of manipulative practices to induce players to sign with them, this has not emerged as a major problem in British sport. In some sports, licensing systems have been introduced in order to ensure propriety. In Premier League football, for example, special permission to act as an agent must be obtained except for close relatives, FIFA-licensed agents and...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• INTRODUCTION
• LIST OF CONCEPTS
• SPORT AND PHYSICAL EDUCATION: The Key Concepts
• Bibliography