Deakin home > Deakin University Library > Deakin Research Online > Train without strain : health and amateur athletes

Train without strain : health and amateur athletes

Mewett, Peter 2004, Train without strain : health and amateur athletes, in NASSS 2004 : the 25th annual conference of North American Society for the Sociology of Sport : interdisiplinary dialogues, pp. 1-18.


Title Train without strain : health and amateur athletes
Author(s) Mewett, Peter
Conference name North American Society for the Sociology of Sport. Conference (25th : 2004 : Tuscon, Ariz.)
Conference location Tucson, Ariz.
Conference dates 3-6 November 2004
Title of proceedings NASSS 2004 : the 25th annual conference of North American Society for the Sociology of Sport : interdisiplinary dialogues
Publication date 2004
Start page 1
End page 18
Summary An exercise in historical sociology, this paper investigates the association between training and health made by amateur athletes between about 1860 and WWI. It examines the idea that while exercise benefited a person’s health and well-being, excessive exertion caused potentially life-threatening ‘strain’. The paper sets out the interpretation of contemporary scientific knowledge about the body–which the author terms the ‘physiology of strain’–that underpinned the advice given to those undergoing a training program for amateur competition. The point is made that the imputed effects of exercise on health were deduced from this scientific knowledge; it did not derive from bio-medical investigations specifically addressing these issues. Amateur athletes included people drawn from the professionally educated elite and medical practitioners figured significantly among them. Using insights from Bourdieu and Foucault, it is argued that their social power and professional connections served to legitimate their interpretation of the physiological effects of exercise (denying the value of the training practices of working class professional athletes) and cemented the physiology of strain as a ‘factual’ statement about exercise and health until well into the twentieth century. The data for the paper comes from training manuals, medical journals and other contemporary publications.
Language eng
Field of Research 160899 Sociology not elsewhere classified
HERDC Research category L2 Full written paper - non-refereed (minor conferences)
Persistent URL http://hdl.handle.net/10536/DRO/DU:30015764

Document type: Conference Paper
Collection: School of Social and International Studies
Connect to link resolver
 
Unless expressly stated otherwise, the copyright for items in Deakin Research Online is owned by the author, with all rights reserved.

Versions
Version Filter Type
Access Statistics: 339 Abstract Views  -  Detailed Statistics
Created: Wed, 12 Nov 2008, 13:07:41 EST