‘The fragile science of bruising’ – Observations on intercorporeal connections between coaches and boxers before and during a fight

ABSTRACT

Though boxing is usually perceived as an individual sport, the merging of boxer and coach into a joint corporeality is essential for prevailing the fight. Using several video recordings (respective transcripts and drawings of video stills) taken during professional boxer’s training sessions, fight preparation, and actual fighting, I show how this connection is established over long-term training, renewed immediately before a fight, maintained during fighting, and (at times) lost. Deploying an ethnomethodological approach, I illustrate the coaches’ methods of engaging in an intercorporeal relation with their boxers. When connected properly, they fight together with the boxers’ performance enhanced by the coaches’ perception and skilful experience. However, coaches and boxers permanently oscillate between an intercorporeal connection and a laboriously established substitution of such. Thus, their endeavour remains delicate and the connection’s fragility is exposed, especially during fighting itself when it is – literally – hammered on by the opponent.

KEYWORDS:

• Sports
• boxing
• intercorporeality
• alignment
• video analysis
• ethnomethodology

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Transcription signs used

Table

Notes

1. The empirical materials stem from the research project »Kommunikation unter Druck – Praktiken der Verständigung von Trainern und Athleten im Spitzensport« (Communication under Pressure – Communication Practices of Coaches and Athletes in High Class Sports), which ran from 2011 until 2015 at Bielefeld University. During the research I took video recordings of training sessions, sparring fights, fight preparation, and 14 tournament fights. The video recordings are represented through anonymised transcripts and drawings of still images. The latter enhance the visibility to the reader and ensure anonymity of the persons involved.

The (preliminary) results of the research were presented to the coaches and their thoughts and feedback taken into account. Other than that there was no direct involvement of the coaches (or any other field participants) in the analysis of the video material.

The transcripts shown here rely on the GAT2 standard (Selting et al., 2011). The German original is translated into English trying to preserve the dynamic of the original language, while at the same time giving a literal translation. See appendix for transcription signs used.