Stories of Identity from High Performance Male Boxers in Their Training and Competition Environments
1
Human Studies Program, Laurentian University, 935 Ramsey Lake Road, Sudbury, ON P3E 2C6, Canada
2
School of Human Kinetics, Laurentian University, 935 Ramsey Lake Road, Sudbury, ON P3E 2C6, Canada
3
School of Social Work, Laurentian University, 935 Ramsey Lake Road, Sudbury, ON P3E 2C6, Canada
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
J. Funct. Morphol. Kinesiol. 2018, 3(4), 58; https://doi.org/10.3390/jfmk3040058
Received: 26 September 2018 / Revised: 7 November 2018 / Accepted: 21 November 2018 / Published: 24 November 2018
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sport Psychology)
The current submission was conceived to broaden the discussion around male athletic identities by exploring the stories told by four members of the Canadian National Boxing Team. The athletes’ stories were elicited through an arts-based method followed by a conversational interview. Stories were then analyzed using an interpretive thematic analysis. Three salient themes were found—fluid masculinity, ethnicity brings an edge to boxing, and expressing identity through language. These themes present accounts that highlight how socially, culturally, and historically dominant narratives can allow athletes to feel comfortable in presenting the identities they might reveal or feel constrained from doing so due to factors outside of their control. The need to develop training and competition contexts that allow for the empowerment of athletes’ individually distinct identities is highlighted as a method to ensuring the positive mental health of elite level athletes.
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Keywords:
empowering contexts; athletic identity; culture; elite athletes; storytelling
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
MDPI and ACS Style
Middleton, T.R.F.; Dupuis-Latour, J.; Ge, Y.; Schinke, R.J.; Blodgett, A.T.; Coholic, D.; Petersen, B. Stories of Identity from High Performance Male Boxers in Their Training and Competition Environments. J. Funct. Morphol. Kinesiol. 2018, 3, 58.
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