What does that entail? Well, here’s what Denison’s web page says about his socio-cultural approach to coaching: “Through the work of Michel Foucault, he views coaching as a social act whereby what coaches know and do on an everyday basis is as much a relational process as it is a scientific one.” In other words, the interactions between coach and athlete are as real and relevant as the details of how many intervals you do and how much your lactate threshold increases.
Many of the ideas that interest Denison and his colleagues are drawn from Foucault’s 1975 book Discipline and Punish, which argues that the exercise of discipline—specifically the control of time, space, and movement—imposes a hierarchical burden that ultimately makes people docile. That may be an intentional goal of the prison system (which is what Foucault was originally writing about), but it’s not ideal for creating champion athletes, who need to have initiative and self-determination. And yet many of the characteristics of a typical track workout—running around a constrained loop in a prescribed amount of time over and over—seem to perfectly embody Foucault’s idea of initiative-crushing discipline.
Many of the ideas that interest Denison and his colleagues are drawn from Foucault’s 1975 book Discipline and Punish, which argues that the exercise of discipline—specifically the control of time, space, and movement—imposes a hierarchical burden that ultimately makes people docile. That may be an intentional goal of the prison system (which is what Foucault was originally writing about), but it’s not ideal for creating champion athletes, who need to have initiative and self-determination. And yet many of the characteristics of a typical track workout—running around a constrained loop in a prescribed amount of time over and over—seem to perfectly embody Foucault’s idea of initiative-crushing discipline.
