Zehntner, Chris (2020) Consent and complicity: The athletes' role in the normalisation of damaging coaching practices. In: Lang, Melanie, (ed.) Routledge Handbook of Athlete Welfare. Routledge, Abingdon, Oxon, UK, pp. 314-323.

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Abstract

This chapter reviews scholarship relating to the normalisation and proliferation of abusive coaching practice and the way that athletes come to misrecognise and contribute to this. In the first part of the chapter, the nuanced ways that athlete abuse is enacted within the coach–athlete relationship are contextualised. The mechanisms of constraint that encourage coaches to recycle taken-for-granted notions of best coaching practice are also elaborated upon. The second part of the chapter centres on a case study that reveals how female cyclists bought into questionable coaching practices in order to achieve national team selection. Social theory is used to illuminate how the athletes consented and conformed and were in part complicit with the normalisation and proliferation of abusive coaching practice. This chapter demonstrates the ways that abuse can be perpetrated by coaches, the complexity of resistance within the coach–athlete relationship, and the role of both parties in the proliferation of damaging practices that affect athlete well-being.

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