Phenomenology for and of Coaching: A Discussion

Sport coaching offers a unique setting that requires a particular artistry of understanding bodies, skills, and relations between time, space, and movement. Through employing a phenomenological attitude, this article tries to think through the fundamental, yet commonplace question of “What is it like?” in sport coaching. What follows, then, is our attempt to demonstrate how phenomenological thought can connect to practice-orientated research in the form of phenomenology for coaching (i.e., grasping the lived, embodied, sensory experiences of athletes) and phenomenology of coaching (i.e., understanding the experiences of standing, watching, influencing, and doing coaching). To do so, we take constraints-led approach and Foucauldian-inspired analysis as two examples to think through. The ambition is to show how coaches both implicitly and explicitly deal with bodily knowledge in their day-to-day coaching practice in a way that can enrich existing literature and understanding in coaching.