Rhythmanalysis in coaching: grasping the everyday rhythm(s) of coaching

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article uses Lefebvre’s rhythmanalysis to critically explore and make-sense-of the (co-)productive schemes of ‘coaching rhythm(s)’ at Alvour Football Club (a pseudonym). The first author spent seven months at a semi-professional football club by living with the group’s weekly schedule of training, meetings, and matches. The precise research methods included (written) field-notes, individual semi-structured interviews, and visual data. The findings introduce and explicate how the group’s rhythmic flow of the week was subject to the perpetual manipulation and imposition of the coaching staff, while also being politically negotiated, and simultaneously resisted by athletes. Specifically, the analysis uses the interplay between ‘eurhythmia’, ‘polyrhythmia’, and ‘arrythmia’ to understand the subtle and nuanced routines of coaching, and how individuals become sensitive to their production. In addition to introducing the value of understanding rhythm(s) in coaching, it is hoped the rhythmanalysis offered in this paper contributes an original interpretation of the taken-for-granted everydayness of coaching, which can challenge many of the assumed mechanical overtones that currently exist. Doing so, the paper offers a new reading of coaching as manipulating rhythm(s).