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- Svensson, Daniel, 1983-
(författare)
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Scientizing performance in endurance sports : The emergence of ‘rational training’ in cross-country skiing, 1930-1980
- 2016
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Elite athletes of today use specialized, scientific training methods and the increasing role of science in sports is undeniable. Scientific methods and equipment has even found its way into the practice of everyday exercisers, a testament to the impact of sport science. From the experiential, personal training regimes of the first half of the 20th century to the scientific training theories of the 1970s, the ideas about training and the athletic body shifted.The rationalization process started in endurance sports in the 1940s. It was part of a struggle between two models of training; natural training and rational training. Physiologists wanted to rid training of individual and local variations and create a universal model of rational, scientific training. The rationalization of training and training landscapes is here understood as an aspect of sportification, a theory commonly used to describe similar developments in sports where increasing regimentation, specialization and rationalization are among the main criteria. This dissertation adds the concept of technologies of sportification to explain the role that micro-technologies and practices (such as training logs, training camps and scientific tests) have in the scientization of training.This thesis thus sets out to analyze the role that science has played in training during the 20th century. It is a history about the rationalization of training, but also about larger issues regarding the role of personal, experiential knowledge and scientific knowledge. The main conclusions are that the process of scientization never managed to rid training of components from natural, experiential training, and that the effort by Swedish physiologists to introduce rational training was part of the larger rationalization movement at the time. In the end, training knowledge was a co-production between practitioners and theoreticians, skiers and scientists.
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| 2. |
- Svensson, Daniel
(författare)
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Rational training : Science and experience in the training of male and female skiers in the Swedish national team, 1954-1975
- 2013
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- When cross country skiing was established as a sport in the late 19th and early 20th century, it was asport heavily dominated by men. Training was something that was done on spare time, but the mainbulk of physical training was due to heavy physical work, from forestry or farming. In Sweden, forest workers were common on the national team well into the 1970s. Cross country skiing was tightly linked to rural areas, and gender coded as male (Sommestad 1992). Especially in Norway, women’sskiing was not easily accepted (Wigernaes 1967). Female skiers in Scandinavia were depicted verydifferently than their male colleagues (Tolvhed 2008). After poor results in international competitions in the early 1950s, the Swedish Ski Federation sought to improve performance of skiers by scientific means. They turned to physiologists at the Royal Central Institute of Gymnastics (GCI) in Stockholm. GCI had previously been the center for physical culture and Swedish gymnastics in Sweden, but had shifted towards a more scientific, rational approach to physical education and training (Svensson, 2013, Yttergren 2010). During the 1950s and 1960s, GCI physiologists like Per Olof Åstrand and Bengt Saltin were involved in testing and scientifically advising the national team (both men and women). Did the reception of scientific advice differ among male and female skiers? If so, how and why? Preliminary results suggest that female skiers, lacking the connection to forestry and long tradition in the sport, were more open to new training methods, while their male colleagues followed the tradition of training from predecessors and forestry. Female skiers, by adapting scientific advice more easily than male colleagues, may have functioned as change agents in the sport of cross country skiing. This indicates a strong connection between the (gendered) culture of a certain physical activity and the training conducted.
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