Gatekeepers, agency and rhetoric: an academic’s reflexive ethnography of ‘doing’ a (failed) adaptive CrossFit project

ABSTRACT

Individuals become activists to affirm both themselves and their vision of the world, often prompted to action by seeking out complementary individuals, groups or organisations that can help organise, research, and promote solutions to shared problems. A gap exists between research and practice within the field of disability sport and adaptive physical activity. In particular, the academy is failing to produce research that demonstrates what, how and why theory and practice can become misaligned and problematic. This novel and needed paper is a reflexive ethnography detailing my struggles to pilot a local adaptive CrossFit project to the disabled community due to unforeseen challenges with gatekeepers, stripping of agency and academic rhetoric. A narrative is included with the hope of revealing social processes outside and within the field of disability sport and adaptive physical activity and to provoke discussion regarding problems with choice, advocacy and agency.

KEYWORDS:

• CrossFit
• reflexivity
• prac-ademic
• disability
• ethnography
• gatekeepers
• narrative

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. United Nations Article 30.5 Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities: Available at: http://pacific.ohchr.org/docs/UN_Sport_Disability_Booklet.pdf

2. This paper subscribes to the Social Model of Disability introduced by Oliver (1983, 1990) and writes ‘disabled people’ as opposed to ‘people with disabilities’. Furthermore, the author agrees with historian Diane McWhorter (2001) that to ‘sanitize the language of segregation is to mute its destructive force – it is to dismiss or downplay’.

3. The CrossFit Games are an athletic competition held every summer since 2007. Athletes at the Games compete in workouts that they learn about hours or days beforehand, consisting mostly of an assortment of standard aerobic, weightlifting, and gymnastics movements, as well as additional surprise elements, such as swimming or cycling. CrossFit Games stylise their individual winners as the ‘Fittest on Earth’.

4. The Inclusive Fitness Initiative is managed by Quest and the Activity Alliance: Further information about the initiative is available at: http://www.activityalliance.org.uk/get-active/inclusive-gyms

5. https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/universities-and-charities-need-to-work-closer-together

6. Active Hands are an accessory to make gripping for those with hand function weakness more independence around the home, garden, gym and for leisure activities. Available at https://www.activehands.com

7. The Last Leg (known during its first series as The Last Leg with Adam Hills) is a British comedy and late-night television talk show that originally ran alongside the 2012 Summer Paralympics every night following the main coverage on Channel 4. It has since become a weekly show giving an alternative look at the week’s global current affairs and events.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Natalie Campbell

Dr Natalie Campbell is a Senior Lecturer in the community of Sport Leasership and Education in Society. Her research is at the intersection of disability, activity, health and wellbeing.