Emotions in sport coaching: an introductory essay

Introduction

According to Turner and Stets (2007), emotions are an inextricable feature of human experience, behaviour, and interaction. Emotions are, for them, the glue that can bind people together and, equally, drive them apart. Unfortunately, while scholars in other fields (e.g. sociology, education, and psychology) have recognised the indisputable centrality of emotions at the “micro, macro, personal, organisational, political, economic, cultural, and religious” (Denzin, 1984, p. xiii) levels of social life, the study of emotion as a central aspect of social relationships is a largely neglected feature of the sport coaching literature. Indeed, despite some notable exceptions (e.g. Jones, 2006; Nelson, Potrac, Gilbourne, Allanson, Gale, and Marshall 2013), an explicit consideration of emotion remains notably absent in the sport coaching literature, including recent attempts to develop the discipline’s conceptual vocabulary (e.g. Jones, Edwards, & Viotto Filho, 2016; Lyle & Cushion, 2017; North, 2017).

Thus far, much coaching inquiry has been dominated, either overtly or implicitly, by a cognitive perspective. One of the unintended consequences of examining coaching (and indeed coach education) in this way has been the representation of coaches, coach educators, and various other contextual stakeholders (e.g. athletes, support staff, administrators) as largely rational, calculating, and dispassionate individuals who are somehow free from the constraints generated by their relations with others (Potrac, Jones, Purdy, Nelson, & Marshall, 2013). In this respect, sport coaching researchers have rarely examined how emotions such as excitement, joy, anger, anxiety, guilt and embarrassment are (re-)produced in, as well as through, the social relationships and interactions that constitute coaching and coach education practice (Jones, Potrac, Cushion, & Ronglan, 2011; Potrac, Jones, Gilbourne, & Nelson, 2013; Potrac, Jones, Purdy et al. 2013). Similarly, our understanding of coaches’ decision-making has also yet to examine how emotions play an integral role in helping individuals and groups of coaches to narrow down “the range of potential actions into a manageable assortment” (Potrac et al., 2013, p. 238) on which they can draw in their everyday practice. In addition, a greater appreciation of emotions as “a permanent dimension of our being in the world and being towards others” (Crossley, 2011, p. 62) in our relational networks would enhance our understandings and representations of the “coalitions, conflicts, and negotiations” (Fineman, 2005, p. 2) that characterise the activity of coaching (Jones et al., 2011; Potrac & Jones, 2009a, 2009b; Thompson, Potrac, & Jones, 2015). Equally, as a community of scholars, we are yet to consider the ways in which routine, but immensely powerful, emotions such as hope, anger, pride, anxiety, and boredom are “frequent, pervasive, manifold, and often intense” (Pekrun & Linnenbrink-Garcia, 2014, p. 1) features of coach and athlete learning.

The paucity of research addressing emotion in sport coaching likely owes much to the relatively short history of coaching scholarship and the hitherto dominance of highly individualised and rationalised conceptions of coaching, rather than any conscious effort by scholars and educators to purposefully relegate emotion to the “ontological basement” of inquiry (Liston & Garrison, 2003, p. 5). For us, the study of emotion can help us build upon the significant intellectual developments that have characterised this fledgling field of inquiry (Lyle & Cushion, 2017). Specifically, such inquiry can complement the largely cognitive-oriented perspectives of social action in coaching by focusing on the structuring and generation of emotion within the complex networks of relationships of which coaches (and others) are a part (see Potrac & Marshall, 2011; Potrac et al., 2013).

It is against this backdrop that we chose to pursue this special issue on the emotional dimensions of sport coaching. Our motivations for this project were various and interconnected. On one level, inspiration came from some of our own embodied, emotional, experiences as coaches, coach educators and sports participants. While they often varied in duration, intensity and connection, emotions such as joy, pride, guilt, and anger have been (and remain) constant companions in our respective coaching and sporting “careers” (e.g. Potrac et al., 2013). For us, emotions are not something that can be turned on and off so that we are sometimes emotional and at other times not (Crossley, 2011). Instead, our respective experiences always maintain an affective dimension. What varies, however, is the flavour and the intensity of affect (Crossley, 2011). Equally, our emotions are never absent from our relationships with, and connections to, other people in our respective coaching worlds; be it in the past, present, or, indeed, projected future (Crossley, 2011; Denzin, 1984). Indeed, our coaching practices have been variously “shaped, negotiated, rejected, reformed, fought over, [and] celebrated because of feelings” (Fineman, 2005, p. 1); both ours and those of others. In this regard, we concluded that our experiences in the field certainly did not, and do not, match with the accounts of practice that we frequently read about in, and had contributed to, the body of knowledge in sport coaching.

We also found, and continue to find, this state of affairs to be problematic when helping students to consider realistically the demands that coaching can make of people (Harris, 2015). For us, coaching is not about unproblematic recipes and “guaranteed” prescriptions, or, indeed, heroic individual performances (Jones et al., 2011). Instead, the essence of coaching lies in how we manage “the pressures, constraints, and possibilities of context” (Jones et al., 2011, p. 4). Here, we frequently wished for a rich, developed, and subject specific body of literature upon which to illustrate and consider how the ambiguities, pathos, and everyday politics of coaching are felt by individuals and groups, be they coaches, athletes, parents, or administrators (Harris, 2015; Jones et al., 2011). Over time, we grew increasingly concerned about the apparent disjuncture between the material we presented in our respective coaching courses (i.e. how we might coach) and the emotional realities (i.e. how we, and others, might think about and experience coaching) that we discussed informally with coaches, athletes, and coach educators in various sport settings.

In taking steps to address our concerns, we were thankful to be able to draw upon the contributions made by various and eminent scholars in mainstream social science (e.g. Bolton, 2005; Denzin, 1984; Fineman, 2005, 2008; Turner & Stets, 2005) and education (e.g. Day & Lee, 2011; Leithwood & Beatty, 2007; Schutz & Pekrun, 2007; Schutz & Zembylas, 2009; Zembylas, 2005). Rather than providing theoretical tinsel, as some have suggested, our engagement with such scholarship has undoubtedly advanced our own thinking, teaching, and, indeed, research in sport coaching (Potrac, Jones, & Nelson, 2014). In addition to the frameworks utilised in the papers that comprise this special issue, we have found Hargreaves’s (1998) theorising on the emotional practice and politics of teaching and Thoits’s (2013) consideration of emotions, social ties, and wellbeing to be particularly insightful. While we primarily make connections between these respective works and potential avenues for researching coaches’ emotions below, we recognise that their application could extend to all those who comprise the social networks of coaching (e.g. athletes, performance analysts, strength and conditioners, sport psychologists, parents, and administrators) and coach education (e.g. coach learners, assessors, administrators). Equally, we do not position these frameworks as the most adequate, or only, ways for researching and understanding emotion in sport coaching. Instead, we simply believe that they provide some productive starting points for more fruitful investigations of emotions in sport coaching.

In his article addressing the emotional politics of teaching and teacher development, Hargreaves (1998) proposed several interconnected points about the emotional dimensions of teaching that coaching researchers and coach educators may wish to consider in their own research and applied endeavours. Firstly, in drawing upon the work of Denzin (1984), Hargreaves (1998, p. 320) proposed that, like all aspects of social life, our engagements in pedagogical activity are not just technical and cognitive. He argued that:

… as an emotional practice [our italics], teaching activates, colours, and expresses teachers’ own feelings, and the actions in which those feelings are embedded. Likewise, as an emotional practice, teaching activates colours and otherwise affects the feelings and actions of others with whom teachers work and form relationships. Teachers can enthuse their students or bore them; be approachable to parents or alienate them; feel supported by their colleagues (and therefore willing to take risks in improving their craft) or mistrusted by them (and therefore more inclined to play safe).

These arguments could equally be made about coaching, whether in high performance, development, or community settings (Lyle & Cushion, 2017), as the papers in this volume and elsewhere suggest (e.g. Jones, 2006; Nelson et al., 2013; Purdy & Potrac, 2016; Purdy, Potrac, & Jones, 2008; Potrac et al., 2013).

Hargreaves (1998) also noted how teaching entails emotional understanding and emotional labour. The former, refers to:

… an intersubjective process requiring a person to enter into the field of experience of another and experience for himself or herself the same or similar experiences experienced by another. The subjective interpretation of another’s emotional experience from one’s own standpoint is central to emotional understanding. Shared and shareable emotionality lie at the core of what it means to understand and meaningfully enter into the emotional experiences of another. (Denzin, 1984, p. 137)

In the context of coaching, emotional understanding refers to a coach seeking to comprehend the intentions, thoughts, feelings, and behaviours of others using empathy and emotional imagination (Hargreaves, 1998). Given the importance of obtaining, maintaining, and advancing a connection with athletes (and other situational stakeholders), examining how coaches recognise and respond to fear, pride, embarrassment, and disgust in others is a potentially fruitful avenue of inquiry for advancing our understanding of coaches’ pedagogical and micro-political tact (Hargreaves, 1998).

In drawing upon the classic work of Hochschild (1983), Hargreaves (1998) argued that teaching entails active emotional labour. Here, emotional labour refers to work that:

… requires one to induce or suppress feelings in order to sustain the outward countenance that produces the proper state of mind in others … This kind of labour calls for co-ordination of mind and feeling, and it sometimes draws on a source of self that we honour as deep and integral to our personality. (Hochschild, 1983, p. 322)

For Hargreaves (1998), the emotional labour of teaching entails more than superficially acting out feeling such as surprise or disappointment. For example, he also suggested that it requires “consciously working one-self up into a state of actually experiencing the necessary feelings that are required to perform one’s job well” (Hargreaves, 1998, p. 322). Hargreaves (1998) further argued that emotional labour is not always a negative phenomenon where individuals feel obliged to trade parts of their self for the security and rewards they obtain from employers. Instead, he contended that there are positive aspects to emotional labour, including circumstances where an individual understands his or her emotional performances to be a genuine form of giving to others (such as enhancing their learning). Emotional labour is, however, also something that can be turned against the person exercising it, be it through increasing performance expectations and workload, stress, and extreme self-sacrifice that have potentially profound consequences for burnout and teacher cynicism (Hargreaves, 1998). While the concept of emotional labour and emotion management has received some initial attention in the coaching literature (e.g. Cassidy, Jones, & Potrac, 2016; Nelson et al., 2013; Potrac & Marshall, 2013), they remain a little understood and under-researched aspect of coaches’ (and other stakeholders’) lives.

Hargreaves (1998) further described how the emotions of teaching are also shaped by the moral purposes of those who teach and how workplace conditions allow them to achieve their desired goals and purposes. While the fulfilment of our moral purposes can result in happiness, joy, and pride, the failure to be able to pursue or achieve them can lead an individual to experience emotions such as guilt, anxiety, anger, and frustration. In an educational context, Hargreaves (1998) suggested that these emotions can be experienced and shaped by teachers’ engagement in contexts when they: (a) face perceived obstructions (e.g. increased form-filling, meetings, and performance assessment); (b) are compelled to achieve other people’s goals that they find inappropriate (e.g. mandated curricular and standardised teaching episodes); (c) are required to pursue standards that are defined too ambitiously for the learners in their charge; and (d) are unable to choose between multiple (and sometimes) conflicting goals. For Hargreaves (1998), it is a sense of loss relating to moral purposes that can lead educators to feel demoralised. In the context of coaching, Hargreaves’s (1998) work on moral purposes helps us to consider how coaches’ emotions are inextricably tied to their purposes (formal and perceived), what stakes they have and are asked to have in them, whether the conditions of the coaching setting make them achievable or not, and the implications these have for coach retention and wellbeing (Cassidy et al., 2016).

Hargreaves’s (1998) theorising also acknowledges how teachers’ emotions are rooted in, as well as affect, their selves, identities, and relationships with others. He suggested that many of the emotions that “we feel are intimately related to our sense of physical safety, psychological security and moral integrity” (Hargreaves, 1998, p. 323) and can vary temporally, spatially, and contextually. Feelings of security, being valued, wanted, and protected, he contends, can lead to happiness, while the opposite can result in experiences of fear, shame, and anxiety (Hargreaves, 1998). In this regard, Hargreaves (1998) argued that working with others is often an intense and emotionally laden experience. For example, collaborating with, performing for, or being judged by, others often entails some degree of discomfort and anxiety, as individuals are, for all intense purposes, putting their professional persona and sense of self “at risk” (Hargreaves, 1998).

While he recognised that risk itself is not an emotion, Hargreaves (1998) argued that it is certainly capable of generating strong emotions in context-dependent ways. These include “the fear and anxiety of confronting danger and threat, as well as the exhilaration of mastery and achievement when difficulties have been surmounted” (Hargreaves, 1998, pp. 324, 325). While a certain level of individual anxiety is essential to pedagogical risk-taking and professional development, Hargreaves (1998) suggested that it needs to be balanced with collective feelings of security, trust, and a sense of being valued. While coaching researchers have begun to explore the interconnections between a coach’s sense of self, organisational relationships, and inter-personal trust (e.g. Jones, 2006; Potrac, Jones, Gilbourne et al., 2013; Purdy & Potrac, 2016; Purdy, Potrac, & Nelson, 2013), little explicit attention has been given to the inherent emotional components of these interdependencies. Equally, there has yet to be any concerted effort to explore coaches’ (and other stakeholders’) experiences of specific positive (e.g. happiness, joy, pride) and negative (e.g. fear, shame, anger) emotions which are grounded in an individual’s sense-making and responses to the actions and behaviours of others (Burkitt, 2014).

The penultimate point addressed by Hargreaves (1998) concerns teachers’ experiences and perceptions of power and powerlessness. At the heart of his argument is the recognition that “emotions are a political as well as personal phenomena” (Hargreaves, 1998, p. 326). In drawing upon the writings of Kemper (1995), Hargreaves (1998) contended that when an individual perceives and experiences themselves occupying a greater position of power, he or she may feel more secure, while increased status (whether defined formally or informally) can also lead to feelings of happiness, pride, and gratitude. No less importantly, Hargreaves (1998) claimed that when people experience a threat (real and/or perceived) to their position of power and status, this can invoke fear, anxiety, shame and depression (Hargreaves, 1998). These emotions are simultaneously affected by the micro-politics of the organisations of which individuals are a part, as well as the wider neoliberal values and policy milieu in which the activity occurs (Hargreaves, 1998). While the political nature of coaching has been the subject of some initial inquiry (e.g. Potrac & Jones, 2009a, 2009b; Potrac et al., 2013; Thompson et al., 2015, among others), there has been little consideration of the various emotions that are at the heart of these dynamics and interactions. In this context, the study of emotions may enable to us to understand better not only how coaches experience various acts of collaboration, negotiation, and conflict within their everyday lives, but also why they interpret and respond to them in the ways that they do.

The final component of Hargreaves’s (1998) work is concerned with culture and context. Here, Hargreaves (1998) addressed how the emotions some individuals experience, and the decisions they take to reveal or conceal them, may “vary among cultures, occupations, genders, and ethnocultural groups” (Hargreaves, 1998, p. 329). By way of an example, he contrasted Nias (1996) disapproval of teachers’ anger in British primary school classrooms with the North American Native Indian Medicine Way Path of Learning, which “values anger at injustice as something worth cultivating in students” (Hargreaves, 1998, p. 329). For Hargreaves (1998, p. 329) there is much to gain from recognising how “emotions and their legitimate expression … are culturally loaded, being afforded different value within different cultural, racial, and ethnic groups”. When applied to coaching and coach education, Hargreaves’s (1998) insights may help us to understand how coach recruitment and development is not an emotionally or morally neutral process. Instead, these activities include exposure to the political and cultural sensitivities and differences in the relations between the groups involved (Hargreaves, 1998), and the dynamic power differentials which characterise their relationships.

The interactionist work of Thoits (1989, 2004, 2011) also raises a number of conceptual ideas that might usefully inform future research on emotions in sport coaching scholarship. For Thoits, the investigation of everyday emotions should not be restricted to their innate, biophysical features. Instead, she argues for a greater recognition of how emotions, such as anger, fear, happiness, disgust, and sadness, are grounded in social relationships where “subjective experiences and emotional beliefs are both socially acquired and socially structured” (Thoits, 1989, p. 319). In this regard, Thoits (1989, 2004, 2011) attaches considerable importance to investigating the normative content of emotions acquired through processes of emotional socialisation not least because, for her, “emotion norms not only define situationally appropriate feelings and displays” (Thoits, 2004, p. 364), but they also inform people’s sense making and responses to their social contexts. Like Hargreaves (1998), Thoits (2004) suggests that emotional expectations are context-dependent and that societies can be comprised of “multiple, overlapping and potentially conflicting emotional ideologies” (p. 365). In sport coaching, Thoits’s (1989, 2004, 2011) work should encourage us to understand better how these ideologies may be deliberately produced and reproduced to justify and/or serve the preferred goals of individuals, groups, specific organisations and whole industries. Thoits’s (1989, 2004, 2011) insights also raise important questions about how emotional rules are socially learnt and shape the evaluations, expressions, and practices of coaches, athletes, and other key stakeholders.

In her analysis of literature addressing workplace emotion, Thoits (2004) highlighted how employees across a range of organisations and roles have actively conformed to the emotion rules of their working contexts. According to Thoits (2004), they do so to secure the social approval of significant others, avoid those sanctions associated with the violation of these normative expectations, and, above all, to help evade the kinds of social evaluative threats which have been shown to impact negatively on health and wellbeing. Her critical review also addressed a range of emotion management strategies used by employees. These include cognitively reframing social situations to elicit alternative emotional responses, altering their physiological state through bodily work, and performing desired behaviours through purposive expression work (Thoits, 2004). In a similar vein to the work of Hargreaves (1998), Thoits’s (1989, 2004, 2011) work sensitises us to how coaches’ social and emotional performances relate to individual and group understandings of normative expectations, social approval, and sanctions, as well as how these contribute to the health and wellbeing of those involved.

In addition to the management of their own emotions, Thoits (1989, 2004, 2011) explores how employees influence the emotions of those with whom they work, a process she refers to as interpersonal emotion management. Developing an understanding of this feature of organisational life is, for her, of considerable importance to explaining why acts of “cohesion, cooperation, and loyalty” as well as “conflict, discrimination, injustice, and cruelty” may occur (Thoits, 2004, p. 369). In her discussion of the social function of emotional conformity and the responsive interpretation of others’ emotions, Thoits (2004, 2011) drew upon Cahill’s (1999) notion of emotional capital. This refer to an individual’s understanding of the cultural norms and expectations of his or her social contexts, as well as their ability to regulate and transform their own and other’s emotions (Thoits, 2004, 2011). She explained that those possessing considerable emotional capital have the potential to “deliberately manipulate other people’s emotions to sustain, usurp, upset, or withhold social placement from some and to convey it to others (or themselves)” (Thoits, 2004, p. 371). Emotional capital also permits workers to “evaluate the self from the perspective of other people” (Thoits, 2004, p. 372) so that they may strategically conform to the expectations of others. This can feature in the restoring and repairing of self-image when damaged, and manipulating others’ emotions for personal benefits or gain (Thoits, 2004). To date, there has yet to be any concerted effort to explore if coaches seek to manage the emotions of those key contextual stakeholders with whom they interact, the interactional strategies that they use to obtain desired outcomes, and the reasoning that underpins this aspect of their practice.

According to Thoits (2004, 2011), sensitivity to the emotional experiences of others permits people to actively develop a sense of collective identity and social solidarity in ways that can positively impact upon social and psychological wellbeing. She claimed that the everyday emotional (in addition to informational and instrumental) support that individuals may receive in their relationships with others not only helps to sustain their self-esteem and sense of belonging, but also the level of control that an they perceive themselves to have over future events (Thoits, 2011). In addition to routine everyday emotional support, Thoits (2011) contends that the caring, sympathetic, and comforting presence offered by significant primary and secondary group members may reduce physical and psychological adversity during times of distress. She explained that individuals, who have experienced similar stressful situations, are particularly able to offer empathic and tolerant understandings of another’s concerns and emotional reactions. Such interactions, she argued, can help to validate the normalcy of the other’s emotional reactions, reduce the psychological arousal that he or she may be experiencing, as well as strengthen low self-esteem (Thoits, 2011). While researchers have started to investigate how coaches’ interactions with other stakeholders may impact upon people’s self-esteem (e.g. Thompson et al., 2013; Potrac et al., 2013), little explicit attention has been given to examining how the actions of others may impact, positively and negatively, on coaches’ psychological wellbeing (Nelson, in press). This certainly represents an important strand of inquiry, especially in terms of assisting and retaining coaches in high performance, developmental, and community settings.

For us, the work of Hargreaves (1998) and Thoits (1989, 2004, 2011) raises several important issues worthy of investigation. Firstly, there is a clear need to develop a greater understanding of coaching as an emotional practice that likely entails (considerable) emotional labour. Indeed, we know very little about how coaches manage their own emotions, as well as attempt to influence the emotional experiences of others. Secondly, while the technical competencies of coaching are important, locating coaches and their emotions within the complex networks of relationships in which they are bound-up is an important starting point for better understanding the realities of coaching practice. Doing so will also help avoid emotions being relegated to the position of “sentimental adornments” (Hargreaves, 1998, p. 330) in comparison to the technical and functional parts of a coach’s (and other stakeholders’) work. Thirdly, there is perhaps much to gain, both theoretically and practically, from explicitly examining the interconnections between the moral purposes of coaches, the political dynamics of coaching policy and organisational life, the social relationships that comprise coaching, and the significant personal investments made in this activity (Hargreaves, 1998; Thoits, 1989, 2004, 2011). Fourthly, they also encourage us to recognise how the emotional politics of coaching and coach education may vary from one coach to another, from one context to another, and from one society and time period to another. Finally, there is much work to be done on the emotional support that coaches do (or do not) receive in the workplace, how the interrelated features (and often blurring) of their working and private lives impacts on their health and wellbeing, and how coaches’ behaviours can impact on the wellbeing of their athletes.

In practical terms, curriculum leaders and developers, including ourselves, arguably need to do more to embrace the emotional dimensions of coaching and coach development. An initial first step in this regard might be to “acknowledge and even honour the centrality of the emotions to the processes” (Hargreaves, 1998, p. 333). of coaching, learning, performance, and caring in practice. While various educational strategies could be utilised to achieve this goal (see Beatty 2004, 2006, 2007), the overarching intent should be “to put the heart back into” coaching, learning, and leading in a sincere manner and for the benefit of all (Hargreaves, 1998, p. 333).

The papers in this special issue

For this special issue, we subscribed to the definition of emotion developed by Turner and Stets (2005). They suggested that emotions consist of five core elements:

(a) the biological activation of key body systems; (b) socially constructed definitions and constraints on what emotions should be experienced and expressed in a situation; (c) the application of linguistic labels provided by culture to internal sensations; (d) the over expression of emotions through facial, voice, and other paralinguistic moves; and (e) perceptions and appraisal of situational objects or events. (Turner & Stets, 2005, p. 9)

While no single element can explain when, how, and why emotions are expressed and understood in particular ways, the articles in this issue specifically focus on the socially constructed, personally enacted, and embodied features of coaches’ and athletes’ emotions. In doing so, we do not deny individual, physical, and psychical dimensions of emotions, but, instead, seek to understand them from a broadly social-relational perspective (Cantó-Milà, 2016).

In the first paper, “Passion and paranoia: An embodied tale of emotion, identity, and pathos in sport coaching”, Potrac, Mallett, Greenough, and Nelson address the lead author’s (emotional) understandings of coaching an amateur women’s football team. Through a process of collaborative inquiry, the authors consider how a coach’s embodied emotional experiences and meaning making were produced in, as well as through, the interaction of self and other in the club context. Following the presentation of storied experience, the complementary works of Burkitt (1997, 2014) and Scott (2015) are deployed as the primary heuristic devices. Here, the authors’ interpretation focuses on the interconnections between emotion, identity, and embodied experience. In concluding the paper, Potrac et al. advocate a greater integration of emotion into ongoing and future coaching scholarship.

The next article, by Martinelli, Day and Lowry, focuses on coaches’ experiences of guilt in relation to athlete injury. In-depth semi-structured interviews were used to generate data concerning coaches’ understandings of the development and regulation of guilt. The coaches’ stories were then critically interrogated using psychological theorising concerning trauma-related guilt. As well as illuminating how guilt may be embodied and managed in different ways by coaches, the authors also raise some important concerns regarding the deontological approach used to define a “good” coach in much coach education provision. In particular, Martinelli et al. argue that dominant discourses regarding coaches’ obligations and athletes’ entitlements may be instrumental in entrenching coaches’ experiences of guilt in everyday practice.

The third paper by McNeill, Durand-Bush, and Lemyre investigates coaches’ understandings of burnout. Based on in-depth interviews with professional coaches, the authors present five non-fictional short stories highlighting the emotions that underpinned the coaches’ experiences and sense making. As well as examining emotions such as anxiety, anger, apathy, and dejection, the authors also consider these emotions in relation to the three dimensions of burnout; namely, emotional exhaustion, depersonalisation, and reduced personal accomplishment. Finally, the authors highlight the need for further intervention research that aims to better understand, reduce, and manage coach burnout.

The penultimate contribution is provided by Douglas and Carless. For this study, ethnographic data were collected at a golf intervention where civilian coaches worked among serving injured, sick, and wounded military personnel in a recovery setting. Through the utilisation of a series of vignettes, the authors consider how emotions are evoked, hidden, or made visible depending on different social situations and relationships. The stories also reveal some of the potential costs or risks of becoming more empathetic and caring. The authors conclude the paper by considering the value of narrative inquiry for illuminating the social and emotional aspects of our lives, work, and relationships that can otherwise be difficult to articulate and share.

In the final paper, Magill, Nelson, Jones, and Potrac consider the emotional dimensions of athletes’ everyday participation in video-based feedback sessions. Data for this study were obtained through a process of collaborative critical reflection and in-depth interviews with elite female footballers. Using fictional narratives as their mode of representation, the authors highlight the emotional, embodied, and relational features of two athletes’ experiences of video-based feedback. Burkitt’s (1999, 2014) writings addressing (complex) emotions and social relations are used as the primary sense-making framework, with the analysis focusing on the interconnections between sensate, corporeal experience, and the power relations and interdependencies in which high performance athletes are enmeshed. In their conclusion, Magill et al. suggest that the exploration of individual emotion management within a network of social relations would help us to understand better the emotionality of athletes (and other stakeholders) within high performance sport settings.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.