What is the nature of athletic performance? This book offers an answer to this fascinating question by considering the relationship between sport, technology and the body. Specifically, it examines cultural resistance to the enhancement of athletes and explores the ways in which performance technologies complicate and confound our conception of the sporting body. The book addresses concerns about the technological "invasion" of the "natural" body to investigate expectations that athletic performances reflect nothing more than the actual capacity of the untainted athlete. By examining a series of case studies, including Paralympic sprinter Oscar Pistorius, Fastskin swimsuits, hypoxic chambers and an array of illicit substances and methods, the book distinguishes between internal and external technologies to highlight the ways that performance enhancement, and public reaction to it, can be read. Sport, Technology and the Body offers a powerful challenge to conventional views of athletic performance that stand authenticity against artifice, integrity against corruption, and athletic purity against technological intrusion. It is essential reading for all serious students of the sociology, culture or ethics of sport.

Sports, Society, and Technology: Bodies, Practices, and Knowledge Production addresses the complex entanglements of science, technology, and sporting cultures. The collection explores themes around human and non-human actants, knowledge formations and processes, and the materiality and multiplicity of bodies through an engagement with the interdisciplinary fields of Sport Studies and Science and Technology Studies. Representing a range of methodological, theoretical, and disciplinary approaches, contributors interrogate the social, cultural, political, and historical intersections of an ever-expanding techno-scientific sporting landscape – from true bounce and brain trauma to exercise physiology, metrics, and esports, and from feminist technoscience, whey protein, and epigenetics to sickle cell screening and testosterone regulation.

This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC) open access license. How do new technologies come to be used in sport? This book moves beyond the idea of functionality to explore the many other important factors that athletes and sporting bodies consider throughout the process of adoption. Few would question the difficulty of producing an elite athletic performance. The high level of training, combined with intense competition and pressure from media and sponsors, can be challenging for athletes and sporting bodies to negotiate. This book explores how these factors affect the use of technology in sport, while simultaneously demonstrating the influence of new technologies on sporting practice. Using actor-network theory ­- an approach common in studies of science and management but seldom applied in this field - it offers readers an inside view into elite sport and the part that technology plays in training, competition and broadcasting. Sport and technology offers theoretical insights relevant to students and scholars of sport and sociology. It will also be fascinating reading for anyone interested in elite sporting practice in the twenty-first century.

In the 1880s photographers and sports enthusiasts confidently declared the end of dead heats in sporting competition. Reflecting a broader social belief in technology, proponents of the camera stressed that the device could provide definitive proof of who won and who lost. Yet despite this remedy for the inadequate human eye, competitive races between horses, boats, and bicycles ended too close to call a sole champion. More than a century later, when cameras can subdivide the second into ten-thousandths and beyond, athletes continue to cross the finish line in ties. In this fascinating journey through the history of the photo-finish in sports, Jonathan Finn shows how innovation was animated by a drive for ever more precise tools and a quest for perfect measurement. As he traces the technological developments inspired by this crusade - from the evolution of the still camera to movie cameras, ultimately leading to complex contemporary photo-finish systems - Finn uncovers the social implications of adopting and contesting the photograph as evidence in sport. At every turn empirical obsession intersects with the unpredictability of sports, creating a paradox wherein the precision offered by photo-finish technology far exceeds the realities of human performance and its measurement. Separating athletes by the hundredth, thousandth, or ten-thousandth of a second is often a fiction that comes with significant material and cultural implications. A lively biography of a critical technology, Beyond the Finish Line illuminates the cultural role of the photo-finish in win-at-all-costs culture and warn that in our pursuit for precision we may threaten the human element of sport that galvanizes mere spectators into fans.

′Once in a while a manuscript stops you in your tracks... What we are offered here is no recovering of old ground but a step change in perspectives on "body matters" that is both innovative and of fundamental importance to anyone working on this sociological terrain...This text is groundbreaking and simply has to be read′ - Acta Sociologica ′This is Shilling at his creative best...these are seminal observations of the classical theories drawn together as never before. Moreover, as a framework [this monograph] provides a genuinely new and fertile way of reconsidering not just classical sociology but contemporary forms as well′ - Sport, Education & Society ′This is a comprehensive, theoretically sophisticated, and ambitious treatise on the body that draws from, and applies, both classical and contemporary sociological theory in a manner that is innovative and thought-provoking. This book is engaging and thought-provoking, but Shilling′s greatest achievement is his ability to illustrate the importance and continued relevance of classical and contemporary sociological theory to real world concerns. It is a book worthy of widespread attention. It reinvigorated my interest in the sociological classics and contained countless nuggets of interesting information that led me to conclude that it would be a worthy book to recommend to a broad sociological audience′ - Teaching Sociology ′Shilling′s book (like his earlier The Body and Social Theory) is crucial reading...a further valuable contribution in a field where he has provided so much′ - Theory & Psychology ′This is an impressive book by one of the leading social theorists working in the field of body studies. It provides a critical summation of theoretical and substantive work in the field to date, while also presenting a powerful argument for a corporeal realism in which the body is both generative of the emergent properties of social structure and a location of their effects. Its scope and originality make it a key point of reference for students and academics in body studies and in the social and cultural sciences more generally′ - Ian Burkitt, Reader in Social Science, University of Bradford ′Chris Shilling is as always a lucid guide through the dense thickets of the "sociology of the body", and his chapters on the fields of work, sport, eating, music and technology brilliantly show how abstract theoretical debates relate to the real world of people′s lives′ - Professor Stephen Mennell, University College Dublin ′What I find very useful and without any doubt valuable, not only in Shilling′s The Body in Culture, Technology and Society but in his work in general, is the breadth and profoundness of his discussion about the body...the style Shilling maintains is crucial for further development of the sociology of the body as a discipline, for it provides us with a rich intellectual environment about the body′ - Sociology ′For any colleague wanting to have a clear idea of how studies of the body can be empirically grounded as well as theoretically ′rich′, Chris Shilling′s The Body in Culture, Technology and Society , is the book to read. To my mind it offers the best account thus far of not only how social action is embodied and must be recognised as such but also of how social structures condition and shape embodied subjects in a variety of social arenas... This is wonderful insightful ′stuff′ - the ideas and intricate thoughts of a scholar such as Shilling who has been immersed in thinking about the complexities of the body in society as well as sociology for a number of years′ - Sociology of Health and Illness This is a milestone in the sociology of the body. The book offers the most comprehensive overview of the field to date and an innovative framework for the analysis of embodiment. It is founded on a revised view of the relation of classical works to the body. It argues that the body should be read as a multi-dimensional medium for the constitution of society. Upon this foundation, the author constructs a series of analyses of the body and the economy, culture, sociality, work, sport, music, food and technology.

Sport ethics prompt discussion of the central principles and ideals by which we all live our lives, and effective leadership in sport is invariably ethical leadership. This fascinating new introduction to sport ethics outlines key ethical theories in the context of sport as well as the fundamentals of moral reasoning.

The global health and fitness industry is worth an estimated $4 trillion. We spend $90 billion each year on health club memberships and $100 billion each year on dietary supplements. In such an industrial climate, lax regulations on the products we are sold (supplements, fad-diets, training programs, gadgets, and garments) result in marketing campaigns underpinned by strong claims and weak evidence. Moreover, our critical faculties are ill-suited to a culture characterized by fake news, social media, misinformation, and bad science. We have become walking, talking prey to 21st-Century Snake Oil salesmen. In The Skeptic’s Guide to Sports Science, Nicholas B. Tiller confronts the claims behind the products and the evidence behind the claims. The author discusses what might be wrong with the sales pitch, the glossy magazine advert, and the celebrity endorsements that our heuristically-wired brains find so innately attractive. Tiller also explores the appeal of the one quick fix, the fallacious arguments that are a mainstay of product advertising, and the critical steps we must take in retraining our minds to navigate the pitfalls of the modern consumerist culture. This informative and accessible volume pulls no punches in scrutinizing the plausibility of, and evidence for, the most popular sports products and practices on the market. Readers are encouraged to confront their conceptualizations of the industry and, by the book’s end, they will have acquired the skills necessary to independently judge the effectiveness of sports-related products. This treatise on the commercialization of science in sport and exercise is a must-read for exercisers, athletes, students, and practitioners who hope to retain their intellectual integrity in a lucrative health and fitness industry that is spiraling out-of-control.

Please note: This text was replaced with a fourth edition. This version is available only for courses using the third edition and will be discontinued at the end of the semester. Taking a unique approach to the presentation of mechanical concepts, Biomechanics of Sport and Exercise eBook, Third Edition With Web Resource, introduces exercise and sport biomechanics in simple terms. By providing mechanics before functional anatomy, the book helps students understand forces and their effects before studying how body structures deal with forces. Students will learn to appreciate the consequences of external forces, how the body generates internal forces to maintain position, and how forces create movement in physical activities. Rather than presenting the principles as isolated and abstract, the text enables students to discover the principles of biomechanics for themselves through observation. By examining ordinary activities firsthand, students will develop meaningful explanations resulting in a deeper understanding of the underlying mechanical concepts. This practical approach combines striking visual elements with clear and concise language to encourage active learning and improved comprehension. This updated edition maintains the organization and features that made previous editions user friendly, such as a quick reference guide of frequently used equations printed on the inside cover and review questions at the end of each chapter to test students’ understanding of important concepts. The third edition also incorporates new features to facilitate learning: • Two online resources incorporate sample problems and use of video to allow practical application of the material. • New art and diagrams enhance problem sets and help students visualize the mechanics of real-world scenarios. • Increased number of review questions (200) and problem sets (120) provide an opportunity for practical application of concepts. • Greater emphasis on the basics, including improved descriptions of conversions and an expanded explanation of the assumption of point mass when modeling objects, provides a stronger foundation for understanding. • New content on deriving kinematic data from video or film and the use of accelerometers in monitoring physical activity keeps students informed of technological advances in the field. Biomechanics of Sport and Exercise eBook, Third Edition With Web Resource, is supplemented with two companion resources that will help students better comprehend the material. Packaged with this e-book, the web resource includes all of the problems from the book, separated by chapter, plus 18 sample problems that guide students step by step through the process of solving. This e-book may also be enhanced with access to MaxTRAQ Educational 2D software for Windows. MaxTRAQ Educational 2D software enables students to analyze and quantify real-world sport movements in video clips and upload their own video content for analysis. The software supplements the final section of the text that bridges the concepts of internal and external forces with the application of biomechanics; it also provides an overview of the technology used in conducting quantitative biomechanical analyses. The MaxTRAQ Educational 2D software must be purchased separately to supplement this e-book at the MaxTRAQ website. Instructors will benefit from an updated ancillary package. An instructor guide outlines each chapter and offers step-by-step solutions to the quantitative problems presented, as well as sample lecture topics, student activities, and teaching tips. A test package makes it easy to prepare quizzes and tests, and an image bank contains most of the figures and tables from the text for use in developing course presentations. Biomechanics of Sport and Exercise, Third Edition, is ideal for those needing a deeper understanding of biomechanics from a qualitative perspective. Thoroughly updated and expanded, this text makes the biomechanics of physical activity easy to understand and apply.

The development and implementation of new technology devices to help professionals, athletes, and non-athletes improve their physical fitness, performance, health, and well-being have emerged in the last few years. This book briefly overviews the current state of the art in technology applied to sports, providing examples, literature syntheses, and recent applications to sports, focused on the most important evidenced-based developments in this area. Attention is drawn to issues and unusual matters that may arise when it comes to technological innovation applied to sport. For the reader, this could be a different perspective on technological progress in physical activity.

This book outlines the effects that technology-induced change will have on sport within the next five to ten years, and provides food for thought concerning what lies further ahead. Presented as a collection of essays, the authors are leading academics from renowned institutions such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Queensland University of Technology, and the University of Cambridge, and practitioners with extensive technological expertise. In their essays, the authors examine the impacts of emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, and robotics on sports and assess how they will change sport itself, consumer behavior, and existing business models. The book will help athletes, entrepreneurs, and innovators working in the sports industry to spot trendsetting technologies, gain deeper insights into how they will affect their activities, and identify the most effective responses to stay ahead of the competition both on and off the pitch.