Blog #3

Blog #3

My second group I decided to observe was athletes next. Instead of just observing them within the athletic building, I observed them within the gym that is open for everyone as well to see a difference. I also observed the difference between male and female teams within the athletic space, to find a difference between the two. The field house is an athletic facility strictly for athletes as stated before, so I am able to observe how athletes are able to workout and interact with each other. Being apart of the football team, I was able to make my first observation easily, since I am already involved with working out.

Watching my fellow teammates lift and workout helped me make some key observations. Firstly, the field house weight room is under supervision by our strength and conditioning coach. This puts the idea of surveillance in your head, that the coach is always watching you. So everyone wasn’t goofing off at all, conversations were being made but only briefly. While lifting, you can see everyone is working hard. The coach is pushing you to go hard and stay focused on your technique. The players are pushing each other by screaming words of encouragement and jumping around as someone completes a really heavy set, and bombarde the athlete and they all start jumping around screaming together.

Now going to Goldstein with a few of my fellow teammates, the energy is kinds of different. Here it is more lackadaisical than being in the field house weight room, and mainly it is like that because it isn’t an organized lift. There are no eyes watching or anyone there to ridicule you if you do an exercise wrong. It’s just you and your teammates getting extra work in. While in the gym, I noticed that conversations were flowing a lot more freely, even in the middle of the exercises. Since we are not stuck to a certain workout, they were able to do their own workouts as well. We also had our phones as well, but for music purposes. Normal students that recognized the few of us came up and said hello, starting short conversations before doing their own workouts.  Comparing both environments, I can see that a good amount of work is being done. However, in the field house it is more high-intensity energy and little distractions. In the open gym the intensity isn’t as high and there are more distractions from the crowded area, the phones, and the lack of surveillance present. These observations shows that the male athletes get a lot more done in the athletic facility, showing a prime reason why it is needed for them.

Football athletes lifting in the field house