Abstract

Pain has long been associated with sports participation, being analyzed variously as a physical phenomenon, as well as a socio-cultural construct in sport sociological literature. In this article, we employ a sociological-phenomenological approach to generate novel insights into the under-researched domain of ‘lived’ pain in competitive swimming. Analytic attention is paid to specific aspects of pain, including ‘discomfort’ and ‘good pain,’ and how these sensations can be positively experienced and understood by the swimmers, as well as forming an integral part of the everyday routines of competitive swimming. Here, training is seen as ‘work’ in the pursuit of athletic improvement. Discomfort and 'good pain' thus become perceived as by-products of training, providing swimmers with important embodied information on pace, energy levels, and other bodily indicators of performance.