Pigskin and Black Belts: Can Martial Arts Provide Insight for Competitive and Aggressive Sports like American Football?

Competitive and aggressive sports provide recreational sport contexts for youth and adolescents across the globe. One of the most popular recreational sports worldwide is martial arts, a sport characterized as aggressive yet backed in the traditional form of the sport by a principled philosophy. The researchers engaged in naturalistic inquiry through full participant observation in a traditional martial arts club. The purpose of the research was to closely examine the teaching of traditional martial arts to determine whether lessons could be derived for competitive and aggressive sports like American football. Philosophical and psychological themes emerged from the research, including a counterbalanced ethic of nonviolence and restraint and achievement orientations reflective of the researchers’ sport backgrounds, respectively