"Serviva un padre da cui apprendere, da criticare, e poi uccidere!" Una filosofia di sport coaching nella boxe popolare

Through a dialogue between a scholar conducting an ethnographic inquiry (Lorenzo) and a boxing trainer (Gabriele), both of whom are boxe popolare (people’s boxing) practitioners, we spotlight Gabriele’s coaching philosophy. The overall aim of the article is to elucidate the pedagogy developed in a boxe popolare gym. Boxe popolare represents a physical cultural practice increasingly popular in contemporary Italy, as it is promoted to general public by leftist grassroots groups. Gabriele provides a unique insight into both sporting and political world of boxe popolare, whose one of the main features consists in experiencing alternative coaching structures and processes according to a do-it-yourself logic. We hence offer Gabriele’s tale to think with and about the pedagogical nature of sport coaching in boxe popolare and beyond. Furthermore, we emphasise how ethnographic inquiry triggers “reflexivity” by arguing that narrative approaches and dialogic methods, in particular, can be adopted for encouraging coaching philosophy self-understanding as well as organizational change.