The First Physical Culturists: Ancient Greek Athletics, Training and Competition

The First Physical Culturists: Ancient Greek Athletics, Training and Competition PDF Author: John Alexander Daulat
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
Physical culture can be regarded as a philosophy, regimen or lifestyle aiming to achieve maximum physical development by exercise, diet and athletic competition. The ancient Greeks were the first to cultivate their bodies to achieve the ideal physique and use physical culture as a form of preventative medicine. This fascinating book highlights how physical culture through exercise and athletics was a fundamental aspect of ancient Greece. This book revisits some of the commonly known aspects of ancient Greece, the Olympic Games and exercise techniques comparing with modern training principles. A unique fusion of sport history and science providing the reader with a detailed knowledge of how to apply these principles to their own exercise training regimen.The lessons found in the history of the world's best athletes are as relevant now as they were during the time of the first Olympic games. Alex Daulat's inviting and informative approach offers insight into ancient exercise, diet, and healthy-living techniques and how it can be applied to modern health and wellness plans. It's often nonfiction that makes history riveting, and The First Physical Culturists is a great must-read book for every history buff and fitness guru.

The First Physical Culturists: Ancient Greek Athletics, Training and Competition

The First Physical Culturists: Ancient Greek Athletics, Training and Competition PDF Author: John Alexander Daulat
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 232

Get Book

Book Description
Physical culture can be regarded as a philosophy, regimen or lifestyle aiming to achieve maximum physical development by exercise, diet and athletic competition. The ancient Greeks were the first to cultivate their bodies to achieve the ideal physique and use physical culture as a form of preventative medicine. This fascinating book highlights how physical culture through exercise and athletics was a fundamental aspect of ancient Greece. This book revisits some of the commonly known aspects of ancient Greece, the Olympic Games and exercise techniques comparing with modern training principles. A unique fusion of sport history and science providing the reader with a detailed knowledge of how to apply these principles to their own exercise training regimen.The lessons found in the history of the world's best athletes are as relevant now as they were during the time of the first Olympic games. Alex Daulat's inviting and informative approach offers insight into ancient exercise, diet, and healthy-living techniques and how it can be applied to modern health and wellness plans. It's often nonfiction that makes history riveting, and The First Physical Culturists is a great must-read book for every history buff and fitness guru.

How to be an Ancient Greek Athlete

How to be an Ancient Greek Athlete PDF Author: Jacqueline Morley
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780329676193
Category : Athletics
Languages : en
Pages : 32

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Book Description
Introduces athletic competition for boys and men in ancient Greece, discussing physical training, rules, etiquette, and such events as wrestling, running, the pentathlon, and chariot racing.

The Athlete in the Ancient Greek World

The Athlete in the Ancient Greek World PDF Author: Reyes Bertolín Cebrián
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806167580
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 247

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Book Description
In the world of sports, the most important component is the athlete. After all, without athletes there would be no sports. In ancient Greece, athletes were public figures, idolized and envied. This fascinating book draws on a broad range of ancient sources to explore the development of athletes in Greece from the archaic period to the Roman Empire. Whereas many previous books have focused on the origins of the Greek games themselves, or the events or locations where the games took place, this volume places a unique emphasis on the athletes themselves—and the fostering of their athleticism. Moving beyond stereotypes of larger-than-life heroes, Reyes Bertolín Cebrián examines the experiences of ordinary athletes, who practiced sports for educational, recreational, or professional purposes. According to Bertolín Cebrián, the majority of athletes in ancient times were young men and mostly single. Similar to today, most athletes practiced sport as part of their schooling. Yet during the fifth century B.C., a major shift in ancient Greek education took place, when the curriculum for training future leaders became more academic in orientation. As a result, argues Bertolín Cebrián, the practice of sport in the Hellenistic period lost its appeal to the intellectual elite, even as it remained popular with large sectors of the population. Thus, a gap emerged between the “higher” and “lower” cultures of sport. In looking at the implications of this development for athletes, whether high-performing or recreational, this erudite volume traverses such wide-ranging fields as history, literature, medicine, and sports psychology to recreate—in compelling detail—the life and lifestyle of the ancient Greek athlete.

Eros and Greek Athletics

Eros and Greek Athletics PDF Author: Thomas F. Scanlon
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195348761
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 468

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Book Description
Ancient Greek athletics offer us a clear window on many important aspects of ancient culture, some of which have distinct parallels with modern sports and their place in our society. Ancient athletics were closely connected with religion, the formation of young men and women in their gender roles, and the construction of sexuality. Eros was, from one perspective, a major god of the gymnasium where homoerotic liaisons reinforced the traditional hierarchies of Greek culture. But Eros in the athletic sphere was also a symbol of life-affirming friendship and even of political freedom in the face of tyranny. Greek athletic culture was not so much a field of dreams as a field of desire, where fervent competition for honor was balanced by cooperation for common social goals. Eros and Greek Athletics is the first in-depth study of Greek body culture as manifest in its athletics, sexuality, and gender formation. In this comprehensive overview, Thomas F. Scanlon explores when and how athletics was linked with religion, upbringing, gender, sexuality, and social values in an evolution from Homer until the Roman period. Scanlon shows that males and females made different uses of the same contests, that pederasty and athletic nudity were fostered by an athletic revolution beginning in the late seventh century B.C., and that public athletic festivals may be seen as quasi-dramatic performances of the human tension between desire and death. Accessibly written and full of insights that will challenge long-held assumptions about ancient sport, Eros and Greek Athletics will appeal to readers interested in ancient and modern sports, religion, sexuality, and gender studies.

Greek Athletics in the Roman World

Greek Athletics in the Roman World PDF Author: Zahra Newby
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191515574
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
The enduring importance of Greek athletic training and competition during the period of the Roman Empire has been a neglected subject in past scholarship on the ancient world. This book examines the impact that Greek athletics had on the Roman world, approaching it through the plentiful surviving visual evidence, viewed against textual and epigraphic sources. It shows that the traditional picture of Roman hostility has been much exaggerated. Instead Greek athletics came to exercise a profound influence upon Roman spectacle and bathing culture. In the Greek east of the empire too, athletics continued to thrive, providing Greek cities with a crucial means of asserting their cultural identity while also accommodating Roman imperial power.

Athletics and Philosophy in the Ancient World

Athletics and Philosophy in the Ancient World PDF Author: Heather L. Reid
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317984951
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 174

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Book Description
This book examines the relationship between athletics and philosophy in ancient Greece and Rome focused on the connection between athleticism and virtue. It begins by observing that the link between athleticism and virtue is older than sport, reaching back to the athletic feats of kings and pharaohs in early Egypt and Mesopotamia. It then traces the role of athletics and the Olympic Games in transforming the idea of aristocracy as something acquired by birth to something that can be trained. This idea of training virtue through the techniques and practice of athletics is examined in relation to Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Then Roman spectacles such as chariot racing and gladiator games are studied in light of the philosophy of Lucretius, Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius. The concluding chapter connects the book’s ancient observations with contemporary issues such as the use of athletes as role models, the relationship between money and corruption, the relative worth of participation and spectatorship, and the role of females in sport. The author argues that there is a strong link between sport and philosophy in the ancient world, calling them offspring of common parents: concern about virtue and the spirit of free enquiry. This book was previously published as a special issue of the Ethics and Sport.

The Victor's Crown

The Victor's Crown PDF Author: David Potter
Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand
ISBN: 0199842736
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 455

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Book Description
Details the role of sports in the classical world from early Greece through the late Roman and early Byzantine empires.

Athletics in the Ancient World

Athletics in the Ancient World PDF Author: Zahra Newby
Publisher: Bristol Classical Press
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 120

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Book Description
Offers an introduction to the many forms that athletics took in the ancient world, and to the sources of evidence by which we can study it. As well as looking at the role of athletics in archaic and classical Greece, this book also covers the periods of the Hellenistic and Roman worlds. The different aspects of athletics are also considered.

Ancient Greek Athletics

Ancient Greek Athletics PDF Author: Stephen Gaylord Miller
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300115291
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
Presenting a survey of sports in ancient Greece, this work describes ancient sporting events and games. It considers the role of women and amateurs in ancient athletics, and explores the impact of these games on art, literature and politics.

Sport, Bodily Culture and Classical Antiquity in Modern Greece

Sport, Bodily Culture and Classical Antiquity in Modern Greece PDF Author: Eleni Fournaraki
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317979737
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
Ancient Greece was the model that guided the emergence of many facets of the modern sports movement, including most notably the Olympics. Yet the process whereby aspects of the ancient world were appropriated and manipulated by sport authorities of nation-states, athletic organizations and their leaders as well as by sports enthusiasts is only very partially understood. This volume takes modern Greece as a case-study and explores, in depth, issues related to the reception and use of classical antiquity in modern sport, spectacle and bodily culture. For citizens of the Greek nation-state, classical antiquity is not merely a vague "legacy" but the cornerstone of their national identity. In the field of sport and bodily culture, since the 1830s there had been persistent attempts to establish firm and direct links between ancient Greek athletics and modern sport through the incorporation of sport in school curricula, the emergence of national sport historiographies as well as the initiatives to revive (in the 19th century) or appropriate (in the 20th) the modern Olympics. Based on fieldwork and unpublished material sources, this book dissects the use and abuse of classical antiquity and sport in constructing national, gender and class identities, and illuminate aspects of the complex modern perceptions of classicism, sport and the body. This book was previously published as a special issue of the International Journal of the History of Sport.