arbiter
JournalsAccount

‘You must feel it. If you do karate without feeling it, it's empty: It doesn’t work’ – Aesthetic experience as motivation for women athletes’ continuity in sports karate

Fabiana Turelli et al.

International Review for the Sociology of Sport2026https://doi.org/10.1177/10126902261430118article
ABDC B
Weight
0.50

Abstract

Women and girls who start practising in martial arts and combat sports (MACS) tend to abandon the practices early after joining them. Women and girls usually are not captivated to remain training, instead facing many challenges that push them out of practices. Yet a few continue. We wonder, then, what makes them do so. We explored this in a study with 14 women elite-level athletes, who were in preparation for the Tokyo 2020 (2021) Olympic Games, having our focus, therefore, on sports karate. Although they had the life project of an Olympic medal as a motivation to persist, this reason showed not to be the most meaningful for them. Thus, in this study we explore what makes women remain practising in sports karate when there seems to be so many challenges and difficulties for their continuity, as shown in the literature. We inquire on reasons that keep women athletes engaged beyond their commitment to a national team, from how they started, passing through some reasons for their permanence somehow more superficial, to finally those reasons that relate to meaningful experiences, as aesthetic experience. We close the paper with a claim that encompasses recommendations to the MACS scholar and practitioner community to turn practices into empowering experiences for women by listening to them.

Open via your library →

Cite this paper

https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1177/10126902261430118

Or copy a formatted citation

@article{fabiana2026,
  title        = {{‘You must feel it. If you do karate without feeling it, it's empty: It doesn’t work’ – Aesthetic experience as motivation for women athletes’ continuity in sports karate}},
  author       = {Fabiana Turelli et al.},
  journal      = {International Review for the Sociology of Sport},
  year         = {2026},
  doi          = {https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1177/10126902261430118},
}

Paste directly into BibTeX, Zotero, or your reference manager.

Flag this paper

‘You must feel it. If you do karate without feeling it, it's empty: It doesn’t work’ – Aesthetic experience as motivation for women athletes’ continuity in sports karate

Flags are reviewed by the Arbiter methodology team within 5 business days.

Evidence weight

0.50

Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40

F · citation impact0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20
M · momentum0.50 × 0.15 = 0.07
V · venue signal0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03
R · text relevance †0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20

† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.