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lity, exercises on the horizontal bar, the parallel bars and the trampoline
and on other apparatus in the gymnasium, when they are not competitive,
are essentially conquest sports. Much of the satisfaction to be
derived from 'movement training' is perhaps of this kind. The environment
to be conquered is by no menas always outside the performer
but may involve and include his own body with its physical limitations
and its physical possibilities. It has been said that mountaineering is
not so much en exercise in mastering the mountain, as an exercise in
mastering oneself. This may well be true; the environment to be conquered
may not be rock or cliff but the emotions, the fears and the physical
fatigue and limitations of the human body.
There is a fourth category of physical activity which is not usually
referred to as sport but which is now commonly used in physical education
and which must be mentioned here because of its bearing upon
sport. I refer to those physical activités where the aim is expression of
feelings or ideas. Dance and mime are obvious examples. The expression
may be self expression or the interpretation of an author's, composer's
or choreographer's ideas. The expression may be highly stereotyped as
in a Highland Fling or it may be spontaneous as in Ann Driver's Music
and Movement. Again it may be that the very act of expression is satisfying
whether or not there is anyone to observe, or it may be that
satisfaction is only to be found in communicating ideas to another, to
an audience.
Now it is clear that my categories of sport are not hard and fast
It may be, for instance, that a hockey player expresses herself in a game
of hockey and derives her satisfaction from that element in the game
as much as from the effort to be 'better than'. It may be too that some
groups will carry dance, which I have classified as 'expressive', to competition
and will derive satisfaction from winning such a competition
and improving themselves to be 'better than'. It is also clear that some
runners, particularly cross-country runners regard their sport as an
exercise of self conquest rather than a competitive event against others.
Again a sport may begin by being a conquest sport as in the early stages
of swimming and may gradually change for the individual concerned
into a competitive sport as swimming races or water polo make their
appeal. None of these qualifications, however, seem to me to affect
the validity of the main fourfold classification.
This classification may help us to put in perspective the very sharp
difference in approach to physical education and to sport by men and
women. Undoubtedly in our cultural pattern more women than men
derive more satisfaction from expressive activities involving shape,
rhythm and style and more men than women derive satisfaction from
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