Description of membership and enacting membership: Seeing-a-lift, being a team

- Describes the members method of suspending action for [seeing-the-lift] of a team mate in the gym.
- Explores two new practices of embodied membership: (1) Cohorting a group and (2) Assembling to watch.
- Highlights the need for body-specific analysis of membership.

Researchers in ethnomethodology have found that accounts of action are not identical to actions themselves. This investigation uses video technology to examine the enactment of membership, distinct from the description of membership. This paper takes up this line of inquiry by examining the way in which in situations of team training, in the sport of powerlifting coming together for seeing-the-lift, gazing on a lifter for an extended period, is an affiliative act. Using video data from several different team training settings, in conjunction with Instagram posts, and drawing on the authors' ethnography and experience in strength training settings, this paper demonstrates that the differing organization of accountabilities in seeing-the-lift highlight that in team settings watching exercise is a collective matter of membership in the team. Thereby this article highlights a practice of embodied action which enacts membership roles in a powerlifting setting.