Embodied interactional competence in boxing practice: Coparticipants’ joint accomplishment of a teaching and learning activity

•Examination of the nature of interactional competences in a sport domain.•Competences viewed as the ability to participate in activities.•How a coach and a boxer coordinate their behaviors at each moment.•Competences include multimodal resources regarded as relevant by participants.•Boxing knowledge acquired over time in the gym as a competency.

Based on a Conversation Analysis (CA) inspired, moment-by-moment analysis, this paper examines how a coach and a boxer utilize their interactional competences in order to interpret each other’s actions and co-construct their boxing practice. Interactional competences examined in this paper involve: (1) the use of multimodal resources, (2) the skillful organization of different parts of a single speaker’s body, and (3) professional knowledge regarding boxing practice in the gym concerned. The first two components of competence are contingent on a particular interaction, while the final component is potentially transportable to other contexts. Whether these resources are contingent or not, both a speaker and a hearer orient to them in their sense-making processes; thus, they are public across different participants.