ABSTRACT
Which would be the best strategy for body education? This was a debate that was increasingly becoming important in a country that needed to forge its identitary discourses in the early decades of the 20thcentury. Analyzing this debate can help us better understand the projects of modernity in conflict in Brazil in that period. Based on this scenario, this study aims to discuss considerations about sports and gymnastics in articles published in the journals Educação Physica and Revista de Educação Física do Exército. As a temporal cut we have selected the decade of 1930, a crucial moment in the process of the construction of the country's identitary representations with regards to the structuring of physical education and the national sporting system.
Keywords: History; Education; Physical Education