As in the neighbouring regions, physical culture in present-day Slovakia evolved as an educational initiative and profited from growing middle-class leisure time and improved equipment. Physical exercise was promoted as a health-building policy and proposed as a useful part of the school curriculum from the late 18th century onwards. At a later stage, Ján Kollár included compulsory physical education in his draft for school reforms of 1849 (not published until 1903). Kollár shunned the Turnen concept, associated as it was with with Jahn’s demagogy, and replaced it with the term “gymnastics”.

The cities were the main domain of gymnastics and sports activities. Shooting clubs had been present in several towns in Upper Hungary since the 16th century. In the first half of the 19th century, the first private fencing and gymnastics institutes were set up; swimming lessons and the first regular races were also organized. These activities may be regarded as the forerunners of sports clubs that began to be established from the 1860s onwards. They were mainly used by the German- and Hungarian-speaking townspeople, certain elite associations (rowing or horse-racing in Pressburg) and the nobility (rowing). In the decades following the Austro-Hungarian settlement of 1867, the Hungarian language began to prevail in sports clubs in Slovakia; all became part of the countrywide sports associations based in Budapest. After the introduction of compulsory gymnastics teaching in primary schools (1868), the number of playgrounds and gyms gradually grew in Upper Hungary.

Many Slovak Lutheran national activists had trained in Jahn-style gymnastic clubs during their studies in the German lands. They realized their importance for national mobilization (as, for example Kollár following his presence at the Wartburg in 1817). After returning home, the climate was hostile to such associations; their activities in the field of physical culture were limited to “national tourism”. In accordance with their Romantic worship and national appropriation of nature, they nurtured the cult of the Tatras (i.e. today’s High Tatras, sometimes extended to apply to the whole of the Carpathians). In the Slovak nationalist discourse, the Tatras symbolized the centre point of the Slavic world, which compensated for the absence of a clearly defined “Slovak national area”. One of the first literary almanacs of the Štúr generation was named after this cult mountain range (Tatranka, 1832-47); so was the first “nationwide” cultural association (Tatrín, 1844-48), and later also a choral and student association. Collective walks to the peak of one of the majestic mountains in the Tatras, Kriváň (2499 m), received great publicity in literary almanacs and nationally-minded periodicals from the 1830s onwards, especially after the famous pilgrimage-hike in August 1841 organized by Gašpar Fejérpataky-Belopotocký, with Štúr as one of the participants. The tradition of national walks to Kriváň was maintained throughout the 19th century and still exists today in a modified form.

The most popular physical activity in Slovakia was dancing. In the second half of the 19th century, dances in pairs were popular in the cities, connoting an individually energetic lifestyle: polka, waltz, mazurka, quadrille. The basic type of dance was the Csárdás, which was also popular in rural areas. It was seen by scholars as a national Hungarian dance, and therefore the Slovak national activists attempted to rename it (for example to Bystrík, unsuccessfully) or to replace it with the men’s Odzemok dance (in some regions using the name Hajduk or Cossack). Dancing parties allowed national representation through costumes. Slovak ladies who would normally wear contemporary bourgeois clothing would wear folk costumes at such festivals. On such occasions, men would wear “Slovak shirts” with embroidered fronts. In contrast to the dress sense of Hungarian nationalists, who invoked their glorious aristocratic past and modern progress, Slovak national activists relied on an idealized folk culture, also in traditional costumes, singing folk and national songs, dancing the Odzemok, jumping over campfires and ritual rafting. Physical exercise associations did not form part of this, although the nationally oriented media produced positive reports on the Sokol (“Falcon”) movement throughout the Slavic lands.

The educator and scientist Ivan Branislav Zoch (1843-1921) promoted the establishment of gymnastic clubs following the example of the Prague Sokol, and when he became professor of the Slovak Lutheran grammar school in Revúca, he introduced physical education for boys (and later for girls) and organized public Sokol-type public presentations with his pupils. He wrote the first Slovak textbook on physical education for primary schools and laid the foundations for Slovak physical education terminology (1873). When, in 1874, the Hungarian government closed all three Slovak grammar schools, the textbooks and public exercise fell into disuse.

The lack of development of physical culture in the Slovak national movement had many causes. The nationally conscious bourgeoisie was weak, and Slovak secondary schools and the central cultural institutions (Matica Slovenská) were prohibited. The Slovak-speaking majority population were peasants without the means or the leisure, or, for that matter, the cultural motivation, to accept sports as a novel pursuit. Slovaks were also put off sports by the Hungarian sports displays during the pompous millennium celebrations of 1896; and the post-1867 Hungarian state supported only those organizations that helped to consolidate the Magyarist state doctrine. Repeated attempts to establish an organization along the lines of Sokol (1871 Martin, Revúca; 1911 Tisovec; 1912 Martin, Skalica) met with a government prohibition owing to what was felt to be their “Pan-Slavic” nature. Conditions were different in the Austrian Habsburg lands; there, the Sokol movement could develop undisturbed and attain mass proportions, spreading from the Czech lands to Slovenia and Galicia, where there were Polish and Ruthenian/Ukrainian branches. In Vienna, the local Slovak students were engaged in Sokol; there, the Jánošík Slovak Workers Gymnastics Club (named after the legendary outlaw) was established in 1914. Within the Hungarian Kingdom, only the Croatian Sokol was authorized (Croatia having gained partial internal autonomy in 1868), along with the Czech Sokol of Budapest (1895). Some Slovaks would also attend, and its choir was directed by a Slovak teacher. Slovak Sokol units emerged after 1890 amongst emigrants in the United States.

During the first Czechoslovak Republic, these constraints disappeared, and physical education organizations proved to be a Czechoslovak nation-building tool. By 1921, there were 101 Slovak Sokol units with over 22,000 members. Gradually, in addition to physical education, other sports such as volleyball, basketball and handball were added. Through meetings and other public exercises, its own media, lectures, amateur theatre and especially the puppet theatre, concerts and dancing parties, Sokol also spread the idea of a unitary Czechoslovak nation. The Czech Sokol movement also organized trips to Slovakia to visit Slovak Sokol members in southern Slovakia, where there was a large Hungarian minority. The Social Democratic Union of Workers’ Gymnastic Units supported Czechoslovak statehood, whilst the Communist Federation of Workers’ Gymnastic Units was in favour of proletarian internationalism. The autonomist Slovak People’s Party under Hlinka promoted the Orol (“Eagle”) movement. Orol in Slovakia was part of a Czechoslovak Catholic organization but emphasized Slovak national independence. In the case of physical education, throughout the interwar period, there was a Czech-Slovak dissonance, and sporting competitions were dominated by Czechoslovak-Hungarian differences.