Athletic Performance Through Strength & Conditioning



Athletic Performance Through Strength & Conditioning

Athletic Performance

At all levels of sport, coaches function as educators, leaders, and strategists. In these roles, they can strongly influence the performance and personal development of the athletes with whom they come in contact. The teaching techniques coaches employ, the goal priorities they establish, the values they exhibit and reinforce, and the relationships they form with athletes have all been topics of psychological research (Mahoney, 2002).

One important area of research is coach instructional techniques. Behavioral researchers have observed and analyzed the techniques employed by outstanding coaches at all levels of competition. They have found that such coaches tend to use approaches that have proven successful in enhancing performance in other performance domains, such as education and business. Systematic goal setting has proven to be a powerful technique for positive skill development. Coaches who employ this technique analyze the task requirements and current skills of the athlete, set specific behavioral (not outcome) goals, develop individualized action plans for developing the needed skills, set timelines for attainment, and closely monitor the targeted behaviors to assess change (Mahoney, 2003). This approach has proven effective from youth sports to the professional level. Other research has shown that behavioral feedback and the use of positive reinforcement enhance the development of sport skills. In general, a positive approach to strengthening desired behaviors through encouragement, sound technical instruction, and positive reinforcement of desired behaviors is preferred by athletes to a negative one featuring criticism, punishment, and an emphasis on avoiding mistakes. Athletes expect coaches to exert control and maintain discipline, but they prefer that it occur within the context of a basically positive coach-athlete relationship.

Much research has focused on youth-sport coaches in recent years. Behavioral coding techniques have been developed, enabling researchers to observe coaches during practices and games, assess their responses to particular classes of situations (e.g., positive and negative athlete behaviors and game developments), and generate behavioral profiles of the coaches based on thousands of their behaviors. They can also obtain athletes' and coaches' ratings of how often the coach engaged in the various behaviors that were coded. Such research has shown that even child athletes are more accurate perceivers of coaching behaviors than are the coaches themselves (Moran, 1996). Studies have also shown that coaching behaviors are more strongly related to athletes' attitudes toward the coach than are won-lost records. Although winning becomes more important in adolescence than at earlier ages, behaviors continue to be more powerful predictors of athletes' evaluations of coaches and desire to play for them again. In line with the positive approach described above, coaches who create a supportive environment through their use of encouragement, technical instruction, positive reinforcement of desired athlete behaviors (including compliance with team rules), and avoidance of punitive behaviors are best liked by athletes. On teams coached by positive coaches, athletes also like their teammates more, possibly because of the socially supportive atmosphere encouraged and modeled by the coach (Mahoney, ...