  20 MINUTES SPORTS COACHING DIPLOMA

Module 05: The Psychology of Sports

Coaching – Part 2

Motivating Athletes
Motivation is re ected in three behaviours:

Choice: Motivation shows in the choices athletes make, choosing to play sport, to practice, to set challenging
goals, and to train even in the o -season.
E ort: Motivation is also re ected in how much e ort athletes give, how intensely they train, compete, and
strive to achieve their goals.
Persistence: Motivation level can be seen in how long athletes persist at striving to attain their goals, even in
the face of adversity and obstacles.

Great coaches know that they don’t give athletes motivation. Rather, they create the conditions or team climate
in which athletes motivate themselves. Coaches do this by recognising the importance of intrinsic motivation,
which stems from the sheer pleasure and inner satisfaction athletes experience from participating in sport.
Intrinsically motivated athletes play for the love of the game. They enjoy the process of learning and mastering
di cult sport skills and play for the pride they feel when working hard toward accomplishing a challenging goal.
They also nd sport stimulating and feel exhilarated when engaged in it.

Some athletes play sport primarily because they enjoy being with their friends and being part of a team, and
coaches can use this need as a powerful motivator. Here are some guidelines:
 Recognise that these athletes are usually responsive to team goals. Although performing well and winning
may not be as signi cant to them as is identifying with the team, they will internalise team goals because of
their desire to be part of the group.
Arrange activities that allow athletes to get to know each other and spend time together. Social activities are a
good way to help ful l the need for acceptance and belonging.
Include team-building activities to help build cohesion. By working together toward a common goal that is not
directly related to sport, athletes can learn to appreciate previously overlooked strengths in themselves and
their teammates.
Create an atmosphere on the team where athletes feel they are playing with each other rather than against
one another.
Have returning athletes serve as mentors to new athletes.
Ensure that all athletes feel they are important members of the team and that their roles are important and
valued.

Handling Success and Failure

Several pieces of the motivation puzzle are now in place. You understand that the key to developing and
sustaining intrinsic motivation is to meet athletes’ needs. With this knowledge, you can work to strengthen
motivation and avoid undermining it.

You can use extrinsic motivators to increase intrinsic motivation if you structure them properly. The next piece of
the motivation puzzle is understanding how athletes respond to success and failure. Motivating athletes is much
easier in success than in failure, but there is a wrinkle: Although some athletes respond to success by feeling
even more motivated, others get complacent or seem una ected.

Athletes want to demonstrate competence and to avoid demonstrating a lack of competence. In doing so, they
can adopt either mastery or an outcome orientation.
Mastery-oriented athletes de ne success based on personal standards in areas such as e ort, improvement,
personal development, and task mastery. These athletes are motivated by the feelings they get when they work
hard, improve, and eventually accomplish a personally challenging goal. Although mastery-oriented athletes
enjoy winning, they also feel successful if they play well but lose the game.

Success seekers are outcome-oriented athletes who are con dent in their ability to succeed. They feel talented
and thus satis ed when they accomplish tasks that other athletes struggle with. They attribute success to ability
and talent, which is con dence-building in times of success but undermines motivation in times of failure. Since
few athletes can outperform others consistently, basing success on social comparison makes it di cult for
outcome-oriented athletes to maintain a strong sense of ability.

Failure avoiders are outcome-oriented athletes who doubt their abilities. Rather than striving to demonstrate
success, they focus on avoiding failure because they doubt they can compare well with others. These athletes
have low motivation.

The need for acceptance and belonging can be met by making sure each athlete feels he or she has an important
role on the team and by developing team cohesion. Intrinsic motivation is enhanced by creating a supportive
autonomy environment rather than a controlling environment. This can be done by increasing athlete ownership,
providing choice, and soliciting athlete input.

Extrinsic rewards can be used to enhance intrinsic motivation if they raise perceived competence. But if they
lower perceived competence or are viewed as manipulative or controlling, they will undermine intrinsic
motivation. The key is to provide rewards that sincerely and appropriately recognise performance
accomplishments and things athletes did well.

Stress Management
Most coaches and athletes have a basic idea of what stress is, but they may not fully understand its intricacies.
Stress is a substantial imbalance between what they believe is demanded of them (competitive demand) and
what they perceive their capabilities to be for meeting those demands (personal control), for situations in which
success is important. 

Coaching is a stressful profession. Coaches often demonstrate near maximal heart rates during competition
while just sitting on the bench. Many critical situations require athletes and their coaches to manage stress if
they want to perform their best successfully. 

Stress management is the process of reducing or eliminating the negative consequences of stress, particularly
physical anxiety and mental anxiety, in order to feel better, experience positive emotions, and perform up to
capabilities. Stress management strategies can target each component of the stress model: competitive demand,
personal control, and coping strategies. You should help your athletes use problem management strategies
whenever possible because they reduce or eliminate the sources of stress.

If the stressor can’t be changed, or athletes lack the capability to meet competitive demands, they can still
modify how they view the situation in order to manage their emotions. Emotion management can help in these
instances by reducing unwanted muscular tension, lowering excessive autonomic arousal, and countering
negative thoughts.

Coaches should follow stress management guidelines to manage stress. The guidelines may be listed as:

Help athletes set realistic process and performance goals that keep success challenging but realistic and
personally controllable.
Assist athletes in minimising unnecessary importance and uncertainty.
Develop athletes’ basic problem-solving skills.
Use mental plans to deal with common problem situations and create a structured approach to unexpected
problems.
Help athletes develop and automate a total emotion management package to e ectively manage both types
of anxiety.
Teach athletes to use integrated coping responses made up of counterarguments they think as they inhale, a
transition phrase “so,” and repetition of the relaxation cue word as they exhale to manage emotions.
Select problem management strategies when obstacles are surmountable, time is available, and performance
capabilities meet competitive demands.
 Choose emotion management strategies when time is limited, obstacles are insurmountable, and personal
control fails to meet competitive demands.
Athletes should automate their TEMP by using imagery practice, sports practice simulation, and available
competitive opportunities.

Two major misconceptions about stress are viewing it as equivalent to high competitive demand and viewing it as
the physiological and psychological responses experienced in demanding competitive situations. In fact, stress is
a substantial imbalance between what people perceive is being demanded of them (i.e., competitive demand)
and what they perceive their capabilities are for meeting those demands (i.e., personal control), for situations in
which success is important.

Competitive demand is what is being asked of performers and how those demands, particularly, the importance
and uncertainty of competitive goals, a ect physical and psychological well-being and sports success.

Personal control refers to the resources athletes have available to them, particularly control over surmounting
sources of stress as well as the performance capabilities required to reach valued goals.

Enhancing the Athletes Self-Con dence

The rst step toward helping your athletes become more self-con dent is to understand what self-con dence is.
It is also important to understand how self-con dence improves performance. Most coaches and athletes think
self-con dence means believing they will win or outperform their opponent. One of the tenets of western sport is
that athletes should always believe they will win; to think otherwise is akin to sacrilege. In fact, conventional
wisdom dictates that if athletes don’t believe they can defeat their opponent, then they are thinking like losers,
which will cause them to become losers.

This mistaken belief often leads either to a lack of self-con dence or to overcon dence. True self-con dence is
an athlete’s realistic belief or expectation about achieving success. Self-con dence is an accumulation of one’s
unique achievements across many di erent tasks and situations, coupled with preparation for the upcoming
event, which enables one to develop speci c expectations of achieving future success.

The more con dent athletes are, the better they perform. But self-con dence also indirectly improves
performance because of its relationship with three other traits: anxiety, motivation, and concentration. Sports
coaches should keep in mind that:

When self-con dence is high, mental anxiety is low, and vice versa. Optimally con dent athletes experience
fewer self-doubts and worries than other athletes and are thus more likely to interpret high arousal positively,
as readiness or excitement.
Optimally con dent athletes have a strong intrinsic motivation to develop their game and continue to
succeed. Di dent athletes do not feel competent enough to be optimally motivated, and overcon dent
athletes feel they are so talented that they do not need to work on their skills.
Optimally con dent athletes likely have optimal concentration. Their con dence enables them to block out
most distractions and helps them to focus on the attentional cues necessary to play their best. This allows
them to execute skills more automatically, which can lead to ow.

Conceptualising Self-Con dence

Coaches must work with athletes who have a wide range of self-con dence. You probably relish the opportunity
to work with competitors who have an ideal level of self-con dence (optimal con dence). But most teams must
also rely on performers who have too little con dence (under-con dence, or di dence) or too much
(overcon dence), either of which prevents them from performing their best. You can think of self-con dence as
falling on a category, with di dence at one end, overcon dence at the other, and optimal self-con dence in
between.

Optimal con dence is based on competence and preparation. Athletes must have the knowledge, skills, and
strategies to perform at a high level, and they must be fully prepared to use that knowledge and execute those
techniques and tactics in the upcoming competition.

Di dence is under-con dence that comes primarily from the inability to develop adequate knowledge,
techniques, and tactics for success. Di dent athletes are full of self-doubts and play not to fail rather than
striving to succeed. Overcon dence comes in two forms. In ated con dence occurs when performers honestly
believe they are better than they are. False con dence is seen in di dent athletes who attempt to hide their
insecurities by acting overcon dent.

Developing Athletes’ Self-Con dence

Developing self-con dence is easiest when you implement a systematic program involving education,
acquisition, and implementation phases. Self-con dence during competition hinges on appraisal and coping
skills.

Education Phase

This phase of developing athletes’ self-con dence has two objectives: to provide solid general education about
con dence and to encourage athletes to assess their con dence patterns. First, use a team meeting to educate
your athletes about self-con dence and how it bene ts performance in practice and competition.

Emphasise the importance of performance-based con dence and layout the major strategies for enhancing
con dence. Sell the importance of boosting con dence by discussing times when your athletes could have
bene ted from greater con dence.

In terms of personal education, your athletes should develop a good understanding of their own self-con dence
and the role that competence and preparation play in optimising their con dence and performing their best.
They should become aware of the factors that boost their con dence and those that de ate it. Coaches should
recommend that athletes heighten their self-awareness by systematically logging key information about their
con dence level and subsequent performance.

Acquisition Phase

Con dence doesn’t develop overnight, and building athletes’ con dence can be challenging for coaches who
have many other things to worry about. However, because you know how important self-con dence is to optimal
performance, you probably are willing to spend time on con dence development. If initial e orts are successful,
your athletes will become more enthusiastic about future mental training e orts, particularly for building
con dence. Such e orts are most e ective when athletes follow these ve steps:

Prioritise the four con dence development strategies based on their e ectiveness for each athlete.
Develop a plan for using the highest-priority strategy to boost con dence.
 Try the strategy for a week in practice and competition.
Assess how well this con dence-building strategy works and ne-tune it in order to maximise its
e ectiveness.
Use this strategy systematically until con dence is optimal for each athlete.

Implementation Phase

During this phase, you help your athletes automate their con dence development and maintenance skills.
Acquiring con dence skills is of little value if athletes don’t practice them enough to automate them. Automating
con dence is tedious and time-consuming, but it is necessary for developing optimal con dence that won’t crack
at crunch time. In pressure-packed situations, performers must have the optimal con dence that allows them to
react instinctively, relying on the execution of automatic responses with minimal conscious thought.

Final Thoughts: Developing Ultimate Con dence

The most important self-con dence athletes can possess is not the conviction that they will always win or never
err, but the belief that they can correct errors and improve consistently by working to become the best they can
be. Athletes need to believe in their ability to improve by developing their physical and mental skills and
preparing to the fullest extent possible.

Armed with con dence in their ability to become competent and prepared, athletes will not be intimidated by
opponents’ successes or disturbed by their own temporary failures. Wins and losses will be given appropriate
weight in view of athletes’ long-term objectives. Competitors will more likely view a particular contest and its
outcome as a test to measure their progress as they pursue their objectives. Winning the game is no longer the
most important objective; becoming better is.