Learn about 20 different ways in which you can support, encourage and praise your athletes.
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Have you ever noticed players not getting on well within a team but are key players? They perform well on the biggest stage and enjoy the admiration and have a massive amount of self-worth! Narcissists perceive themselves to be exceptional performers and seek opportunities for personal glory. If a narcissists’ performance is clearly identifiable within […]
The focus of attention is influential in how well athletes learn sport-related and movement skills (movement efficiency, such as force production, speed, and endurance) and how well those skills can be executed (movement effectiveness, including balance and accuracy; Wulf, 2013). Therefore, it is important for coaches to know and understand where athletes should direct their […]
Coaching is far more than just teaching sports skills to individuals and teams. It is also about inspiring, giving confidence and motivating others by building quality relationships. You need to poses the emotional expertise in order to build those relationships with an individual or within a sports team. In sports psychology this emotional expertise is […]
The term ‘culture’ is thrown around a lot in sport. However, what does it mean exactly and, as coaches, how do we create and maintain it? While it is, largely, accepted that developing culture is important, particularly as we progress up the sporting pyramid to elite levels, there are common mistakes made. It is essential that coaches have […]
Most coaches that I’ve encountered have what they call a “coaching philosophy” which seems to me a quite broad and unexplained term. It can be anything from “give 110%” to an entire page of rules and regulations, and everything in between. I see it so often that I wonder if that broad term can help […]
Mental toughness is hard to quantify and define, and it is increasingly evident that the concept can mean different things to different people. UK researchers Jones et al. (2002) carried out an in-depth study with top international athletes and concluded mental toughness to be: ‘having the natural or developed psychological edge that enables you to […]
“Motivation will almost always beat mere talent” Norman Ralph Augustine Motivation is a key subject for athletes, coaches and sporting organisations. In sport psychology, we attempt to define and measure the ‘right motivation’. The self-determination theory is one such attempt to define the ‘right’ motivation, suggesting that more self-determined forms of motivation lead to positive […]