08/24/2021
Un bon sommaire des composantes de la psychologie du sport!
Sport and performance psychology is, perhaps, as broad as it is deep. It can be enormously challenging for coaches to make sense of.
I’m passionate about helping coaches make sense of it. With that in mind, here’s some psychological frameworks and theories associated with engagement, learning, and performance, all of which may be useful for coaches to learn.
1. Psychological Skills Training (or Mental Skills Training):
- Concentration/Attention control
- Arousal/activation
- Relaxation
- Imagery
- Performance routines
2. Harwood’s 5 C’s:
- Concentration
- Control
- Confidence
- Commitment
- Communication
3. Psychological Characteristics of Developing Excellence (Collins & McNamara)
- Effective & Controllable Imagery
- Focus & Distraction Control
- Realistic Performance Evaluation & Attribution
- Role Clarity & Commitment
- Planning & Organisation
- Goal-Setting & Self-reinforcement
- Quality Practice
- Resilience & Self-Regulation
- Creating & Using Support Networks
4. Self-Efficacy (Bandura) sources:
- Past Experiences
- Verbal Persuasion
- Vicarious Experience
- Physical & Emotional States
- Imaginal Experiences (added later)
5. Challenge & Threat State (Jones et al) sources:
- self-efficacy
- self-control
- approach/avoidant
- social support
Others to consider:
6. Pressure Inurement Training (Fletcher & Sarkar)
7. Individual Zone of Optimal Functioning (Hanin)
8. Ideal Performance State (Loehr)
9. Attentional Style (Nideffer)
10. Mental Toughness (Steve Bull)
11. Mental Toughness (Clough & Strycharczyk)
Pick one! Give yourself 10-20 minutes a week for three months to study it, and to amalgamate this research into your coaching practice. A simple Google search can help. A paper or book may suffice.
Doing so will help you improve your ability to be evidence-informed with relation to your delivery of biopsychosocial processes within your coaching practice.
This isn’t easy to do but it’s worth the effort. It’s worth it because you can then reflect on your biopsychosocial delivery with a greater sense of efficacy. What can that reflection look like? Here’s some questions you can ask yourself:
-what did I deliver?
-how did I do that?
-why did I do it that way and what alternatives were there?
-how did it go?
-how might I do it next time?
Five questions to ask yourself following an interaction or a coaching practice. Five questions to help you become a student of yourself as a coach, and a student of coaching from a biopsychsocial perspective (referencing the framework or theoretical template you’re working from).
So, in summary, give yourself a small window to learn more from the world of psychology. Become evidence-informed. Then build from there...
