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Applying Educational Psychology in Coaching Athletes
440 Pages
Applying Educational Psychology in Coaching Athletes discusses how to improve coaching success and athletic performance through the application of teaching principles and theories. Delving deeper than an explanation of what athletes learn and what coaches teach, Applying Educational Psychology in Coaching Athletes offers insight into the how of athletes’ learning and coaching by considering
• principles of psychology that drive the emotions, motivation, expectations, self-worth, and relationships of athletes;
• application of principles of psychology to the motor learning process; and
• use of principles of educational psychology to improve sport expertise and coaching success.
A three-time U.S. Olympic coach and veteran collegiate coach, Huber infuses his own experience in applying theories of educational psychology in working with individual athletes, as well as world-class national and international teams. With an engaging presentation and strong practical applications, Huber assists coaching students and practicing coaches in utilizing educational psychology as a platform for improving coaching skills.
Applying Educational Psychology in Coaching Athletes introduces the idea of the developing coach as both teacher and learner, and how coaching principles and a strong coaching philosophy provide a foundation for effective management and decision-making. By considering the theories that drive successful coaching, developing coaches gain focus, motivation, and guidance as they learn how a thoughtful coach provides the structure and discipline to make athletes more successful on the field of play.
Throughout the text, Huber focuses on how athletes learn, considering theories of motivation, behaviorism, cognition, and humanism, and the interplay between emotions and motor learning and performance. Each chapter opens with a coaching related anecdote that readers can relate to in order to highlight the significance of the theory under consideration. After careful explanation of each theory, Huber details concrete examples, guidelines, and specific applications for coaching. In addition to summary information, each chapter concludes with ‘Your Coaching Toolbox,’ which focuses readers on ways to incorporate their newly gained knowledge into their interactions with athletes.
Applying Educational Psychology in Coaching Athletes is unmatched in its depth of insight into the teaching and learning process in sport and how to put it into practice. By examining how athletes learn and coaches teach, the text helps coaches understand how to maximize athlete performance and increase their athletic success.
Part I. Athletes and Theories of Motivation
Chapter 1. The Unstoppable Athlete: Applying Motivation Theory
Behaviorism and Motivation
Cognitivism and Motivation
Social Cognitive Learning and Motivation
Humanism and Motivation
The Unstoppable Athlete
The Unstoppable Coach
Your Coaching Toolbox
The Scientific and Artful Coach
If You Remember Only Three Things
Suggested Readings
Chapter 2. The Resilient Athlete: Applying Attribution Theory
Attribution Theory
Beliefs about Ability
Perceived Causality and Emotional Response
Attributions, Achievement Motivation, and Self-Worth
Applying Attribution Theory to Increase Athlete Motivation
Self-Determination Theory
The Resilient Athlete
The Resilient Coach
Your Coaching Toolbox
The Scientific and Artful Coach
If You Remember Only Three Things
Suggested Readings
Part II. Athletes and Theories of Behaviorism
Chapter 3. The Salivating Athlete: Applying Respondent Conditioning Theory
Pavlov’s Classical (Respondent) Conditioning
Positive Respondent Conditioning Examples
Applying Respondent Conditioning Theory in Coaching Athletes
Thorndike’s Connectionism Theory
Applying Connectionism Theory in Coaching Athletes
Conclusion
The Salivating Athlete
The Salivating Coach
Your Coaching Toolbox
The Scientific and Artful Coach
If You Remember Only Three Things
Suggested Readings
Chapter 4. The Athlete in the Skinner Box: Applying Operant Conditioning Theory
Skinner’s Operant Conditioning Theory
Types of Reinforcement Schedules
Extrinsic Feedback as Reinforcement
Applying Extrinsic Feedback Using Operant Conditioning in Coaching Athletes
Instrinsic Feedback as Reinforcement
Four Types of Athlete Behavior Worth Conditioning
Applying Operant Conditioning Theory in Coaching Athletes
The Athlete in the Skinner Box
The Coach in the Skinner Box
Your Coaching Toolbox
The Scientific and Artful Coach
If You Remember Only Three Things
Suggested Readings
Part III. Athletes and Theories of Cognitive Learning
Chapter 5. The Imitating Athlete: Applying Social Cognitive Theory
Social Cognitive Theory
Four Processes of Observational Learning
Sources of Reinforcement
Effects of Imitation
Applying Observational Learning Theory to Coaching Athletes
The Imitating Athlete
The Imitating Coach
Your Coaching Toolbox
The Scientific and Artful Coach
If You Remember Only Three Things
Suggested Readings
Chapter 6. The Supercomputing Athlete: Applying Cognitive Learning Theory
The Computer as Metaphor
Three Memory Components: The Basic Information Processing Model
Three Stages of Motor Learning
Three Cognitive Motor Learning Theories
Three Stages of Information Processing for Motor Performance
The Supercomputing Athlete
The Supercomputing Coach
Your Coaching Toolbox
The Scientific and Artful Coach
If You Remember Only Three Things
Suggested Readings
Chapter 7. The Expert Athlete: Applying Expertise Theory and Deliberate Practice
Expertise Theory
Characteristics of Expertise
Characteristics of Deliberate Practice
Engaging in Deliberate Practice: Three Phases of Development
Creating Deliberate Practice
The Expert Athlete
The Expert Coach
Your Coaching Toolbox
The Scientific and Artful Coach
If You Remember Only Three Things
Suggested Readings
Part IV. Athletes and Theories of Humanism
Chapter 8. The Fully Human Athlete: Applying Humanistic Learning Theory
Humanistic Psychology
Applying Four Common Emphases of Humanistic Coaching
Nondirective Model of Coaching
Constructivism
Pyramid of Teaching Success in Sport (PofTSS)
The Fully Human Athlete
The Fully Human Coach
Your Coaching Toolbox
The Scientific and Artful Coach
If You Remember Only Three Things
Suggested Readings
Chapter 9. The Emotional Athlete: Applying Emotion Theory
Emotions and Performance
Arousal, Anxiety, and Performance
Consequences of Emotions
Applying Emotion Theory in Coaching Athletes
The Emotional Athlete
The Emotional Coach
Your Coaching Toolbox
The Scientific and Artful Coach
If You Remember Only Three Things
Suggested Readings
Part V. Developing Your Coaching Skills and Philosophy
Chapter 10. The Principled Coach: Applying Principles of Practice Management and Discipline
Management and Discipline
The Practice Environment
Applying Preventive Strategies in Coaching Athletes: Heading Them Off at the Pass
Applying Corrective Strategies in Coaching Athletes: When It’s Too Late to Head Them Off at the Pass
The Bridled Athlete
The Principled Coach
Your Coaching Toolbox
The Scientific and Artful Coach
If You Remember Only Three Things
Suggested Readings
Chapter 11. The Philosophical Coach: Applying Wisdom
Considerations for Developing a Coaching Philosophy
Developing Ethics Within Your Philosophy
Developing Values Within Your Philosophy
The Values of Sport
The Philosophical Coach
The Wise Coach
Your Coaching Toolbox
The Scientific and Artful Coach
If You Remember Only Three Things
Suggested Readings
Jeffrey J. Huber, PhD, is head diving coach and an adjunct assistant professor in the department of counseling and educational psychology and the department of kinesiology at Indiana University at Bloomington. As an educational psychologist, Huber has taught courses in educational psychology for both undergraduate and graduate teacher and coach candidates and is a guest lecturer in courses on exercise science, philosophy of coaching, motor learning, and theories of high-level performance.
Huber received his doctorate in educational psychology and master’s of education in curriculum and instruction from the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. A collegiate coach for over 35 years, Huber has been the recipient of the Big Ten, NCAA, USA, and USOC National Coach of the Year awards. Huber was named the U.S. National Coach of the Year 11 times and has served as U.S. coach for the Sydney (2000), Athens (2004), and Beijing (2008) Olympic Games.
In his free time, Huber enjoys running, weightlifting, swimming, and writing. He and his wife, Lesa, reside in Bloomington.
"I highly recommend Dr. Huber's book for anyone who wants to reach their potential as a sports coach. The book is required reading for my graduate students who regularly tell me it is the best coaching book they have ever read. I also constantly recommend the book to high school and college coaches. The book is special because it is a rare, and detailed, blend of applied science and actual coaching practice."
- Wade Gilbert, PhD, Professor California State University, Fresno
Understanding motor learning stages improves skill instruction
As a coach I found this simple paradigm to be extremely helpful for understanding, guiding, and accelerating the motor learning process.
Three Stages of Motor Learning
At this point in the chapter, you might ask, “What does all this discussion about thinking and memory have to do with motor learning and performance?” You want your athletes to respond, not think. You want them to grip it and rip it. You want them to look and automatically react. Well, motor learning, particularly early learning, involves attempts by learners to acquire an idea of the movement (Gentile, 1972) or understand the basic pattern of coordination (Newell, 1985). To achieve these goals, learners must use cognitive (Fitts & Posner, 1967) and verbal processes (Adams, 1971) to solve problems. To this end, Fitts (1964; Fitts & Posner, 1967) suggests that motor skill acquisition follows three stages: the cognitive stage, the associative stage, and the autonomous stage.
As a coach I found this simple paradigm to be extremely helpful for understanding, guiding, and accelerating the motor learning process. Because of its importance, it is worth examining the three stages and their implications for effective coaching.
Cognitive Stage
For the new learner, the problem to be solved in the cognitive stage is understanding what to do (Schmidt & Lee, 2005). It would be extremely difficult for someone to learn a skill without receiving any prior knowledge about the skill, whether that knowledge is visual or verbal. For example, consider the butterfly stroke in swimming. It is a fairly complicated and somewhat unnatural stroke in which to syncopate the movement of the arms with the kick of the legs. It would be difficult indeed for a novice swimmer to learn such a stroke without ever seeing the stroke performed or ever receiving any declarative knowledge about how the stroke is performed. In other words, motor learning begins with the cognitive stage and the processing of information.
Surely the swimmer could discover how to roughly perform the stroke, but it probably would take many long hours of trial and error, experimentation, and some creative problem solving. It is much simpler to learn a skill by first acquiring information about the skill.
The cognitive stage is of great interest to cognitivists because this stage involves information processing. Also called the verbal-motor stage (Adams, 1971), this stage is verbal-cognitive in nature (Schmidt & Lee, 2005) because it involves the conveyance (verbal) and acquisition (cognition) of new information. In this stage, the person is trying to process information in an attempt to cognitively understand the requirements and parameters of motor movement.
Consider several young children taking beginning golf lessons. They might arrive early for their first golf lesson. Having never seen any golfers in action, they are excited and eager to see what golf is all about; each child is a mini tabula rasa ready to learn. They watch the preceding class of golfers and immediately begin collecting visual information. Next, the instructor explains the golf swing, beginning with the grip of the club and stance. Now they are gathering verbal information about the sport. In other words, they don't simply show up and begin golfing. Everything begins with the acquisition and cognitive processing of newly presented information. During this cognitive stage, the beginning athlete ingests information and organizes it into some meaningful form that will ultimately lead to the creation of a motor program.
The cognitive stage is characterized as having large gains in performance and inconsistent performance. During this stage instruction, guidance, slow-motion drills, video analysis, augmented feedback, and other coaching techniques are highly effective (Schmidt & Lee, 2005). Recall the discussion in chapter 4 regarding Adams' closed-loop theory and the importance of error-free learning in the initial learning stage (p. 133). During the cognitive stage it is important that the learner is provided with the necessary information, guidance, and time to establish sound fundamentals of movement. Sometimes making errors and taking a constructivist approach to coaching and learning can be useful (see the discussion on schema theory, p. 196).
Associative Stage
The associative stage is characterized as much less verbal information, smaller gains in performance, conscious performance, adjustment making, awkward and disjointed movement, and taking a long time to complete. During this stage the athlete works at making movement adjustments and stringing together small movement skills. This stage is also called the motor stage (Adams, 1971) because the problem to be solved in the associative stage is learning how to perform the skill (Schmidt & Lee, 2005). From the cognitive perspective, the athlete is attempting to translate declarative knowledge into procedural knowledge. In other words, the athlete is transforming what to do into how to do.
No diver in the history of the sport of diving has ever performed every single dive for perfect 10s in a single competition. There is always room for improvement. This is true for all sports. For example, a baseball or softball pitcher can improve delivery and learn new pitches, a pole-vaulter can learn to use a new pole and a new technique, a gymnast can refine a routine, a basketball player can improve shooting technique, and a swimmer can improve stroke or flip turn technique. Highly successful athletes and highly effective coaches are always looking for ways to get better. Consequently, they frequently revisit the cognitive stage and then the associative stage of motor learning. Revisiting these stages is the relearning process.
Some years ago, I had an opportunity to work with Professor Yu Fen at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. Professor Yu Fen is one of the top diving coaches in the world and has produced numerous world and Olympic champions. One of the things I took away from working with her is the importance of continually revisiting the first and second stages of motor acquisition, no matter how accomplished an athlete might be. If a diver was not performing, say, a forward 3 1/2 somersault in the pike position, she would take the diver to the trampoline and begin working a basic jump or single somersault. During one of her practices, I observed Olympic gold medalist Tian Liang practicing on 1-meter springboard virtually the same drill as a beginning athlete on an adjacent springboard.
Let's say you have a new athlete who recently transferred from another program to your program. The reason for the transfer is that he has hit a plateau. In fact, his level of performance has begun to decrease. After observing him, you realize that the reason for his lack of progress is that some of his fundamentals are badly in need of remedial work. Where do you begin with this adopted athlete with a host of bad habits? Given what you now know about motor acquisition, the best approach is to first explain that if he wants to improve his performance he will have to make changes, and to make changes means letting go of old habits and learning new fundamentals by revisiting the three stages (cognitive, associative, autonomous) of motor learning. This relearning process means acquiring new information (cognitive stage) and then going through the frustrating associative stage.
Getting athletes to buy into relearning can be challenging. Some athletes, especially successful ones, might say, “Hey, I was high school state champion doing it this way! Why should I change? Besides, the new movement feels awkward.” A coach might reply, “Well, you could have won by even more had you done it the new way!” When these athletes try something new it feels uncomfortable and awkward and they sometimes are reluctant to continue with the change. The verbal information you provide about the three stages of motor learning as well as the information about the new technique helps them establish or activate a learning schema (p. 179) and provides a rationale or perspective for persevering with the change. Next, you work with them on the skill in its simplest form until the skill is mastered, automatic, and integrated into the movement program.
Autonomous Stage
According to Fitts' and Posner's paradigm, this is the final stage of motor acquisition. It often requires years of training to arrive at the autonomous stage. But this stage is where it's at for elite athletes, where motor performance becomes largely automatic, where cognitive processing demands are minimal, and athletes are capable of attending to and processing other information, such as the position of defensive players, game strategy, or the form or style of movement (Schmidt & Lee, 2005) in sports such as ice-skating, dance, and synchronized swimming. It is the stage where they can now respond and not think (or think minimally), where they can grip it and rip it, look and automatically react, and enter a state of flow.
Both good outcomes and bad outcomes are associated with the autonomous stage. The good is that performance requires much less attentional and cognitive demand, which thereby frees the performer to engage in secondary tasks, such as the concert pianist who is able to follow random digits or perform arithmetic while simultaneously playing the piano (Shaffer, 1980), or the quarterback who is capable of surveying the defense and detecting an eminent blitz while simultaneously calling the signals and changing the play at the line of scrimmage.
The bad is that since less cognitive demand exists during performance, it leaves ample room for irrelevant and distracting thoughts to sneak into the workshop (working memory) of the mind. Examples of this occurrence are the elite athletes at the Olympic trials who get caught thinking about making the Olympic team instead of focusing exclusively on performance during the last moments of a gymnastics routine, swimming race, or wrestling match. Think of the gymnast who puts together a stellar routine only to make a silly mistake at the end; or the swimmer who swims magnificently but doesn't finish the race and gets touched out at the wall; or the wrestler who dominates the match but loses concentration and allows his opponent to gain an easy reversal in the waning seconds. Some mountain climbing accidents occur as climbers near the top of the mountain. This may be so because those experienced climbers used some of their available attentional capacity to suddenly begin thinking about reaching the peak—the outcome—rather than focusing on what got them to that part of the mountain in the first place—the process.
The other bad outcome about automatic performance is that it reinforces athletes to maintain incorrect movements because a certain amount of comfort and reinforcement is associated with automatic performance, even if it is incorrect. But just because a motor movement can be performed automatically doesn't mean the movement is correct or worthy of being maintained. Moreover, as soon as athletes stop thinking about the new movement during the cognitive and associative stages, they are likely to respond automatically, thereby reverting to the old and incorrect movement in their performance repertoire. The three stages of motor learning are summarized in table 6.2.
Applying Motor Learning Stages in Coaching Athletes
Provide your athletes with detailed information in the early stage of learning. If you want your athletes to perform correctly, give them the correct information. This means that you need to know what you are talking about and you need to be clear and concise with your instruction. If your athletes don't understand what they are supposed to do, they won't do it correctly. And if they don't understand, perhaps the problem is you, not them. In other words, you may need to do a better job of clearly communicating exactly what you want them to do and communicate it in laymen's terms—in language they can understand and at a conceptual level they are prepared to cognitively grasp. For example, you may understand the physics behind what you are teaching, but if your athletes don't comprehend concepts such as angular momentum, shear force, and action-reaction you will have lost them at “Hello.”
Explain the three stages of motor learning and the relearning process. Relearning something is often more difficult than learning it correctly the first time. This difficulty can lead to frustration and frustration acts like a brick wall between the athlete and the desired goal movement being learned. Make sure your athletes understand the motor learning stages and which stage they are at during the relearning process. Continually remind them that if they trust you and stay committed to the new movement, eventually it will become automatic and integrated into their performance. The new movement seems awkward now compared to the old movement because they are in the associative stage, but after enough repetitions the new movement will become smooth, automatic, and, most important, more effective than the old movement. Some coaches are ineffective at fixing movements. They understand how to teach it correctly in the beginning, but not how to change (fix) a bad habit. Understanding cognitive theory and taking a cognitive teaching approach will help you effectively do both: Teach it correctly the first time and change a bad habit.
Be patient with your athletes during the associative stage. Based on the stages of learning, we now know that awkward and disjointed movements characterize the associative stage. Things aren't going to look or feel very smooth at first; it is part of the learning process. If you expect performance to be immediately smooth and flowing, you are going to be disappointed, disillusioned, and perhaps even somewhat distraught—and so too are your athletes. Fear not. It is all part of the learning process. Remain patient and facilitate learning. Your impatience is likely to make your athletes anxious and impede their learning, whereas your patience and confidence will motivate them to persevere during the associative stage.
Stress the importance of positive information in working memory. A goal for you is to get your athletes to be able to perform automatically. As already mentioned, however, automaticity creates empty space in working memory, which makes it easier for athletes to unintentionally entertain negative thoughts and ruminate, which means to repeatedly dwell on negative and unproductive thoughts. For example, some athletes focus on the outcome of competition and the thought What if I lose? Ruminative thoughts are often unconscious thoughts that through sheer volume of constant repetition become overwhelming and overtake working memory. For example, at a major competition some athletes get this blank look on their faces when their coaches talk to them. It's as though their entire focus is on some internal thought and they are lost to the external world of the here and now. Help your athletes keep working memory space filled with the right stuff; teach them to monitor their thoughts, use thought-stopping statements, redirect their thoughts, engage in positive self-talk, and answer negative thoughts and images with positive thoughts and images.
Read more from Applying Educational Psychology in Coaching Athletes by Jeffery Huber.
Emphasize humanistic principles as part of an effective coaching philosophy
Humanism can manifest itself through the coaching process in four ways. These common emphases are affect, self-concept, communication, and personal values.
Applying Education Psychology in Coaching Athletes.
Applying Four Common Emphases of Humanistic Coaching
Humanism can manifest itself through the coaching process in four ways. These common emphases are affect, self-concept, communication, and personal values.
Affect
Emphasizing affect means paying greater attention to thinking and feeling and less attention to acquiring specific information and skills. Following are some suggestions for emphasizing affect.
Set affective objectives. Setting specific affective objectives means you commit to making a conscious effort to integrate humanism into your program. Examples of affective objectives include encouraging and leading athletes to demonstrate a love for their sport and themselves and to demonstrate a concern and respect for teammates. Another affective objective is to demonstrate a concern and respect for your athletes and acceptance of them as unique individuals, not just as a group of athletes. Another goal is to act as a role model and model a love for the sport and belief in the importance of becoming a more complete person.
Pay greater attention to athletes' feelings. Simply asking athletes how they are feeling and what is going on in their lives, showing a genuine concern for them as human beings, listening to their problems, and being sensitive to their emotional responses are all ways of paying greater attention to athlete's feelings.
Have athletes become more aware of their teammates' feelings. Awareness of others' feelings emphasizes affect and helps athletes move outside their egocentrism. One way to facilitate this greater awareness is to hold a team meeting and ask your athletes to express their feelings, understand their teammates' needs, and find ways to support each other at practices, competitions, and outside the practice venue. Also, when disagreements occur between athletes, ask each athlete to try understanding the other's viewpoint.
Stress the importance of learning and thinking strategies. According to Rogers emphasizing affect also means emphasizing thinking. When you emphasize thinking, the information and skills being taught are not as important as the process and strategies for learning. Consequently, a humanistic coach emphasizes learning how to learn and teaches athletes specific strategies to help them become good learners. For example, having athletes mentally review information about drills before, during, and after each practice helps them learn how to learn drills. Many athletes tend to leave a practice and never think about that practice ever again. When taking time to review information discussed in practice, athletes are more apt to organize the information, give it meaning, remember it at the next practice, and, consequently, improve at a faster rate.
Self-Concept
Helping your athletes develop a positive self-concept is another way to emphasize humanism. Remember that your athletes develop their self-concept in part through interaction with you and how you communicate to them about who they are as human beings. How can you facilitate this process? Following are some suggestions.
Maintain positive perceptions and expectations of your athletes. It is easy to form limiting notions of your athletes and unconsciously communicate these limitations to them. These notions then become part of a hidden curriculum: the things you unconsciously teach as the unintended outcome or by-product of your coaching. Statements such as the following ones can become part of a hidden curriculum: “This athlete is mentally weak.” “This athlete will never make it.” “This athlete can do skills A and B great but will never learn skill C.” “This athlete will always be a B-level player.” Rid yourself of preconceived limiting notions of your athletes and avoid any hidden curriculum. Expect the best. When you expect the best, you generally get the best. Don't count out any of your athletes. Like Jimmy, the young lanky boy I coached many years ago, just when you think someone can't do something, you may be surprised.
Communicate these positive perceptions and expectations through word and deed. It is good to have positive perceptions and expectations of your athletes, but make sure you communicate them to your athletes both by what you say and what you do. Take the time to tell your athletes what you think of them and what they are capable of achieving and communicate these expectations through your coaching. Saying, “Well, you didn't make it this time but I know you will at the next competition” is an effective example. Also, demonstrate your confidence in them through your actions. For example, you tell one of your athletes that she can become a champion if she puts in more work and then you stay after practice or volunteer to come in on your day off to work with her.
Maintain positive perceptions and expectations publicly and privately. Coaches sometimes disparage their athletes behind their backs. Getting frustrated and needing to vent some frustration is part of coaching, but you have to support your athletes and believe in them, even when they aren't looking. Being a humanistic coach means, in part, being genuine as a person. Being genuine means acting as you really are as a person and having your words match your internal feelings. In other words, you openly let others know how you feel. Venting is part of human nature and part of dealing with stress. But you have to be true to your athletes. You can't say one thing publicly and then turn around and say something contrary privately. Besides making you a hypocrite and disingenuous, your words ultimately get back to the athlete and ruin the coach-athlete relationship.
Invite rather than disinvite athletes. According to Purkey and Novak (1996), teachers invite students by communicating to them that they are capable, self-directed, and valued, and by expecting behaviors and achievements commensurate with their worth and emerging self-concept. In contrast, teachers who disinvite students send a message that students are irresponsible, incapable, worthless, and undirected. As a coach, do you invite or disinvite your athletes?
Build a positive self-concept by promoting success rather than failure. To promote success, break down learning tasks into small and attainable increments. Coaches sometimes ask athletes to do too much too soon. Perhaps this is because they forget how many smaller tasks comprise a particular movement. They ask athletes to do a skill that actually involves many skills, none of which the athletes have yet mastered. When you ask athletes to do too much too soon, you set them up for guaranteed failure. The result of repeated failure can be a poor self-concept, a feeling of external control, and a sense of helplessness.
Promoting success and a positive self-concept also includes implementing mastery learning (Bloom, 1976). The concept of mastery learning suggests that all learners can learn; the only difference between learners is the amount of time each person requires to learn the material. While Bloom's concept of mastery learning deals mainly with concept learning, mastery learning can be applied to motor learning as well. Not all athletes will learn to perform at the elite level. However, most athletes can learn much of what you teach to some level of proficiency. The humanistic coach focuses on helping each athlete master as many skills as possible for their particular sport and level of experience and ability.
Mastery learning means learning a particular skill to a certain level of proficiency before moving on to the next skill. For example, when you break down a skill into smaller increments, make sure your athlete masters each smaller skill before moving on to the next skill. It may take time and patience on the part of both athlete and coach, but it will be well worth the effort later in the athlete's career.
Communication
A third major emphasis of a humanistic approach to coaching is communication. Communication includes attention to the principles and skills of effective human relations, honest interpersonal communication, and constructive conflict resolution. Following are some suggestions for emphasizing communication in your coaching.
Establish effective human relations through honest and open interpersonal communication. Honest and open communication means being real with your athletes, rather than aloof and unapproachable. Honest communication also means really listening to what your athletes have to say. A shortcoming for many coaches is that they don't take the time or give enough effort to really listen to what their athletes are trying to say. Being a good listener is not easy but sometimes it is all an athlete really wants or needs.
One season I had trouble establishing a relationship with one of my athletes. I was angry with her because I thought she never listened to me. Over the course of the season, our relationship became increasingly distant. Finally, another athlete said to me, “Coach, you need to talk to her.” At first I dismissed her comment, but the more I thought about it, the more I knew she was right. So, one afternoon I took some time to talk with her. I said a few things about how I felt, but then I just listened to what she had to say. The more I listened to her, the more she listened to me. I am positive that our meeting was a turning point in her season and career. And it literally happened overnight. We met on a Wednesday and on Thursday she competed in the NCAA championship. She finished third with a lifetime best performance, a performance that far exceeded anything she had done to that point in her season.
Take time from your daily routine to communicate with your athletes. Maybe it is just a few minutes as they are coming into practice or while they are stretching. Or maybe you connect with a few of your athletes before they leave practice. The more you communicate with them, particularly on a personal level, the more of a relationship you establish with them. Take the time to occasionally meet one-on-one in your office. Have an open-door policy so that your athletes feel comfortable stopping by even if it is only to say hello. Schedule individual goal-setting sessions. Besides nourishing the athlete-coach relationship, these meetings provide athletes with the opportunity to express their feelings and talk about things important to their athletic careers and their personal lives.
Arrange team meetings and team goal-setting sessions. These sessions give your athletes the opportunity to communicate among themselves. It is worthwhile to attend some of these meetings to lay the ground rules for athlete interaction and discussion topics. For other meetings, it is more important that the athletes take responsibility for the meeting and you need not be present. Some of the topics your athletes can consider are how to support one another inside and outside of practice, how to communicate effectively with each other, and how to openly talk about problems and their resolutions.
Use the principles and ideas of humanism and Rogerian theory to constructively resolve conflict. No matter how effective you are as a coach or how great your athletes are as people, you will have conflict at some point within your team and within your program. And the quicker it is resolved, the sooner you right the ship and continue moving forward. It might be a conflict between you and a player, between two players, between an assistant coach and a player, between two assistant coaches, between coach and parent, or between the offense and the defense. The number of potential conflicts lurking on the horizon is great and you and your athletes need to be trained and ready to confront these battles. Humanism and Rogerian theory provide a perfect battle plan.
According to humanism and Rogerian theory, the best way to resolve conflict is for both sides to sit down and communicate. Since people act in accordance with their phenomenological reality, this communication involves having each person really listen and attempt to understand the other person's private world of experiences. Because humanism emphasizes self-direction, self-determination, autonomy, and self-evaluation, it is expected that each person, with the coach acting as facilitator, will assume responsibility for resolving the conflict.
Personal Values
Personal values should be a part of your coaching philosophy and your coaching curriculum. You teach values whether you know it or not. If you are unaware of the values you teach, then they have become part of your hidden curriculum. As mentioned a number of times in this book, effective coaches are aware of everything they teach. Consequently, be conscious of the values you teach—or want to teach—and incorporate them into your coaching curriculum so that you teach positive values and eliminate negative values you might be inadvertently teaching your athletes.
Encourage your athletes to discover their own personal values. Simon, Howe, and Kirschenbaum (1972) suggest 79 strategies for helping students elaborate and clarify values. Personal values you might teach include acceptance of self and others, acceptance of personal faults and mistakes but still maintaining self-worth, and valuing effort and performance more than winning. One personal value worth teaching is personal responsibility. Historically, humanism has valued autonomy: the individual taking responsibility and control for his or her life.
Stress personal responsibility as a value. You can nurture personal responsibility in many ways. Having athletes set their own goals and select appropriate ways of reaching their goals gives them a sense of control and autonomy. Also, setting up athletes for success helps establish an internal locus of control. According to attribution theory, athletes with an internal locus of control see success as a result of personal effort and not an external factor such as luck. In other words, an athlete with an internal locus of control believes that he is in control of the outcome of events.
Stress personal problem solving as a value. Rather than solve a problem for an athlete, you can facilitate the athlete's effort to solve the problem. This concept is at the center of Roger's client-centered therapy, in which the client, not the counselor, solves the problem. Based on Rogerian theory, a nondirective model of teaching has been developed for fostering a sense of personal responsibility in athletes. The following section outlines the nondirective model.
Read more from Applying Educational Psychology in Coaching Athletes by Jeffery Huber.
Coaches can use behaviorism to increase athletes' motivation
According to the concept of psychological hedonism and the pain–pleasure principle, people are motivated to obtain pleasure and avoid pain.
Behaviorism and Motivation
According to the concept of psychological hedonism and the pain-pleasure principle, people are motivated to obtain pleasure and avoid pain. This simple explanation for human motivation, however, seems incongruous with the picture of the hard-working athlete training through extremely demanding and often painful (not pleasurable) conditions to achieve a long-range goal. How do you account for this type of athlete motivation? According to behaviorism, you would argue that somehow athlete motivation to train under such grueling circumstances is being reinforced. A reinforcer increases the probability that a response will reoccur. When a rat receives a food pellet (reinforcer) for feverishly pressing a lever in the Skinner box, the rat is more likely to press the lever again.
Reinforcement and Praise
When used according to the principles of operant conditioning, reinforcement can have a significant impact on motivation and human behavior. Consider the successful coach who always seems to have upbeat and motivated athletes willing to charge through a brick wall for their coach. Unfortunately, the example of the unsuccessful coach whose athletes always seem to be downcast, downtrodden, and unmotivated also exists. One factor that separates the successful coach from the unsuccessful coach is the use of positive reinforcers, in particular, praise. Although the use of praise is discussed in detail in chapter 10, several rules about the use of praise (pushing the praise button) are worth repeating here.
Praise provides information to athletes not only about performance but also about notion of self. In other words, it tells athletes about the quality of their motor performance, but it often also tells them about their self-worth and competence. For example, when you say, “Jerome, way to think. That's the way to make the correction the first time!” you are letting him know about his improved performance and also, and more important, about his intelligence, effort, and capacity for change. Contrast this coaching comment with the droll and uninspired “Okay. Go on to the next drill.” Often, just a few precisely put words make a significant and long-lasting difference in an athlete's notion of self and motivation.
Praise should be used judiciously. It is easy to use praise too often so that it becomes meaningless to athletes or too infrequently so that it is ineffective in influencing behavior. Young coaches in particular often use praise too frequently. Successful coaches find the right balance for dishing out praise so that when they do use praise, it has real punch and positively affects athlete motivation.
Praise should include specific, constructive encouragement to build self-esteem (Hitz & Driscoll, 1994). Encouraging comments should be clear and specific rather than vague and general. Athletes want to know not only the what but also the why. If they aren't doing something correctly, they want to know why it is wrong and why a different approach is better. At the same time, they also want to be encouraged for their effort and ability to succeed with future attempts. For example, the type of praise in the following statement increases self-esteem and motivation while it concomitantly provides constructive encouragement: “Maria, you took the race out too fast but I admire your determination, adventurousness, and fearlessness! Those are qualities you should be proud of and will serve you well in the future. However, you need to pace yourself and run your own race next time.”
Praise should be sincere. Sincere praise not only provides reinforcement, but it also sends an emotional message that says you genuinely care for your athletes and want to see them succeed. Athletes who perceive that their coaches care for them are motivated to give even greater effort in practice. Conversely, insincere praise, besides being ineffective, communicates to athletes that you have little regard for them and their performances. Sincere praise builds the athlete-coach relationship while insincere praise undermines it. Which type of praise do you give your athletes?
Praising effort is important, particularly for young athletes. Children who are praised for their efforts are more apt to develop a view of ability as something they can control and something that can change (Mueller & Dweck, 1998). Consequently, these athletes are more apt to be motivated to train hard and expect results based on personal effort. In contrast, people who are praised for their talent tend to view ability as fixed and unchanging. Consequently, when these athletes experience failure, they are less motivated to train hard.
External Feedback as Reinforcement
Like praise, external feedback can serve as a reinforcer for athlete behaviors. For example, in the game of hot and cold, people shout out “hotter” and “colder” to express how close the player is to reaching the goal. The hotter game players get (i.e., the closer they get to their achievement goal) the more motivated they become to keep going. In this regard, both knowledge of results (KR) and knowledge of performance (KP) act as reinforcers. Two specific external feedback properties that athletes find motivating are the aptly named motivating feedback and informational feedback.
Motivating feedback is defined as feedback about an individual's progress toward goal achievement that energizes and directs behavior. For example, consider a runner who is on the second to last lap and her coach tells her she is on pace for a personal best time. When athletes believe they are improving and moving toward their goals, they become increasingly motivated in their pursuit of goal achievement.
Informational feedback is defined as feedback that provides performers with error correction information, either descriptive (what happened) or prescriptive (what needs to happen). This type of feedback is motivating to all athletes, but it is particularly motivating for athletes engaged in deliberate practice (i.e., setting specific goals for everything they do in practice). For these athletes, informational feedback is like food to a hungry traveler; they devour it. They want to improve with each practice and informational feedback helps temporarily satisfy their craving for knowledge about their progress toward improved performance.
Extrinsic and Intrinsic Motivation
Some people engage in specific behaviors because they have extrinsic motivation: They engage in the behaviors because they anticipate certain external rewards. For example, some athletes try out for a team because they anticipate earning a varsity letter, a trophy, a college scholarship, and so on. Other people have intrinsic motivation: They engage in athletics because they respond well to internal sources of reinforcement such as personal satisfaction and sense of accomplishment. These athletes derive internal reinforcement from achievements such as throwing a perfect pass, performing a great gymnastics routine, swishing a 3-point shot, running a perfect race, and so on. The beauty of sport is that this list is virtually endless.
Research suggests that people who respond to intrinsic motives are more committed, enjoy their activities more, and are more persistent when they confront failure (Agbor-Baiyee, 1997). While this research examined student behavior, research examining athletes found similar results (Vallerand & Losier, 1999). Close to intrinsic motivation is a concept called interest (Wigfield, Eccles, & Rodriguez, 1998). People who engage in activities simply for the fact that they like doing it and expect no external reward can be said to have an interest in that activity. A primary objective for all coaches should be to encourage athletes to develop a genuine interest in their sport.
Keep in mind, however, that external rewards can be useful for facilitating interest and intrinsic motivation. For example, when I was learning to dive, our coach purchased gold (it was actually yellow, but it looked like gold to my teammates and me) diving suits like the one reigning Olympic champion Bernie Wrightson wore when he won the gold medal. We all aspired to become gold medalists like Bernie, but we could not buy the suit. We could only acquire the suit by earning it, by learning a full list of high-degree-of-difficulty dives on the 3-meter springboard. We wanted to earn that suit so badly that we would do almost anything, including learning scary and difficult new dives that no one our age was performing back then. The suit became a symbol of courage, effort, determination, and noteworthy accomplishment. We did not remain in the sport simply because of the suit, but it sure captured our interest and ignited our intrinsic motivation.
Conditioned Responses
Athletes who associate positive physiological responses, such as relaxation and appropriate arousal level, and enhancing emotions, such as joy and satisfaction, are more likely to love their sport and come to practice highly motivated to train. Therefore, to increase motivation, coaches need to condition their athletes to respond positively to not only their sport but the many aspects of their sport, such as training, stretching, conditioning, drill and skill work, and competing. For many athletes, especially young ones, a positive conditioned response is what brings them back each day, each week, each month, and each season. Because conditioning is so important to the motor learning process and athlete success, chapter 3 examines it in detail (see The Salivating Athlete).
Applying Behaviorism to Increase Athlete Motivation
Based on the theory of behaviorism, coaches can push a number of “behavioral buttons” to increase athletes' motivation.
Follow the guidelines for the effective use of praise. Although praise is an effective reinforcer, it can be misused. Know when, what, and how to use it. Successful coaches are masters at effectively using praise to motivate their athletes.
Use external feedback as you would other types of reinforcers. External feedback for all athletes, but particularly elite athletes, is highly reinforcing. The more accurate the external feedback, the more reinforcing it becomes for them. Years ago when I first began working with an elite athlete, who already was a NCAA champion and world champion, I learned two things rather quickly: Remember what correction you give him and give him accurate feedback about whether or not he made the correction on the subsequent attempt. If I forgot the correction or my feedback was inaccurate, he kindly let me know about it! Highly effective coaches provide accurate and timely external feedback.
Recognize individual differences. No two athletes are exactly alike. It is important to keep these differences in mind when using reinforcement to influence motivation. What is reinforcing for one athlete might not be reinforcing to another athlete. Knowing how to push their buttons in part means knowing what is reinforcing to them. For example, some athletes hate being pulled aside and lectured while other athletes take it as a compliment and a sign that you care about them and their goals.
Reinforce effort in order to encourage intrinsic motivation. In the long run, athletes train harder and longer and persevere in their sport when they are intrinsically motivated. For this reason, reinforce effort. Athletes who associate ability and achievement with effort are more likely to be motivated to train and maintain their motivation during difficult training cycles.
Condition athletes to have a positive physiological response to their sport. Athletes who have an interest and love for their sport (training and competition) will be engaged and motivated. You can facilitate a positive response by continually pairing positive conditioned stimuli with positive unconditioned stimuli. A significant way to create a positive response is to facilitate success and mastery during practice, make practice and competition fun, and focus on effort.
Use external reinforcers. Sometimes external reinforcers can be effective for kick starting or augmenting an athlete's internal motivation. In the case of the gold diving suit, it is interesting to note that every diver on the team did indeed earn a suit. Most went on to successful high school careers and a number of us went on to compete collegiately and nationally. One athlete even made the U.S. Olympic team, and one stayed around long enough to coach collegiate diving for over 37 years. Sometimes, a seemingly small external reward can go a long way toward intrinsically motivating athletes. It is funny how after all these years grown men still occasionally gather and talk about “the suit” and how they cherish it and have it stored away like a rare artifact, precious and immeasurably valuable, a tangible reminder of the intangible rewards they received from their memorable experience in sport. I am sure that athletes in all sports have similar stories and memories.
Read more from Applying Educational Psychology in Coaching Athletes by Jeffery Huber.
Understanding motor learning stages improves skill instruction
As a coach I found this simple paradigm to be extremely helpful for understanding, guiding, and accelerating the motor learning process.
Three Stages of Motor Learning
At this point in the chapter, you might ask, “What does all this discussion about thinking and memory have to do with motor learning and performance?” You want your athletes to respond, not think. You want them to grip it and rip it. You want them to look and automatically react. Well, motor learning, particularly early learning, involves attempts by learners to acquire an idea of the movement (Gentile, 1972) or understand the basic pattern of coordination (Newell, 1985). To achieve these goals, learners must use cognitive (Fitts & Posner, 1967) and verbal processes (Adams, 1971) to solve problems. To this end, Fitts (1964; Fitts & Posner, 1967) suggests that motor skill acquisition follows three stages: the cognitive stage, the associative stage, and the autonomous stage.
As a coach I found this simple paradigm to be extremely helpful for understanding, guiding, and accelerating the motor learning process. Because of its importance, it is worth examining the three stages and their implications for effective coaching.
Cognitive Stage
For the new learner, the problem to be solved in the cognitive stage is understanding what to do (Schmidt & Lee, 2005). It would be extremely difficult for someone to learn a skill without receiving any prior knowledge about the skill, whether that knowledge is visual or verbal. For example, consider the butterfly stroke in swimming. It is a fairly complicated and somewhat unnatural stroke in which to syncopate the movement of the arms with the kick of the legs. It would be difficult indeed for a novice swimmer to learn such a stroke without ever seeing the stroke performed or ever receiving any declarative knowledge about how the stroke is performed. In other words, motor learning begins with the cognitive stage and the processing of information.
Surely the swimmer could discover how to roughly perform the stroke, but it probably would take many long hours of trial and error, experimentation, and some creative problem solving. It is much simpler to learn a skill by first acquiring information about the skill.
The cognitive stage is of great interest to cognitivists because this stage involves information processing. Also called the verbal-motor stage (Adams, 1971), this stage is verbal-cognitive in nature (Schmidt & Lee, 2005) because it involves the conveyance (verbal) and acquisition (cognition) of new information. In this stage, the person is trying to process information in an attempt to cognitively understand the requirements and parameters of motor movement.
Consider several young children taking beginning golf lessons. They might arrive early for their first golf lesson. Having never seen any golfers in action, they are excited and eager to see what golf is all about; each child is a mini tabula rasa ready to learn. They watch the preceding class of golfers and immediately begin collecting visual information. Next, the instructor explains the golf swing, beginning with the grip of the club and stance. Now they are gathering verbal information about the sport. In other words, they don't simply show up and begin golfing. Everything begins with the acquisition and cognitive processing of newly presented information. During this cognitive stage, the beginning athlete ingests information and organizes it into some meaningful form that will ultimately lead to the creation of a motor program.
The cognitive stage is characterized as having large gains in performance and inconsistent performance. During this stage instruction, guidance, slow-motion drills, video analysis, augmented feedback, and other coaching techniques are highly effective (Schmidt & Lee, 2005). Recall the discussion in chapter 4 regarding Adams' closed-loop theory and the importance of error-free learning in the initial learning stage (p. 133). During the cognitive stage it is important that the learner is provided with the necessary information, guidance, and time to establish sound fundamentals of movement. Sometimes making errors and taking a constructivist approach to coaching and learning can be useful (see the discussion on schema theory, p. 196).
Associative Stage
The associative stage is characterized as much less verbal information, smaller gains in performance, conscious performance, adjustment making, awkward and disjointed movement, and taking a long time to complete. During this stage the athlete works at making movement adjustments and stringing together small movement skills. This stage is also called the motor stage (Adams, 1971) because the problem to be solved in the associative stage is learning how to perform the skill (Schmidt & Lee, 2005). From the cognitive perspective, the athlete is attempting to translate declarative knowledge into procedural knowledge. In other words, the athlete is transforming what to do into how to do.
No diver in the history of the sport of diving has ever performed every single dive for perfect 10s in a single competition. There is always room for improvement. This is true for all sports. For example, a baseball or softball pitcher can improve delivery and learn new pitches, a pole-vaulter can learn to use a new pole and a new technique, a gymnast can refine a routine, a basketball player can improve shooting technique, and a swimmer can improve stroke or flip turn technique. Highly successful athletes and highly effective coaches are always looking for ways to get better. Consequently, they frequently revisit the cognitive stage and then the associative stage of motor learning. Revisiting these stages is the relearning process.
Some years ago, I had an opportunity to work with Professor Yu Fen at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. Professor Yu Fen is one of the top diving coaches in the world and has produced numerous world and Olympic champions. One of the things I took away from working with her is the importance of continually revisiting the first and second stages of motor acquisition, no matter how accomplished an athlete might be. If a diver was not performing, say, a forward 3 1/2 somersault in the pike position, she would take the diver to the trampoline and begin working a basic jump or single somersault. During one of her practices, I observed Olympic gold medalist Tian Liang practicing on 1-meter springboard virtually the same drill as a beginning athlete on an adjacent springboard.
Let's say you have a new athlete who recently transferred from another program to your program. The reason for the transfer is that he has hit a plateau. In fact, his level of performance has begun to decrease. After observing him, you realize that the reason for his lack of progress is that some of his fundamentals are badly in need of remedial work. Where do you begin with this adopted athlete with a host of bad habits? Given what you now know about motor acquisition, the best approach is to first explain that if he wants to improve his performance he will have to make changes, and to make changes means letting go of old habits and learning new fundamentals by revisiting the three stages (cognitive, associative, autonomous) of motor learning. This relearning process means acquiring new information (cognitive stage) and then going through the frustrating associative stage.
Getting athletes to buy into relearning can be challenging. Some athletes, especially successful ones, might say, “Hey, I was high school state champion doing it this way! Why should I change? Besides, the new movement feels awkward.” A coach might reply, “Well, you could have won by even more had you done it the new way!” When these athletes try something new it feels uncomfortable and awkward and they sometimes are reluctant to continue with the change. The verbal information you provide about the three stages of motor learning as well as the information about the new technique helps them establish or activate a learning schema (p. 179) and provides a rationale or perspective for persevering with the change. Next, you work with them on the skill in its simplest form until the skill is mastered, automatic, and integrated into the movement program.
Autonomous Stage
According to Fitts' and Posner's paradigm, this is the final stage of motor acquisition. It often requires years of training to arrive at the autonomous stage. But this stage is where it's at for elite athletes, where motor performance becomes largely automatic, where cognitive processing demands are minimal, and athletes are capable of attending to and processing other information, such as the position of defensive players, game strategy, or the form or style of movement (Schmidt & Lee, 2005) in sports such as ice-skating, dance, and synchronized swimming. It is the stage where they can now respond and not think (or think minimally), where they can grip it and rip it, look and automatically react, and enter a state of flow.
Both good outcomes and bad outcomes are associated with the autonomous stage. The good is that performance requires much less attentional and cognitive demand, which thereby frees the performer to engage in secondary tasks, such as the concert pianist who is able to follow random digits or perform arithmetic while simultaneously playing the piano (Shaffer, 1980), or the quarterback who is capable of surveying the defense and detecting an eminent blitz while simultaneously calling the signals and changing the play at the line of scrimmage.
The bad is that since less cognitive demand exists during performance, it leaves ample room for irrelevant and distracting thoughts to sneak into the workshop (working memory) of the mind. Examples of this occurrence are the elite athletes at the Olympic trials who get caught thinking about making the Olympic team instead of focusing exclusively on performance during the last moments of a gymnastics routine, swimming race, or wrestling match. Think of the gymnast who puts together a stellar routine only to make a silly mistake at the end; or the swimmer who swims magnificently but doesn't finish the race and gets touched out at the wall; or the wrestler who dominates the match but loses concentration and allows his opponent to gain an easy reversal in the waning seconds. Some mountain climbing accidents occur as climbers near the top of the mountain. This may be so because those experienced climbers used some of their available attentional capacity to suddenly begin thinking about reaching the peak—the outcome—rather than focusing on what got them to that part of the mountain in the first place—the process.
The other bad outcome about automatic performance is that it reinforces athletes to maintain incorrect movements because a certain amount of comfort and reinforcement is associated with automatic performance, even if it is incorrect. But just because a motor movement can be performed automatically doesn't mean the movement is correct or worthy of being maintained. Moreover, as soon as athletes stop thinking about the new movement during the cognitive and associative stages, they are likely to respond automatically, thereby reverting to the old and incorrect movement in their performance repertoire. The three stages of motor learning are summarized in table 6.2.
Applying Motor Learning Stages in Coaching Athletes
Provide your athletes with detailed information in the early stage of learning. If you want your athletes to perform correctly, give them the correct information. This means that you need to know what you are talking about and you need to be clear and concise with your instruction. If your athletes don't understand what they are supposed to do, they won't do it correctly. And if they don't understand, perhaps the problem is you, not them. In other words, you may need to do a better job of clearly communicating exactly what you want them to do and communicate it in laymen's terms—in language they can understand and at a conceptual level they are prepared to cognitively grasp. For example, you may understand the physics behind what you are teaching, but if your athletes don't comprehend concepts such as angular momentum, shear force, and action-reaction you will have lost them at “Hello.”
Explain the three stages of motor learning and the relearning process. Relearning something is often more difficult than learning it correctly the first time. This difficulty can lead to frustration and frustration acts like a brick wall between the athlete and the desired goal movement being learned. Make sure your athletes understand the motor learning stages and which stage they are at during the relearning process. Continually remind them that if they trust you and stay committed to the new movement, eventually it will become automatic and integrated into their performance. The new movement seems awkward now compared to the old movement because they are in the associative stage, but after enough repetitions the new movement will become smooth, automatic, and, most important, more effective than the old movement. Some coaches are ineffective at fixing movements. They understand how to teach it correctly in the beginning, but not how to change (fix) a bad habit. Understanding cognitive theory and taking a cognitive teaching approach will help you effectively do both: Teach it correctly the first time and change a bad habit.
Be patient with your athletes during the associative stage. Based on the stages of learning, we now know that awkward and disjointed movements characterize the associative stage. Things aren't going to look or feel very smooth at first; it is part of the learning process. If you expect performance to be immediately smooth and flowing, you are going to be disappointed, disillusioned, and perhaps even somewhat distraught—and so too are your athletes. Fear not. It is all part of the learning process. Remain patient and facilitate learning. Your impatience is likely to make your athletes anxious and impede their learning, whereas your patience and confidence will motivate them to persevere during the associative stage.
Stress the importance of positive information in working memory. A goal for you is to get your athletes to be able to perform automatically. As already mentioned, however, automaticity creates empty space in working memory, which makes it easier for athletes to unintentionally entertain negative thoughts and ruminate, which means to repeatedly dwell on negative and unproductive thoughts. For example, some athletes focus on the outcome of competition and the thought What if I lose? Ruminative thoughts are often unconscious thoughts that through sheer volume of constant repetition become overwhelming and overtake working memory. For example, at a major competition some athletes get this blank look on their faces when their coaches talk to them. It's as though their entire focus is on some internal thought and they are lost to the external world of the here and now. Help your athletes keep working memory space filled with the right stuff; teach them to monitor their thoughts, use thought-stopping statements, redirect their thoughts, engage in positive self-talk, and answer negative thoughts and images with positive thoughts and images.
Read more from Applying Educational Psychology in Coaching Athletes by Jeffery Huber.
Emphasize humanistic principles as part of an effective coaching philosophy
Humanism can manifest itself through the coaching process in four ways. These common emphases are affect, self-concept, communication, and personal values.
Applying Education Psychology in Coaching Athletes.
Applying Four Common Emphases of Humanistic Coaching
Humanism can manifest itself through the coaching process in four ways. These common emphases are affect, self-concept, communication, and personal values.
Affect
Emphasizing affect means paying greater attention to thinking and feeling and less attention to acquiring specific information and skills. Following are some suggestions for emphasizing affect.
Set affective objectives. Setting specific affective objectives means you commit to making a conscious effort to integrate humanism into your program. Examples of affective objectives include encouraging and leading athletes to demonstrate a love for their sport and themselves and to demonstrate a concern and respect for teammates. Another affective objective is to demonstrate a concern and respect for your athletes and acceptance of them as unique individuals, not just as a group of athletes. Another goal is to act as a role model and model a love for the sport and belief in the importance of becoming a more complete person.
Pay greater attention to athletes' feelings. Simply asking athletes how they are feeling and what is going on in their lives, showing a genuine concern for them as human beings, listening to their problems, and being sensitive to their emotional responses are all ways of paying greater attention to athlete's feelings.
Have athletes become more aware of their teammates' feelings. Awareness of others' feelings emphasizes affect and helps athletes move outside their egocentrism. One way to facilitate this greater awareness is to hold a team meeting and ask your athletes to express their feelings, understand their teammates' needs, and find ways to support each other at practices, competitions, and outside the practice venue. Also, when disagreements occur between athletes, ask each athlete to try understanding the other's viewpoint.
Stress the importance of learning and thinking strategies. According to Rogers emphasizing affect also means emphasizing thinking. When you emphasize thinking, the information and skills being taught are not as important as the process and strategies for learning. Consequently, a humanistic coach emphasizes learning how to learn and teaches athletes specific strategies to help them become good learners. For example, having athletes mentally review information about drills before, during, and after each practice helps them learn how to learn drills. Many athletes tend to leave a practice and never think about that practice ever again. When taking time to review information discussed in practice, athletes are more apt to organize the information, give it meaning, remember it at the next practice, and, consequently, improve at a faster rate.
Self-Concept
Helping your athletes develop a positive self-concept is another way to emphasize humanism. Remember that your athletes develop their self-concept in part through interaction with you and how you communicate to them about who they are as human beings. How can you facilitate this process? Following are some suggestions.
Maintain positive perceptions and expectations of your athletes. It is easy to form limiting notions of your athletes and unconsciously communicate these limitations to them. These notions then become part of a hidden curriculum: the things you unconsciously teach as the unintended outcome or by-product of your coaching. Statements such as the following ones can become part of a hidden curriculum: “This athlete is mentally weak.” “This athlete will never make it.” “This athlete can do skills A and B great but will never learn skill C.” “This athlete will always be a B-level player.” Rid yourself of preconceived limiting notions of your athletes and avoid any hidden curriculum. Expect the best. When you expect the best, you generally get the best. Don't count out any of your athletes. Like Jimmy, the young lanky boy I coached many years ago, just when you think someone can't do something, you may be surprised.
Communicate these positive perceptions and expectations through word and deed. It is good to have positive perceptions and expectations of your athletes, but make sure you communicate them to your athletes both by what you say and what you do. Take the time to tell your athletes what you think of them and what they are capable of achieving and communicate these expectations through your coaching. Saying, “Well, you didn't make it this time but I know you will at the next competition” is an effective example. Also, demonstrate your confidence in them through your actions. For example, you tell one of your athletes that she can become a champion if she puts in more work and then you stay after practice or volunteer to come in on your day off to work with her.
Maintain positive perceptions and expectations publicly and privately. Coaches sometimes disparage their athletes behind their backs. Getting frustrated and needing to vent some frustration is part of coaching, but you have to support your athletes and believe in them, even when they aren't looking. Being a humanistic coach means, in part, being genuine as a person. Being genuine means acting as you really are as a person and having your words match your internal feelings. In other words, you openly let others know how you feel. Venting is part of human nature and part of dealing with stress. But you have to be true to your athletes. You can't say one thing publicly and then turn around and say something contrary privately. Besides making you a hypocrite and disingenuous, your words ultimately get back to the athlete and ruin the coach-athlete relationship.
Invite rather than disinvite athletes. According to Purkey and Novak (1996), teachers invite students by communicating to them that they are capable, self-directed, and valued, and by expecting behaviors and achievements commensurate with their worth and emerging self-concept. In contrast, teachers who disinvite students send a message that students are irresponsible, incapable, worthless, and undirected. As a coach, do you invite or disinvite your athletes?
Build a positive self-concept by promoting success rather than failure. To promote success, break down learning tasks into small and attainable increments. Coaches sometimes ask athletes to do too much too soon. Perhaps this is because they forget how many smaller tasks comprise a particular movement. They ask athletes to do a skill that actually involves many skills, none of which the athletes have yet mastered. When you ask athletes to do too much too soon, you set them up for guaranteed failure. The result of repeated failure can be a poor self-concept, a feeling of external control, and a sense of helplessness.
Promoting success and a positive self-concept also includes implementing mastery learning (Bloom, 1976). The concept of mastery learning suggests that all learners can learn; the only difference between learners is the amount of time each person requires to learn the material. While Bloom's concept of mastery learning deals mainly with concept learning, mastery learning can be applied to motor learning as well. Not all athletes will learn to perform at the elite level. However, most athletes can learn much of what you teach to some level of proficiency. The humanistic coach focuses on helping each athlete master as many skills as possible for their particular sport and level of experience and ability.
Mastery learning means learning a particular skill to a certain level of proficiency before moving on to the next skill. For example, when you break down a skill into smaller increments, make sure your athlete masters each smaller skill before moving on to the next skill. It may take time and patience on the part of both athlete and coach, but it will be well worth the effort later in the athlete's career.
Communication
A third major emphasis of a humanistic approach to coaching is communication. Communication includes attention to the principles and skills of effective human relations, honest interpersonal communication, and constructive conflict resolution. Following are some suggestions for emphasizing communication in your coaching.
Establish effective human relations through honest and open interpersonal communication. Honest and open communication means being real with your athletes, rather than aloof and unapproachable. Honest communication also means really listening to what your athletes have to say. A shortcoming for many coaches is that they don't take the time or give enough effort to really listen to what their athletes are trying to say. Being a good listener is not easy but sometimes it is all an athlete really wants or needs.
One season I had trouble establishing a relationship with one of my athletes. I was angry with her because I thought she never listened to me. Over the course of the season, our relationship became increasingly distant. Finally, another athlete said to me, “Coach, you need to talk to her.” At first I dismissed her comment, but the more I thought about it, the more I knew she was right. So, one afternoon I took some time to talk with her. I said a few things about how I felt, but then I just listened to what she had to say. The more I listened to her, the more she listened to me. I am positive that our meeting was a turning point in her season and career. And it literally happened overnight. We met on a Wednesday and on Thursday she competed in the NCAA championship. She finished third with a lifetime best performance, a performance that far exceeded anything she had done to that point in her season.
Take time from your daily routine to communicate with your athletes. Maybe it is just a few minutes as they are coming into practice or while they are stretching. Or maybe you connect with a few of your athletes before they leave practice. The more you communicate with them, particularly on a personal level, the more of a relationship you establish with them. Take the time to occasionally meet one-on-one in your office. Have an open-door policy so that your athletes feel comfortable stopping by even if it is only to say hello. Schedule individual goal-setting sessions. Besides nourishing the athlete-coach relationship, these meetings provide athletes with the opportunity to express their feelings and talk about things important to their athletic careers and their personal lives.
Arrange team meetings and team goal-setting sessions. These sessions give your athletes the opportunity to communicate among themselves. It is worthwhile to attend some of these meetings to lay the ground rules for athlete interaction and discussion topics. For other meetings, it is more important that the athletes take responsibility for the meeting and you need not be present. Some of the topics your athletes can consider are how to support one another inside and outside of practice, how to communicate effectively with each other, and how to openly talk about problems and their resolutions.
Use the principles and ideas of humanism and Rogerian theory to constructively resolve conflict. No matter how effective you are as a coach or how great your athletes are as people, you will have conflict at some point within your team and within your program. And the quicker it is resolved, the sooner you right the ship and continue moving forward. It might be a conflict between you and a player, between two players, between an assistant coach and a player, between two assistant coaches, between coach and parent, or between the offense and the defense. The number of potential conflicts lurking on the horizon is great and you and your athletes need to be trained and ready to confront these battles. Humanism and Rogerian theory provide a perfect battle plan.
According to humanism and Rogerian theory, the best way to resolve conflict is for both sides to sit down and communicate. Since people act in accordance with their phenomenological reality, this communication involves having each person really listen and attempt to understand the other person's private world of experiences. Because humanism emphasizes self-direction, self-determination, autonomy, and self-evaluation, it is expected that each person, with the coach acting as facilitator, will assume responsibility for resolving the conflict.
Personal Values
Personal values should be a part of your coaching philosophy and your coaching curriculum. You teach values whether you know it or not. If you are unaware of the values you teach, then they have become part of your hidden curriculum. As mentioned a number of times in this book, effective coaches are aware of everything they teach. Consequently, be conscious of the values you teach—or want to teach—and incorporate them into your coaching curriculum so that you teach positive values and eliminate negative values you might be inadvertently teaching your athletes.
Encourage your athletes to discover their own personal values. Simon, Howe, and Kirschenbaum (1972) suggest 79 strategies for helping students elaborate and clarify values. Personal values you might teach include acceptance of self and others, acceptance of personal faults and mistakes but still maintaining self-worth, and valuing effort and performance more than winning. One personal value worth teaching is personal responsibility. Historically, humanism has valued autonomy: the individual taking responsibility and control for his or her life.
Stress personal responsibility as a value. You can nurture personal responsibility in many ways. Having athletes set their own goals and select appropriate ways of reaching their goals gives them a sense of control and autonomy. Also, setting up athletes for success helps establish an internal locus of control. According to attribution theory, athletes with an internal locus of control see success as a result of personal effort and not an external factor such as luck. In other words, an athlete with an internal locus of control believes that he is in control of the outcome of events.
Stress personal problem solving as a value. Rather than solve a problem for an athlete, you can facilitate the athlete's effort to solve the problem. This concept is at the center of Roger's client-centered therapy, in which the client, not the counselor, solves the problem. Based on Rogerian theory, a nondirective model of teaching has been developed for fostering a sense of personal responsibility in athletes. The following section outlines the nondirective model.
Read more from Applying Educational Psychology in Coaching Athletes by Jeffery Huber.
Coaches can use behaviorism to increase athletes' motivation
According to the concept of psychological hedonism and the pain–pleasure principle, people are motivated to obtain pleasure and avoid pain.
Behaviorism and Motivation
According to the concept of psychological hedonism and the pain-pleasure principle, people are motivated to obtain pleasure and avoid pain. This simple explanation for human motivation, however, seems incongruous with the picture of the hard-working athlete training through extremely demanding and often painful (not pleasurable) conditions to achieve a long-range goal. How do you account for this type of athlete motivation? According to behaviorism, you would argue that somehow athlete motivation to train under such grueling circumstances is being reinforced. A reinforcer increases the probability that a response will reoccur. When a rat receives a food pellet (reinforcer) for feverishly pressing a lever in the Skinner box, the rat is more likely to press the lever again.
Reinforcement and Praise
When used according to the principles of operant conditioning, reinforcement can have a significant impact on motivation and human behavior. Consider the successful coach who always seems to have upbeat and motivated athletes willing to charge through a brick wall for their coach. Unfortunately, the example of the unsuccessful coach whose athletes always seem to be downcast, downtrodden, and unmotivated also exists. One factor that separates the successful coach from the unsuccessful coach is the use of positive reinforcers, in particular, praise. Although the use of praise is discussed in detail in chapter 10, several rules about the use of praise (pushing the praise button) are worth repeating here.
Praise provides information to athletes not only about performance but also about notion of self. In other words, it tells athletes about the quality of their motor performance, but it often also tells them about their self-worth and competence. For example, when you say, “Jerome, way to think. That's the way to make the correction the first time!” you are letting him know about his improved performance and also, and more important, about his intelligence, effort, and capacity for change. Contrast this coaching comment with the droll and uninspired “Okay. Go on to the next drill.” Often, just a few precisely put words make a significant and long-lasting difference in an athlete's notion of self and motivation.
Praise should be used judiciously. It is easy to use praise too often so that it becomes meaningless to athletes or too infrequently so that it is ineffective in influencing behavior. Young coaches in particular often use praise too frequently. Successful coaches find the right balance for dishing out praise so that when they do use praise, it has real punch and positively affects athlete motivation.
Praise should include specific, constructive encouragement to build self-esteem (Hitz & Driscoll, 1994). Encouraging comments should be clear and specific rather than vague and general. Athletes want to know not only the what but also the why. If they aren't doing something correctly, they want to know why it is wrong and why a different approach is better. At the same time, they also want to be encouraged for their effort and ability to succeed with future attempts. For example, the type of praise in the following statement increases self-esteem and motivation while it concomitantly provides constructive encouragement: “Maria, you took the race out too fast but I admire your determination, adventurousness, and fearlessness! Those are qualities you should be proud of and will serve you well in the future. However, you need to pace yourself and run your own race next time.”
Praise should be sincere. Sincere praise not only provides reinforcement, but it also sends an emotional message that says you genuinely care for your athletes and want to see them succeed. Athletes who perceive that their coaches care for them are motivated to give even greater effort in practice. Conversely, insincere praise, besides being ineffective, communicates to athletes that you have little regard for them and their performances. Sincere praise builds the athlete-coach relationship while insincere praise undermines it. Which type of praise do you give your athletes?
Praising effort is important, particularly for young athletes. Children who are praised for their efforts are more apt to develop a view of ability as something they can control and something that can change (Mueller & Dweck, 1998). Consequently, these athletes are more apt to be motivated to train hard and expect results based on personal effort. In contrast, people who are praised for their talent tend to view ability as fixed and unchanging. Consequently, when these athletes experience failure, they are less motivated to train hard.
External Feedback as Reinforcement
Like praise, external feedback can serve as a reinforcer for athlete behaviors. For example, in the game of hot and cold, people shout out “hotter” and “colder” to express how close the player is to reaching the goal. The hotter game players get (i.e., the closer they get to their achievement goal) the more motivated they become to keep going. In this regard, both knowledge of results (KR) and knowledge of performance (KP) act as reinforcers. Two specific external feedback properties that athletes find motivating are the aptly named motivating feedback and informational feedback.
Motivating feedback is defined as feedback about an individual's progress toward goal achievement that energizes and directs behavior. For example, consider a runner who is on the second to last lap and her coach tells her she is on pace for a personal best time. When athletes believe they are improving and moving toward their goals, they become increasingly motivated in their pursuit of goal achievement.
Informational feedback is defined as feedback that provides performers with error correction information, either descriptive (what happened) or prescriptive (what needs to happen). This type of feedback is motivating to all athletes, but it is particularly motivating for athletes engaged in deliberate practice (i.e., setting specific goals for everything they do in practice). For these athletes, informational feedback is like food to a hungry traveler; they devour it. They want to improve with each practice and informational feedback helps temporarily satisfy their craving for knowledge about their progress toward improved performance.
Extrinsic and Intrinsic Motivation
Some people engage in specific behaviors because they have extrinsic motivation: They engage in the behaviors because they anticipate certain external rewards. For example, some athletes try out for a team because they anticipate earning a varsity letter, a trophy, a college scholarship, and so on. Other people have intrinsic motivation: They engage in athletics because they respond well to internal sources of reinforcement such as personal satisfaction and sense of accomplishment. These athletes derive internal reinforcement from achievements such as throwing a perfect pass, performing a great gymnastics routine, swishing a 3-point shot, running a perfect race, and so on. The beauty of sport is that this list is virtually endless.
Research suggests that people who respond to intrinsic motives are more committed, enjoy their activities more, and are more persistent when they confront failure (Agbor-Baiyee, 1997). While this research examined student behavior, research examining athletes found similar results (Vallerand & Losier, 1999). Close to intrinsic motivation is a concept called interest (Wigfield, Eccles, & Rodriguez, 1998). People who engage in activities simply for the fact that they like doing it and expect no external reward can be said to have an interest in that activity. A primary objective for all coaches should be to encourage athletes to develop a genuine interest in their sport.
Keep in mind, however, that external rewards can be useful for facilitating interest and intrinsic motivation. For example, when I was learning to dive, our coach purchased gold (it was actually yellow, but it looked like gold to my teammates and me) diving suits like the one reigning Olympic champion Bernie Wrightson wore when he won the gold medal. We all aspired to become gold medalists like Bernie, but we could not buy the suit. We could only acquire the suit by earning it, by learning a full list of high-degree-of-difficulty dives on the 3-meter springboard. We wanted to earn that suit so badly that we would do almost anything, including learning scary and difficult new dives that no one our age was performing back then. The suit became a symbol of courage, effort, determination, and noteworthy accomplishment. We did not remain in the sport simply because of the suit, but it sure captured our interest and ignited our intrinsic motivation.
Conditioned Responses
Athletes who associate positive physiological responses, such as relaxation and appropriate arousal level, and enhancing emotions, such as joy and satisfaction, are more likely to love their sport and come to practice highly motivated to train. Therefore, to increase motivation, coaches need to condition their athletes to respond positively to not only their sport but the many aspects of their sport, such as training, stretching, conditioning, drill and skill work, and competing. For many athletes, especially young ones, a positive conditioned response is what brings them back each day, each week, each month, and each season. Because conditioning is so important to the motor learning process and athlete success, chapter 3 examines it in detail (see The Salivating Athlete).
Applying Behaviorism to Increase Athlete Motivation
Based on the theory of behaviorism, coaches can push a number of “behavioral buttons” to increase athletes' motivation.
Follow the guidelines for the effective use of praise. Although praise is an effective reinforcer, it can be misused. Know when, what, and how to use it. Successful coaches are masters at effectively using praise to motivate their athletes.
Use external feedback as you would other types of reinforcers. External feedback for all athletes, but particularly elite athletes, is highly reinforcing. The more accurate the external feedback, the more reinforcing it becomes for them. Years ago when I first began working with an elite athlete, who already was a NCAA champion and world champion, I learned two things rather quickly: Remember what correction you give him and give him accurate feedback about whether or not he made the correction on the subsequent attempt. If I forgot the correction or my feedback was inaccurate, he kindly let me know about it! Highly effective coaches provide accurate and timely external feedback.
Recognize individual differences. No two athletes are exactly alike. It is important to keep these differences in mind when using reinforcement to influence motivation. What is reinforcing for one athlete might not be reinforcing to another athlete. Knowing how to push their buttons in part means knowing what is reinforcing to them. For example, some athletes hate being pulled aside and lectured while other athletes take it as a compliment and a sign that you care about them and their goals.
Reinforce effort in order to encourage intrinsic motivation. In the long run, athletes train harder and longer and persevere in their sport when they are intrinsically motivated. For this reason, reinforce effort. Athletes who associate ability and achievement with effort are more likely to be motivated to train and maintain their motivation during difficult training cycles.
Condition athletes to have a positive physiological response to their sport. Athletes who have an interest and love for their sport (training and competition) will be engaged and motivated. You can facilitate a positive response by continually pairing positive conditioned stimuli with positive unconditioned stimuli. A significant way to create a positive response is to facilitate success and mastery during practice, make practice and competition fun, and focus on effort.
Use external reinforcers. Sometimes external reinforcers can be effective for kick starting or augmenting an athlete's internal motivation. In the case of the gold diving suit, it is interesting to note that every diver on the team did indeed earn a suit. Most went on to successful high school careers and a number of us went on to compete collegiately and nationally. One athlete even made the U.S. Olympic team, and one stayed around long enough to coach collegiate diving for over 37 years. Sometimes, a seemingly small external reward can go a long way toward intrinsically motivating athletes. It is funny how after all these years grown men still occasionally gather and talk about “the suit” and how they cherish it and have it stored away like a rare artifact, precious and immeasurably valuable, a tangible reminder of the intangible rewards they received from their memorable experience in sport. I am sure that athletes in all sports have similar stories and memories.
Read more from Applying Educational Psychology in Coaching Athletes by Jeffery Huber.
Understanding motor learning stages improves skill instruction
As a coach I found this simple paradigm to be extremely helpful for understanding, guiding, and accelerating the motor learning process.
Three Stages of Motor Learning
At this point in the chapter, you might ask, “What does all this discussion about thinking and memory have to do with motor learning and performance?” You want your athletes to respond, not think. You want them to grip it and rip it. You want them to look and automatically react. Well, motor learning, particularly early learning, involves attempts by learners to acquire an idea of the movement (Gentile, 1972) or understand the basic pattern of coordination (Newell, 1985). To achieve these goals, learners must use cognitive (Fitts & Posner, 1967) and verbal processes (Adams, 1971) to solve problems. To this end, Fitts (1964; Fitts & Posner, 1967) suggests that motor skill acquisition follows three stages: the cognitive stage, the associative stage, and the autonomous stage.
As a coach I found this simple paradigm to be extremely helpful for understanding, guiding, and accelerating the motor learning process. Because of its importance, it is worth examining the three stages and their implications for effective coaching.
Cognitive Stage
For the new learner, the problem to be solved in the cognitive stage is understanding what to do (Schmidt & Lee, 2005). It would be extremely difficult for someone to learn a skill without receiving any prior knowledge about the skill, whether that knowledge is visual or verbal. For example, consider the butterfly stroke in swimming. It is a fairly complicated and somewhat unnatural stroke in which to syncopate the movement of the arms with the kick of the legs. It would be difficult indeed for a novice swimmer to learn such a stroke without ever seeing the stroke performed or ever receiving any declarative knowledge about how the stroke is performed. In other words, motor learning begins with the cognitive stage and the processing of information.
Surely the swimmer could discover how to roughly perform the stroke, but it probably would take many long hours of trial and error, experimentation, and some creative problem solving. It is much simpler to learn a skill by first acquiring information about the skill.
The cognitive stage is of great interest to cognitivists because this stage involves information processing. Also called the verbal-motor stage (Adams, 1971), this stage is verbal-cognitive in nature (Schmidt & Lee, 2005) because it involves the conveyance (verbal) and acquisition (cognition) of new information. In this stage, the person is trying to process information in an attempt to cognitively understand the requirements and parameters of motor movement.
Consider several young children taking beginning golf lessons. They might arrive early for their first golf lesson. Having never seen any golfers in action, they are excited and eager to see what golf is all about; each child is a mini tabula rasa ready to learn. They watch the preceding class of golfers and immediately begin collecting visual information. Next, the instructor explains the golf swing, beginning with the grip of the club and stance. Now they are gathering verbal information about the sport. In other words, they don't simply show up and begin golfing. Everything begins with the acquisition and cognitive processing of newly presented information. During this cognitive stage, the beginning athlete ingests information and organizes it into some meaningful form that will ultimately lead to the creation of a motor program.
The cognitive stage is characterized as having large gains in performance and inconsistent performance. During this stage instruction, guidance, slow-motion drills, video analysis, augmented feedback, and other coaching techniques are highly effective (Schmidt & Lee, 2005). Recall the discussion in chapter 4 regarding Adams' closed-loop theory and the importance of error-free learning in the initial learning stage (p. 133). During the cognitive stage it is important that the learner is provided with the necessary information, guidance, and time to establish sound fundamentals of movement. Sometimes making errors and taking a constructivist approach to coaching and learning can be useful (see the discussion on schema theory, p. 196).
Associative Stage
The associative stage is characterized as much less verbal information, smaller gains in performance, conscious performance, adjustment making, awkward and disjointed movement, and taking a long time to complete. During this stage the athlete works at making movement adjustments and stringing together small movement skills. This stage is also called the motor stage (Adams, 1971) because the problem to be solved in the associative stage is learning how to perform the skill (Schmidt & Lee, 2005). From the cognitive perspective, the athlete is attempting to translate declarative knowledge into procedural knowledge. In other words, the athlete is transforming what to do into how to do.
No diver in the history of the sport of diving has ever performed every single dive for perfect 10s in a single competition. There is always room for improvement. This is true for all sports. For example, a baseball or softball pitcher can improve delivery and learn new pitches, a pole-vaulter can learn to use a new pole and a new technique, a gymnast can refine a routine, a basketball player can improve shooting technique, and a swimmer can improve stroke or flip turn technique. Highly successful athletes and highly effective coaches are always looking for ways to get better. Consequently, they frequently revisit the cognitive stage and then the associative stage of motor learning. Revisiting these stages is the relearning process.
Some years ago, I had an opportunity to work with Professor Yu Fen at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. Professor Yu Fen is one of the top diving coaches in the world and has produced numerous world and Olympic champions. One of the things I took away from working with her is the importance of continually revisiting the first and second stages of motor acquisition, no matter how accomplished an athlete might be. If a diver was not performing, say, a forward 3 1/2 somersault in the pike position, she would take the diver to the trampoline and begin working a basic jump or single somersault. During one of her practices, I observed Olympic gold medalist Tian Liang practicing on 1-meter springboard virtually the same drill as a beginning athlete on an adjacent springboard.
Let's say you have a new athlete who recently transferred from another program to your program. The reason for the transfer is that he has hit a plateau. In fact, his level of performance has begun to decrease. After observing him, you realize that the reason for his lack of progress is that some of his fundamentals are badly in need of remedial work. Where do you begin with this adopted athlete with a host of bad habits? Given what you now know about motor acquisition, the best approach is to first explain that if he wants to improve his performance he will have to make changes, and to make changes means letting go of old habits and learning new fundamentals by revisiting the three stages (cognitive, associative, autonomous) of motor learning. This relearning process means acquiring new information (cognitive stage) and then going through the frustrating associative stage.
Getting athletes to buy into relearning can be challenging. Some athletes, especially successful ones, might say, “Hey, I was high school state champion doing it this way! Why should I change? Besides, the new movement feels awkward.” A coach might reply, “Well, you could have won by even more had you done it the new way!” When these athletes try something new it feels uncomfortable and awkward and they sometimes are reluctant to continue with the change. The verbal information you provide about the three stages of motor learning as well as the information about the new technique helps them establish or activate a learning schema (p. 179) and provides a rationale or perspective for persevering with the change. Next, you work with them on the skill in its simplest form until the skill is mastered, automatic, and integrated into the movement program.
Autonomous Stage
According to Fitts' and Posner's paradigm, this is the final stage of motor acquisition. It often requires years of training to arrive at the autonomous stage. But this stage is where it's at for elite athletes, where motor performance becomes largely automatic, where cognitive processing demands are minimal, and athletes are capable of attending to and processing other information, such as the position of defensive players, game strategy, or the form or style of movement (Schmidt & Lee, 2005) in sports such as ice-skating, dance, and synchronized swimming. It is the stage where they can now respond and not think (or think minimally), where they can grip it and rip it, look and automatically react, and enter a state of flow.
Both good outcomes and bad outcomes are associated with the autonomous stage. The good is that performance requires much less attentional and cognitive demand, which thereby frees the performer to engage in secondary tasks, such as the concert pianist who is able to follow random digits or perform arithmetic while simultaneously playing the piano (Shaffer, 1980), or the quarterback who is capable of surveying the defense and detecting an eminent blitz while simultaneously calling the signals and changing the play at the line of scrimmage.
The bad is that since less cognitive demand exists during performance, it leaves ample room for irrelevant and distracting thoughts to sneak into the workshop (working memory) of the mind. Examples of this occurrence are the elite athletes at the Olympic trials who get caught thinking about making the Olympic team instead of focusing exclusively on performance during the last moments of a gymnastics routine, swimming race, or wrestling match. Think of the gymnast who puts together a stellar routine only to make a silly mistake at the end; or the swimmer who swims magnificently but doesn't finish the race and gets touched out at the wall; or the wrestler who dominates the match but loses concentration and allows his opponent to gain an easy reversal in the waning seconds. Some mountain climbing accidents occur as climbers near the top of the mountain. This may be so because those experienced climbers used some of their available attentional capacity to suddenly begin thinking about reaching the peak—the outcome—rather than focusing on what got them to that part of the mountain in the first place—the process.
The other bad outcome about automatic performance is that it reinforces athletes to maintain incorrect movements because a certain amount of comfort and reinforcement is associated with automatic performance, even if it is incorrect. But just because a motor movement can be performed automatically doesn't mean the movement is correct or worthy of being maintained. Moreover, as soon as athletes stop thinking about the new movement during the cognitive and associative stages, they are likely to respond automatically, thereby reverting to the old and incorrect movement in their performance repertoire. The three stages of motor learning are summarized in table 6.2.
Applying Motor Learning Stages in Coaching Athletes
Provide your athletes with detailed information in the early stage of learning. If you want your athletes to perform correctly, give them the correct information. This means that you need to know what you are talking about and you need to be clear and concise with your instruction. If your athletes don't understand what they are supposed to do, they won't do it correctly. And if they don't understand, perhaps the problem is you, not them. In other words, you may need to do a better job of clearly communicating exactly what you want them to do and communicate it in laymen's terms—in language they can understand and at a conceptual level they are prepared to cognitively grasp. For example, you may understand the physics behind what you are teaching, but if your athletes don't comprehend concepts such as angular momentum, shear force, and action-reaction you will have lost them at “Hello.”
Explain the three stages of motor learning and the relearning process. Relearning something is often more difficult than learning it correctly the first time. This difficulty can lead to frustration and frustration acts like a brick wall between the athlete and the desired goal movement being learned. Make sure your athletes understand the motor learning stages and which stage they are at during the relearning process. Continually remind them that if they trust you and stay committed to the new movement, eventually it will become automatic and integrated into their performance. The new movement seems awkward now compared to the old movement because they are in the associative stage, but after enough repetitions the new movement will become smooth, automatic, and, most important, more effective than the old movement. Some coaches are ineffective at fixing movements. They understand how to teach it correctly in the beginning, but not how to change (fix) a bad habit. Understanding cognitive theory and taking a cognitive teaching approach will help you effectively do both: Teach it correctly the first time and change a bad habit.
Be patient with your athletes during the associative stage. Based on the stages of learning, we now know that awkward and disjointed movements characterize the associative stage. Things aren't going to look or feel very smooth at first; it is part of the learning process. If you expect performance to be immediately smooth and flowing, you are going to be disappointed, disillusioned, and perhaps even somewhat distraught—and so too are your athletes. Fear not. It is all part of the learning process. Remain patient and facilitate learning. Your impatience is likely to make your athletes anxious and impede their learning, whereas your patience and confidence will motivate them to persevere during the associative stage.
Stress the importance of positive information in working memory. A goal for you is to get your athletes to be able to perform automatically. As already mentioned, however, automaticity creates empty space in working memory, which makes it easier for athletes to unintentionally entertain negative thoughts and ruminate, which means to repeatedly dwell on negative and unproductive thoughts. For example, some athletes focus on the outcome of competition and the thought What if I lose? Ruminative thoughts are often unconscious thoughts that through sheer volume of constant repetition become overwhelming and overtake working memory. For example, at a major competition some athletes get this blank look on their faces when their coaches talk to them. It's as though their entire focus is on some internal thought and they are lost to the external world of the here and now. Help your athletes keep working memory space filled with the right stuff; teach them to monitor their thoughts, use thought-stopping statements, redirect their thoughts, engage in positive self-talk, and answer negative thoughts and images with positive thoughts and images.
Read more from Applying Educational Psychology in Coaching Athletes by Jeffery Huber.
Emphasize humanistic principles as part of an effective coaching philosophy
Humanism can manifest itself through the coaching process in four ways. These common emphases are affect, self-concept, communication, and personal values.
Applying Education Psychology in Coaching Athletes.
Applying Four Common Emphases of Humanistic Coaching
Humanism can manifest itself through the coaching process in four ways. These common emphases are affect, self-concept, communication, and personal values.
Affect
Emphasizing affect means paying greater attention to thinking and feeling and less attention to acquiring specific information and skills. Following are some suggestions for emphasizing affect.
Set affective objectives. Setting specific affective objectives means you commit to making a conscious effort to integrate humanism into your program. Examples of affective objectives include encouraging and leading athletes to demonstrate a love for their sport and themselves and to demonstrate a concern and respect for teammates. Another affective objective is to demonstrate a concern and respect for your athletes and acceptance of them as unique individuals, not just as a group of athletes. Another goal is to act as a role model and model a love for the sport and belief in the importance of becoming a more complete person.
Pay greater attention to athletes' feelings. Simply asking athletes how they are feeling and what is going on in their lives, showing a genuine concern for them as human beings, listening to their problems, and being sensitive to their emotional responses are all ways of paying greater attention to athlete's feelings.
Have athletes become more aware of their teammates' feelings. Awareness of others' feelings emphasizes affect and helps athletes move outside their egocentrism. One way to facilitate this greater awareness is to hold a team meeting and ask your athletes to express their feelings, understand their teammates' needs, and find ways to support each other at practices, competitions, and outside the practice venue. Also, when disagreements occur between athletes, ask each athlete to try understanding the other's viewpoint.
Stress the importance of learning and thinking strategies. According to Rogers emphasizing affect also means emphasizing thinking. When you emphasize thinking, the information and skills being taught are not as important as the process and strategies for learning. Consequently, a humanistic coach emphasizes learning how to learn and teaches athletes specific strategies to help them become good learners. For example, having athletes mentally review information about drills before, during, and after each practice helps them learn how to learn drills. Many athletes tend to leave a practice and never think about that practice ever again. When taking time to review information discussed in practice, athletes are more apt to organize the information, give it meaning, remember it at the next practice, and, consequently, improve at a faster rate.
Self-Concept
Helping your athletes develop a positive self-concept is another way to emphasize humanism. Remember that your athletes develop their self-concept in part through interaction with you and how you communicate to them about who they are as human beings. How can you facilitate this process? Following are some suggestions.
Maintain positive perceptions and expectations of your athletes. It is easy to form limiting notions of your athletes and unconsciously communicate these limitations to them. These notions then become part of a hidden curriculum: the things you unconsciously teach as the unintended outcome or by-product of your coaching. Statements such as the following ones can become part of a hidden curriculum: “This athlete is mentally weak.” “This athlete will never make it.” “This athlete can do skills A and B great but will never learn skill C.” “This athlete will always be a B-level player.” Rid yourself of preconceived limiting notions of your athletes and avoid any hidden curriculum. Expect the best. When you expect the best, you generally get the best. Don't count out any of your athletes. Like Jimmy, the young lanky boy I coached many years ago, just when you think someone can't do something, you may be surprised.
Communicate these positive perceptions and expectations through word and deed. It is good to have positive perceptions and expectations of your athletes, but make sure you communicate them to your athletes both by what you say and what you do. Take the time to tell your athletes what you think of them and what they are capable of achieving and communicate these expectations through your coaching. Saying, “Well, you didn't make it this time but I know you will at the next competition” is an effective example. Also, demonstrate your confidence in them through your actions. For example, you tell one of your athletes that she can become a champion if she puts in more work and then you stay after practice or volunteer to come in on your day off to work with her.
Maintain positive perceptions and expectations publicly and privately. Coaches sometimes disparage their athletes behind their backs. Getting frustrated and needing to vent some frustration is part of coaching, but you have to support your athletes and believe in them, even when they aren't looking. Being a humanistic coach means, in part, being genuine as a person. Being genuine means acting as you really are as a person and having your words match your internal feelings. In other words, you openly let others know how you feel. Venting is part of human nature and part of dealing with stress. But you have to be true to your athletes. You can't say one thing publicly and then turn around and say something contrary privately. Besides making you a hypocrite and disingenuous, your words ultimately get back to the athlete and ruin the coach-athlete relationship.
Invite rather than disinvite athletes. According to Purkey and Novak (1996), teachers invite students by communicating to them that they are capable, self-directed, and valued, and by expecting behaviors and achievements commensurate with their worth and emerging self-concept. In contrast, teachers who disinvite students send a message that students are irresponsible, incapable, worthless, and undirected. As a coach, do you invite or disinvite your athletes?
Build a positive self-concept by promoting success rather than failure. To promote success, break down learning tasks into small and attainable increments. Coaches sometimes ask athletes to do too much too soon. Perhaps this is because they forget how many smaller tasks comprise a particular movement. They ask athletes to do a skill that actually involves many skills, none of which the athletes have yet mastered. When you ask athletes to do too much too soon, you set them up for guaranteed failure. The result of repeated failure can be a poor self-concept, a feeling of external control, and a sense of helplessness.
Promoting success and a positive self-concept also includes implementing mastery learning (Bloom, 1976). The concept of mastery learning suggests that all learners can learn; the only difference between learners is the amount of time each person requires to learn the material. While Bloom's concept of mastery learning deals mainly with concept learning, mastery learning can be applied to motor learning as well. Not all athletes will learn to perform at the elite level. However, most athletes can learn much of what you teach to some level of proficiency. The humanistic coach focuses on helping each athlete master as many skills as possible for their particular sport and level of experience and ability.
Mastery learning means learning a particular skill to a certain level of proficiency before moving on to the next skill. For example, when you break down a skill into smaller increments, make sure your athlete masters each smaller skill before moving on to the next skill. It may take time and patience on the part of both athlete and coach, but it will be well worth the effort later in the athlete's career.
Communication
A third major emphasis of a humanistic approach to coaching is communication. Communication includes attention to the principles and skills of effective human relations, honest interpersonal communication, and constructive conflict resolution. Following are some suggestions for emphasizing communication in your coaching.
Establish effective human relations through honest and open interpersonal communication. Honest and open communication means being real with your athletes, rather than aloof and unapproachable. Honest communication also means really listening to what your athletes have to say. A shortcoming for many coaches is that they don't take the time or give enough effort to really listen to what their athletes are trying to say. Being a good listener is not easy but sometimes it is all an athlete really wants or needs.
One season I had trouble establishing a relationship with one of my athletes. I was angry with her because I thought she never listened to me. Over the course of the season, our relationship became increasingly distant. Finally, another athlete said to me, “Coach, you need to talk to her.” At first I dismissed her comment, but the more I thought about it, the more I knew she was right. So, one afternoon I took some time to talk with her. I said a few things about how I felt, but then I just listened to what she had to say. The more I listened to her, the more she listened to me. I am positive that our meeting was a turning point in her season and career. And it literally happened overnight. We met on a Wednesday and on Thursday she competed in the NCAA championship. She finished third with a lifetime best performance, a performance that far exceeded anything she had done to that point in her season.
Take time from your daily routine to communicate with your athletes. Maybe it is just a few minutes as they are coming into practice or while they are stretching. Or maybe you connect with a few of your athletes before they leave practice. The more you communicate with them, particularly on a personal level, the more of a relationship you establish with them. Take the time to occasionally meet one-on-one in your office. Have an open-door policy so that your athletes feel comfortable stopping by even if it is only to say hello. Schedule individual goal-setting sessions. Besides nourishing the athlete-coach relationship, these meetings provide athletes with the opportunity to express their feelings and talk about things important to their athletic careers and their personal lives.
Arrange team meetings and team goal-setting sessions. These sessions give your athletes the opportunity to communicate among themselves. It is worthwhile to attend some of these meetings to lay the ground rules for athlete interaction and discussion topics. For other meetings, it is more important that the athletes take responsibility for the meeting and you need not be present. Some of the topics your athletes can consider are how to support one another inside and outside of practice, how to communicate effectively with each other, and how to openly talk about problems and their resolutions.
Use the principles and ideas of humanism and Rogerian theory to constructively resolve conflict. No matter how effective you are as a coach or how great your athletes are as people, you will have conflict at some point within your team and within your program. And the quicker it is resolved, the sooner you right the ship and continue moving forward. It might be a conflict between you and a player, between two players, between an assistant coach and a player, between two assistant coaches, between coach and parent, or between the offense and the defense. The number of potential conflicts lurking on the horizon is great and you and your athletes need to be trained and ready to confront these battles. Humanism and Rogerian theory provide a perfect battle plan.
According to humanism and Rogerian theory, the best way to resolve conflict is for both sides to sit down and communicate. Since people act in accordance with their phenomenological reality, this communication involves having each person really listen and attempt to understand the other person's private world of experiences. Because humanism emphasizes self-direction, self-determination, autonomy, and self-evaluation, it is expected that each person, with the coach acting as facilitator, will assume responsibility for resolving the conflict.
Personal Values
Personal values should be a part of your coaching philosophy and your coaching curriculum. You teach values whether you know it or not. If you are unaware of the values you teach, then they have become part of your hidden curriculum. As mentioned a number of times in this book, effective coaches are aware of everything they teach. Consequently, be conscious of the values you teach—or want to teach—and incorporate them into your coaching curriculum so that you teach positive values and eliminate negative values you might be inadvertently teaching your athletes.
Encourage your athletes to discover their own personal values. Simon, Howe, and Kirschenbaum (1972) suggest 79 strategies for helping students elaborate and clarify values. Personal values you might teach include acceptance of self and others, acceptance of personal faults and mistakes but still maintaining self-worth, and valuing effort and performance more than winning. One personal value worth teaching is personal responsibility. Historically, humanism has valued autonomy: the individual taking responsibility and control for his or her life.
Stress personal responsibility as a value. You can nurture personal responsibility in many ways. Having athletes set their own goals and select appropriate ways of reaching their goals gives them a sense of control and autonomy. Also, setting up athletes for success helps establish an internal locus of control. According to attribution theory, athletes with an internal locus of control see success as a result of personal effort and not an external factor such as luck. In other words, an athlete with an internal locus of control believes that he is in control of the outcome of events.
Stress personal problem solving as a value. Rather than solve a problem for an athlete, you can facilitate the athlete's effort to solve the problem. This concept is at the center of Roger's client-centered therapy, in which the client, not the counselor, solves the problem. Based on Rogerian theory, a nondirective model of teaching has been developed for fostering a sense of personal responsibility in athletes. The following section outlines the nondirective model.
Read more from Applying Educational Psychology in Coaching Athletes by Jeffery Huber.
Coaches can use behaviorism to increase athletes' motivation
According to the concept of psychological hedonism and the pain–pleasure principle, people are motivated to obtain pleasure and avoid pain.
Behaviorism and Motivation
According to the concept of psychological hedonism and the pain-pleasure principle, people are motivated to obtain pleasure and avoid pain. This simple explanation for human motivation, however, seems incongruous with the picture of the hard-working athlete training through extremely demanding and often painful (not pleasurable) conditions to achieve a long-range goal. How do you account for this type of athlete motivation? According to behaviorism, you would argue that somehow athlete motivation to train under such grueling circumstances is being reinforced. A reinforcer increases the probability that a response will reoccur. When a rat receives a food pellet (reinforcer) for feverishly pressing a lever in the Skinner box, the rat is more likely to press the lever again.
Reinforcement and Praise
When used according to the principles of operant conditioning, reinforcement can have a significant impact on motivation and human behavior. Consider the successful coach who always seems to have upbeat and motivated athletes willing to charge through a brick wall for their coach. Unfortunately, the example of the unsuccessful coach whose athletes always seem to be downcast, downtrodden, and unmotivated also exists. One factor that separates the successful coach from the unsuccessful coach is the use of positive reinforcers, in particular, praise. Although the use of praise is discussed in detail in chapter 10, several rules about the use of praise (pushing the praise button) are worth repeating here.
Praise provides information to athletes not only about performance but also about notion of self. In other words, it tells athletes about the quality of their motor performance, but it often also tells them about their self-worth and competence. For example, when you say, “Jerome, way to think. That's the way to make the correction the first time!” you are letting him know about his improved performance and also, and more important, about his intelligence, effort, and capacity for change. Contrast this coaching comment with the droll and uninspired “Okay. Go on to the next drill.” Often, just a few precisely put words make a significant and long-lasting difference in an athlete's notion of self and motivation.
Praise should be used judiciously. It is easy to use praise too often so that it becomes meaningless to athletes or too infrequently so that it is ineffective in influencing behavior. Young coaches in particular often use praise too frequently. Successful coaches find the right balance for dishing out praise so that when they do use praise, it has real punch and positively affects athlete motivation.
Praise should include specific, constructive encouragement to build self-esteem (Hitz & Driscoll, 1994). Encouraging comments should be clear and specific rather than vague and general. Athletes want to know not only the what but also the why. If they aren't doing something correctly, they want to know why it is wrong and why a different approach is better. At the same time, they also want to be encouraged for their effort and ability to succeed with future attempts. For example, the type of praise in the following statement increases self-esteem and motivation while it concomitantly provides constructive encouragement: “Maria, you took the race out too fast but I admire your determination, adventurousness, and fearlessness! Those are qualities you should be proud of and will serve you well in the future. However, you need to pace yourself and run your own race next time.”
Praise should be sincere. Sincere praise not only provides reinforcement, but it also sends an emotional message that says you genuinely care for your athletes and want to see them succeed. Athletes who perceive that their coaches care for them are motivated to give even greater effort in practice. Conversely, insincere praise, besides being ineffective, communicates to athletes that you have little regard for them and their performances. Sincere praise builds the athlete-coach relationship while insincere praise undermines it. Which type of praise do you give your athletes?
Praising effort is important, particularly for young athletes. Children who are praised for their efforts are more apt to develop a view of ability as something they can control and something that can change (Mueller & Dweck, 1998). Consequently, these athletes are more apt to be motivated to train hard and expect results based on personal effort. In contrast, people who are praised for their talent tend to view ability as fixed and unchanging. Consequently, when these athletes experience failure, they are less motivated to train hard.
External Feedback as Reinforcement
Like praise, external feedback can serve as a reinforcer for athlete behaviors. For example, in the game of hot and cold, people shout out “hotter” and “colder” to express how close the player is to reaching the goal. The hotter game players get (i.e., the closer they get to their achievement goal) the more motivated they become to keep going. In this regard, both knowledge of results (KR) and knowledge of performance (KP) act as reinforcers. Two specific external feedback properties that athletes find motivating are the aptly named motivating feedback and informational feedback.
Motivating feedback is defined as feedback about an individual's progress toward goal achievement that energizes and directs behavior. For example, consider a runner who is on the second to last lap and her coach tells her she is on pace for a personal best time. When athletes believe they are improving and moving toward their goals, they become increasingly motivated in their pursuit of goal achievement.
Informational feedback is defined as feedback that provides performers with error correction information, either descriptive (what happened) or prescriptive (what needs to happen). This type of feedback is motivating to all athletes, but it is particularly motivating for athletes engaged in deliberate practice (i.e., setting specific goals for everything they do in practice). For these athletes, informational feedback is like food to a hungry traveler; they devour it. They want to improve with each practice and informational feedback helps temporarily satisfy their craving for knowledge about their progress toward improved performance.
Extrinsic and Intrinsic Motivation
Some people engage in specific behaviors because they have extrinsic motivation: They engage in the behaviors because they anticipate certain external rewards. For example, some athletes try out for a team because they anticipate earning a varsity letter, a trophy, a college scholarship, and so on. Other people have intrinsic motivation: They engage in athletics because they respond well to internal sources of reinforcement such as personal satisfaction and sense of accomplishment. These athletes derive internal reinforcement from achievements such as throwing a perfect pass, performing a great gymnastics routine, swishing a 3-point shot, running a perfect race, and so on. The beauty of sport is that this list is virtually endless.
Research suggests that people who respond to intrinsic motives are more committed, enjoy their activities more, and are more persistent when they confront failure (Agbor-Baiyee, 1997). While this research examined student behavior, research examining athletes found similar results (Vallerand & Losier, 1999). Close to intrinsic motivation is a concept called interest (Wigfield, Eccles, & Rodriguez, 1998). People who engage in activities simply for the fact that they like doing it and expect no external reward can be said to have an interest in that activity. A primary objective for all coaches should be to encourage athletes to develop a genuine interest in their sport.
Keep in mind, however, that external rewards can be useful for facilitating interest and intrinsic motivation. For example, when I was learning to dive, our coach purchased gold (it was actually yellow, but it looked like gold to my teammates and me) diving suits like the one reigning Olympic champion Bernie Wrightson wore when he won the gold medal. We all aspired to become gold medalists like Bernie, but we could not buy the suit. We could only acquire the suit by earning it, by learning a full list of high-degree-of-difficulty dives on the 3-meter springboard. We wanted to earn that suit so badly that we would do almost anything, including learning scary and difficult new dives that no one our age was performing back then. The suit became a symbol of courage, effort, determination, and noteworthy accomplishment. We did not remain in the sport simply because of the suit, but it sure captured our interest and ignited our intrinsic motivation.
Conditioned Responses
Athletes who associate positive physiological responses, such as relaxation and appropriate arousal level, and enhancing emotions, such as joy and satisfaction, are more likely to love their sport and come to practice highly motivated to train. Therefore, to increase motivation, coaches need to condition their athletes to respond positively to not only their sport but the many aspects of their sport, such as training, stretching, conditioning, drill and skill work, and competing. For many athletes, especially young ones, a positive conditioned response is what brings them back each day, each week, each month, and each season. Because conditioning is so important to the motor learning process and athlete success, chapter 3 examines it in detail (see The Salivating Athlete).
Applying Behaviorism to Increase Athlete Motivation
Based on the theory of behaviorism, coaches can push a number of “behavioral buttons” to increase athletes' motivation.
Follow the guidelines for the effective use of praise. Although praise is an effective reinforcer, it can be misused. Know when, what, and how to use it. Successful coaches are masters at effectively using praise to motivate their athletes.
Use external feedback as you would other types of reinforcers. External feedback for all athletes, but particularly elite athletes, is highly reinforcing. The more accurate the external feedback, the more reinforcing it becomes for them. Years ago when I first began working with an elite athlete, who already was a NCAA champion and world champion, I learned two things rather quickly: Remember what correction you give him and give him accurate feedback about whether or not he made the correction on the subsequent attempt. If I forgot the correction or my feedback was inaccurate, he kindly let me know about it! Highly effective coaches provide accurate and timely external feedback.
Recognize individual differences. No two athletes are exactly alike. It is important to keep these differences in mind when using reinforcement to influence motivation. What is reinforcing for one athlete might not be reinforcing to another athlete. Knowing how to push their buttons in part means knowing what is reinforcing to them. For example, some athletes hate being pulled aside and lectured while other athletes take it as a compliment and a sign that you care about them and their goals.
Reinforce effort in order to encourage intrinsic motivation. In the long run, athletes train harder and longer and persevere in their sport when they are intrinsically motivated. For this reason, reinforce effort. Athletes who associate ability and achievement with effort are more likely to be motivated to train and maintain their motivation during difficult training cycles.
Condition athletes to have a positive physiological response to their sport. Athletes who have an interest and love for their sport (training and competition) will be engaged and motivated. You can facilitate a positive response by continually pairing positive conditioned stimuli with positive unconditioned stimuli. A significant way to create a positive response is to facilitate success and mastery during practice, make practice and competition fun, and focus on effort.
Use external reinforcers. Sometimes external reinforcers can be effective for kick starting or augmenting an athlete's internal motivation. In the case of the gold diving suit, it is interesting to note that every diver on the team did indeed earn a suit. Most went on to successful high school careers and a number of us went on to compete collegiately and nationally. One athlete even made the U.S. Olympic team, and one stayed around long enough to coach collegiate diving for over 37 years. Sometimes, a seemingly small external reward can go a long way toward intrinsically motivating athletes. It is funny how after all these years grown men still occasionally gather and talk about “the suit” and how they cherish it and have it stored away like a rare artifact, precious and immeasurably valuable, a tangible reminder of the intangible rewards they received from their memorable experience in sport. I am sure that athletes in all sports have similar stories and memories.
Read more from Applying Educational Psychology in Coaching Athletes by Jeffery Huber.
Understanding motor learning stages improves skill instruction
As a coach I found this simple paradigm to be extremely helpful for understanding, guiding, and accelerating the motor learning process.
Three Stages of Motor Learning
At this point in the chapter, you might ask, “What does all this discussion about thinking and memory have to do with motor learning and performance?” You want your athletes to respond, not think. You want them to grip it and rip it. You want them to look and automatically react. Well, motor learning, particularly early learning, involves attempts by learners to acquire an idea of the movement (Gentile, 1972) or understand the basic pattern of coordination (Newell, 1985). To achieve these goals, learners must use cognitive (Fitts & Posner, 1967) and verbal processes (Adams, 1971) to solve problems. To this end, Fitts (1964; Fitts & Posner, 1967) suggests that motor skill acquisition follows three stages: the cognitive stage, the associative stage, and the autonomous stage.
As a coach I found this simple paradigm to be extremely helpful for understanding, guiding, and accelerating the motor learning process. Because of its importance, it is worth examining the three stages and their implications for effective coaching.
Cognitive Stage
For the new learner, the problem to be solved in the cognitive stage is understanding what to do (Schmidt & Lee, 2005). It would be extremely difficult for someone to learn a skill without receiving any prior knowledge about the skill, whether that knowledge is visual or verbal. For example, consider the butterfly stroke in swimming. It is a fairly complicated and somewhat unnatural stroke in which to syncopate the movement of the arms with the kick of the legs. It would be difficult indeed for a novice swimmer to learn such a stroke without ever seeing the stroke performed or ever receiving any declarative knowledge about how the stroke is performed. In other words, motor learning begins with the cognitive stage and the processing of information.
Surely the swimmer could discover how to roughly perform the stroke, but it probably would take many long hours of trial and error, experimentation, and some creative problem solving. It is much simpler to learn a skill by first acquiring information about the skill.
The cognitive stage is of great interest to cognitivists because this stage involves information processing. Also called the verbal-motor stage (Adams, 1971), this stage is verbal-cognitive in nature (Schmidt & Lee, 2005) because it involves the conveyance (verbal) and acquisition (cognition) of new information. In this stage, the person is trying to process information in an attempt to cognitively understand the requirements and parameters of motor movement.
Consider several young children taking beginning golf lessons. They might arrive early for their first golf lesson. Having never seen any golfers in action, they are excited and eager to see what golf is all about; each child is a mini tabula rasa ready to learn. They watch the preceding class of golfers and immediately begin collecting visual information. Next, the instructor explains the golf swing, beginning with the grip of the club and stance. Now they are gathering verbal information about the sport. In other words, they don't simply show up and begin golfing. Everything begins with the acquisition and cognitive processing of newly presented information. During this cognitive stage, the beginning athlete ingests information and organizes it into some meaningful form that will ultimately lead to the creation of a motor program.
The cognitive stage is characterized as having large gains in performance and inconsistent performance. During this stage instruction, guidance, slow-motion drills, video analysis, augmented feedback, and other coaching techniques are highly effective (Schmidt & Lee, 2005). Recall the discussion in chapter 4 regarding Adams' closed-loop theory and the importance of error-free learning in the initial learning stage (p. 133). During the cognitive stage it is important that the learner is provided with the necessary information, guidance, and time to establish sound fundamentals of movement. Sometimes making errors and taking a constructivist approach to coaching and learning can be useful (see the discussion on schema theory, p. 196).
Associative Stage
The associative stage is characterized as much less verbal information, smaller gains in performance, conscious performance, adjustment making, awkward and disjointed movement, and taking a long time to complete. During this stage the athlete works at making movement adjustments and stringing together small movement skills. This stage is also called the motor stage (Adams, 1971) because the problem to be solved in the associative stage is learning how to perform the skill (Schmidt & Lee, 2005). From the cognitive perspective, the athlete is attempting to translate declarative knowledge into procedural knowledge. In other words, the athlete is transforming what to do into how to do.
No diver in the history of the sport of diving has ever performed every single dive for perfect 10s in a single competition. There is always room for improvement. This is true for all sports. For example, a baseball or softball pitcher can improve delivery and learn new pitches, a pole-vaulter can learn to use a new pole and a new technique, a gymnast can refine a routine, a basketball player can improve shooting technique, and a swimmer can improve stroke or flip turn technique. Highly successful athletes and highly effective coaches are always looking for ways to get better. Consequently, they frequently revisit the cognitive stage and then the associative stage of motor learning. Revisiting these stages is the relearning process.
Some years ago, I had an opportunity to work with Professor Yu Fen at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. Professor Yu Fen is one of the top diving coaches in the world and has produced numerous world and Olympic champions. One of the things I took away from working with her is the importance of continually revisiting the first and second stages of motor acquisition, no matter how accomplished an athlete might be. If a diver was not performing, say, a forward 3 1/2 somersault in the pike position, she would take the diver to the trampoline and begin working a basic jump or single somersault. During one of her practices, I observed Olympic gold medalist Tian Liang practicing on 1-meter springboard virtually the same drill as a beginning athlete on an adjacent springboard.
Let's say you have a new athlete who recently transferred from another program to your program. The reason for the transfer is that he has hit a plateau. In fact, his level of performance has begun to decrease. After observing him, you realize that the reason for his lack of progress is that some of his fundamentals are badly in need of remedial work. Where do you begin with this adopted athlete with a host of bad habits? Given what you now know about motor acquisition, the best approach is to first explain that if he wants to improve his performance he will have to make changes, and to make changes means letting go of old habits and learning new fundamentals by revisiting the three stages (cognitive, associative, autonomous) of motor learning. This relearning process means acquiring new information (cognitive stage) and then going through the frustrating associative stage.
Getting athletes to buy into relearning can be challenging. Some athletes, especially successful ones, might say, “Hey, I was high school state champion doing it this way! Why should I change? Besides, the new movement feels awkward.” A coach might reply, “Well, you could have won by even more had you done it the new way!” When these athletes try something new it feels uncomfortable and awkward and they sometimes are reluctant to continue with the change. The verbal information you provide about the three stages of motor learning as well as the information about the new technique helps them establish or activate a learning schema (p. 179) and provides a rationale or perspective for persevering with the change. Next, you work with them on the skill in its simplest form until the skill is mastered, automatic, and integrated into the movement program.
Autonomous Stage
According to Fitts' and Posner's paradigm, this is the final stage of motor acquisition. It often requires years of training to arrive at the autonomous stage. But this stage is where it's at for elite athletes, where motor performance becomes largely automatic, where cognitive processing demands are minimal, and athletes are capable of attending to and processing other information, such as the position of defensive players, game strategy, or the form or style of movement (Schmidt & Lee, 2005) in sports such as ice-skating, dance, and synchronized swimming. It is the stage where they can now respond and not think (or think minimally), where they can grip it and rip it, look and automatically react, and enter a state of flow.
Both good outcomes and bad outcomes are associated with the autonomous stage. The good is that performance requires much less attentional and cognitive demand, which thereby frees the performer to engage in secondary tasks, such as the concert pianist who is able to follow random digits or perform arithmetic while simultaneously playing the piano (Shaffer, 1980), or the quarterback who is capable of surveying the defense and detecting an eminent blitz while simultaneously calling the signals and changing the play at the line of scrimmage.
The bad is that since less cognitive demand exists during performance, it leaves ample room for irrelevant and distracting thoughts to sneak into the workshop (working memory) of the mind. Examples of this occurrence are the elite athletes at the Olympic trials who get caught thinking about making the Olympic team instead of focusing exclusively on performance during the last moments of a gymnastics routine, swimming race, or wrestling match. Think of the gymnast who puts together a stellar routine only to make a silly mistake at the end; or the swimmer who swims magnificently but doesn't finish the race and gets touched out at the wall; or the wrestler who dominates the match but loses concentration and allows his opponent to gain an easy reversal in the waning seconds. Some mountain climbing accidents occur as climbers near the top of the mountain. This may be so because those experienced climbers used some of their available attentional capacity to suddenly begin thinking about reaching the peak—the outcome—rather than focusing on what got them to that part of the mountain in the first place—the process.
The other bad outcome about automatic performance is that it reinforces athletes to maintain incorrect movements because a certain amount of comfort and reinforcement is associated with automatic performance, even if it is incorrect. But just because a motor movement can be performed automatically doesn't mean the movement is correct or worthy of being maintained. Moreover, as soon as athletes stop thinking about the new movement during the cognitive and associative stages, they are likely to respond automatically, thereby reverting to the old and incorrect movement in their performance repertoire. The three stages of motor learning are summarized in table 6.2.
Applying Motor Learning Stages in Coaching Athletes
Provide your athletes with detailed information in the early stage of learning. If you want your athletes to perform correctly, give them the correct information. This means that you need to know what you are talking about and you need to be clear and concise with your instruction. If your athletes don't understand what they are supposed to do, they won't do it correctly. And if they don't understand, perhaps the problem is you, not them. In other words, you may need to do a better job of clearly communicating exactly what you want them to do and communicate it in laymen's terms—in language they can understand and at a conceptual level they are prepared to cognitively grasp. For example, you may understand the physics behind what you are teaching, but if your athletes don't comprehend concepts such as angular momentum, shear force, and action-reaction you will have lost them at “Hello.”
Explain the three stages of motor learning and the relearning process. Relearning something is often more difficult than learning it correctly the first time. This difficulty can lead to frustration and frustration acts like a brick wall between the athlete and the desired goal movement being learned. Make sure your athletes understand the motor learning stages and which stage they are at during the relearning process. Continually remind them that if they trust you and stay committed to the new movement, eventually it will become automatic and integrated into their performance. The new movement seems awkward now compared to the old movement because they are in the associative stage, but after enough repetitions the new movement will become smooth, automatic, and, most important, more effective than the old movement. Some coaches are ineffective at fixing movements. They understand how to teach it correctly in the beginning, but not how to change (fix) a bad habit. Understanding cognitive theory and taking a cognitive teaching approach will help you effectively do both: Teach it correctly the first time and change a bad habit.
Be patient with your athletes during the associative stage. Based on the stages of learning, we now know that awkward and disjointed movements characterize the associative stage. Things aren't going to look or feel very smooth at first; it is part of the learning process. If you expect performance to be immediately smooth and flowing, you are going to be disappointed, disillusioned, and perhaps even somewhat distraught—and so too are your athletes. Fear not. It is all part of the learning process. Remain patient and facilitate learning. Your impatience is likely to make your athletes anxious and impede their learning, whereas your patience and confidence will motivate them to persevere during the associative stage.
Stress the importance of positive information in working memory. A goal for you is to get your athletes to be able to perform automatically. As already mentioned, however, automaticity creates empty space in working memory, which makes it easier for athletes to unintentionally entertain negative thoughts and ruminate, which means to repeatedly dwell on negative and unproductive thoughts. For example, some athletes focus on the outcome of competition and the thought What if I lose? Ruminative thoughts are often unconscious thoughts that through sheer volume of constant repetition become overwhelming and overtake working memory. For example, at a major competition some athletes get this blank look on their faces when their coaches talk to them. It's as though their entire focus is on some internal thought and they are lost to the external world of the here and now. Help your athletes keep working memory space filled with the right stuff; teach them to monitor their thoughts, use thought-stopping statements, redirect their thoughts, engage in positive self-talk, and answer negative thoughts and images with positive thoughts and images.
Read more from Applying Educational Psychology in Coaching Athletes by Jeffery Huber.
Emphasize humanistic principles as part of an effective coaching philosophy
Humanism can manifest itself through the coaching process in four ways. These common emphases are affect, self-concept, communication, and personal values.
Applying Education Psychology in Coaching Athletes.
Applying Four Common Emphases of Humanistic Coaching
Humanism can manifest itself through the coaching process in four ways. These common emphases are affect, self-concept, communication, and personal values.
Affect
Emphasizing affect means paying greater attention to thinking and feeling and less attention to acquiring specific information and skills. Following are some suggestions for emphasizing affect.
Set affective objectives. Setting specific affective objectives means you commit to making a conscious effort to integrate humanism into your program. Examples of affective objectives include encouraging and leading athletes to demonstrate a love for their sport and themselves and to demonstrate a concern and respect for teammates. Another affective objective is to demonstrate a concern and respect for your athletes and acceptance of them as unique individuals, not just as a group of athletes. Another goal is to act as a role model and model a love for the sport and belief in the importance of becoming a more complete person.
Pay greater attention to athletes' feelings. Simply asking athletes how they are feeling and what is going on in their lives, showing a genuine concern for them as human beings, listening to their problems, and being sensitive to their emotional responses are all ways of paying greater attention to athlete's feelings.
Have athletes become more aware of their teammates' feelings. Awareness of others' feelings emphasizes affect and helps athletes move outside their egocentrism. One way to facilitate this greater awareness is to hold a team meeting and ask your athletes to express their feelings, understand their teammates' needs, and find ways to support each other at practices, competitions, and outside the practice venue. Also, when disagreements occur between athletes, ask each athlete to try understanding the other's viewpoint.
Stress the importance of learning and thinking strategies. According to Rogers emphasizing affect also means emphasizing thinking. When you emphasize thinking, the information and skills being taught are not as important as the process and strategies for learning. Consequently, a humanistic coach emphasizes learning how to learn and teaches athletes specific strategies to help them become good learners. For example, having athletes mentally review information about drills before, during, and after each practice helps them learn how to learn drills. Many athletes tend to leave a practice and never think about that practice ever again. When taking time to review information discussed in practice, athletes are more apt to organize the information, give it meaning, remember it at the next practice, and, consequently, improve at a faster rate.
Self-Concept
Helping your athletes develop a positive self-concept is another way to emphasize humanism. Remember that your athletes develop their self-concept in part through interaction with you and how you communicate to them about who they are as human beings. How can you facilitate this process? Following are some suggestions.
Maintain positive perceptions and expectations of your athletes. It is easy to form limiting notions of your athletes and unconsciously communicate these limitations to them. These notions then become part of a hidden curriculum: the things you unconsciously teach as the unintended outcome or by-product of your coaching. Statements such as the following ones can become part of a hidden curriculum: “This athlete is mentally weak.” “This athlete will never make it.” “This athlete can do skills A and B great but will never learn skill C.” “This athlete will always be a B-level player.” Rid yourself of preconceived limiting notions of your athletes and avoid any hidden curriculum. Expect the best. When you expect the best, you generally get the best. Don't count out any of your athletes. Like Jimmy, the young lanky boy I coached many years ago, just when you think someone can't do something, you may be surprised.
Communicate these positive perceptions and expectations through word and deed. It is good to have positive perceptions and expectations of your athletes, but make sure you communicate them to your athletes both by what you say and what you do. Take the time to tell your athletes what you think of them and what they are capable of achieving and communicate these expectations through your coaching. Saying, “Well, you didn't make it this time but I know you will at the next competition” is an effective example. Also, demonstrate your confidence in them through your actions. For example, you tell one of your athletes that she can become a champion if she puts in more work and then you stay after practice or volunteer to come in on your day off to work with her.
Maintain positive perceptions and expectations publicly and privately. Coaches sometimes disparage their athletes behind their backs. Getting frustrated and needing to vent some frustration is part of coaching, but you have to support your athletes and believe in them, even when they aren't looking. Being a humanistic coach means, in part, being genuine as a person. Being genuine means acting as you really are as a person and having your words match your internal feelings. In other words, you openly let others know how you feel. Venting is part of human nature and part of dealing with stress. But you have to be true to your athletes. You can't say one thing publicly and then turn around and say something contrary privately. Besides making you a hypocrite and disingenuous, your words ultimately get back to the athlete and ruin the coach-athlete relationship.
Invite rather than disinvite athletes. According to Purkey and Novak (1996), teachers invite students by communicating to them that they are capable, self-directed, and valued, and by expecting behaviors and achievements commensurate with their worth and emerging self-concept. In contrast, teachers who disinvite students send a message that students are irresponsible, incapable, worthless, and undirected. As a coach, do you invite or disinvite your athletes?
Build a positive self-concept by promoting success rather than failure. To promote success, break down learning tasks into small and attainable increments. Coaches sometimes ask athletes to do too much too soon. Perhaps this is because they forget how many smaller tasks comprise a particular movement. They ask athletes to do a skill that actually involves many skills, none of which the athletes have yet mastered. When you ask athletes to do too much too soon, you set them up for guaranteed failure. The result of repeated failure can be a poor self-concept, a feeling of external control, and a sense of helplessness.
Promoting success and a positive self-concept also includes implementing mastery learning (Bloom, 1976). The concept of mastery learning suggests that all learners can learn; the only difference between learners is the amount of time each person requires to learn the material. While Bloom's concept of mastery learning deals mainly with concept learning, mastery learning can be applied to motor learning as well. Not all athletes will learn to perform at the elite level. However, most athletes can learn much of what you teach to some level of proficiency. The humanistic coach focuses on helping each athlete master as many skills as possible for their particular sport and level of experience and ability.
Mastery learning means learning a particular skill to a certain level of proficiency before moving on to the next skill. For example, when you break down a skill into smaller increments, make sure your athlete masters each smaller skill before moving on to the next skill. It may take time and patience on the part of both athlete and coach, but it will be well worth the effort later in the athlete's career.
Communication
A third major emphasis of a humanistic approach to coaching is communication. Communication includes attention to the principles and skills of effective human relations, honest interpersonal communication, and constructive conflict resolution. Following are some suggestions for emphasizing communication in your coaching.
Establish effective human relations through honest and open interpersonal communication. Honest and open communication means being real with your athletes, rather than aloof and unapproachable. Honest communication also means really listening to what your athletes have to say. A shortcoming for many coaches is that they don't take the time or give enough effort to really listen to what their athletes are trying to say. Being a good listener is not easy but sometimes it is all an athlete really wants or needs.
One season I had trouble establishing a relationship with one of my athletes. I was angry with her because I thought she never listened to me. Over the course of the season, our relationship became increasingly distant. Finally, another athlete said to me, “Coach, you need to talk to her.” At first I dismissed her comment, but the more I thought about it, the more I knew she was right. So, one afternoon I took some time to talk with her. I said a few things about how I felt, but then I just listened to what she had to say. The more I listened to her, the more she listened to me. I am positive that our meeting was a turning point in her season and career. And it literally happened overnight. We met on a Wednesday and on Thursday she competed in the NCAA championship. She finished third with a lifetime best performance, a performance that far exceeded anything she had done to that point in her season.
Take time from your daily routine to communicate with your athletes. Maybe it is just a few minutes as they are coming into practice or while they are stretching. Or maybe you connect with a few of your athletes before they leave practice. The more you communicate with them, particularly on a personal level, the more of a relationship you establish with them. Take the time to occasionally meet one-on-one in your office. Have an open-door policy so that your athletes feel comfortable stopping by even if it is only to say hello. Schedule individual goal-setting sessions. Besides nourishing the athlete-coach relationship, these meetings provide athletes with the opportunity to express their feelings and talk about things important to their athletic careers and their personal lives.
Arrange team meetings and team goal-setting sessions. These sessions give your athletes the opportunity to communicate among themselves. It is worthwhile to attend some of these meetings to lay the ground rules for athlete interaction and discussion topics. For other meetings, it is more important that the athletes take responsibility for the meeting and you need not be present. Some of the topics your athletes can consider are how to support one another inside and outside of practice, how to communicate effectively with each other, and how to openly talk about problems and their resolutions.
Use the principles and ideas of humanism and Rogerian theory to constructively resolve conflict. No matter how effective you are as a coach or how great your athletes are as people, you will have conflict at some point within your team and within your program. And the quicker it is resolved, the sooner you right the ship and continue moving forward. It might be a conflict between you and a player, between two players, between an assistant coach and a player, between two assistant coaches, between coach and parent, or between the offense and the defense. The number of potential conflicts lurking on the horizon is great and you and your athletes need to be trained and ready to confront these battles. Humanism and Rogerian theory provide a perfect battle plan.
According to humanism and Rogerian theory, the best way to resolve conflict is for both sides to sit down and communicate. Since people act in accordance with their phenomenological reality, this communication involves having each person really listen and attempt to understand the other person's private world of experiences. Because humanism emphasizes self-direction, self-determination, autonomy, and self-evaluation, it is expected that each person, with the coach acting as facilitator, will assume responsibility for resolving the conflict.
Personal Values
Personal values should be a part of your coaching philosophy and your coaching curriculum. You teach values whether you know it or not. If you are unaware of the values you teach, then they have become part of your hidden curriculum. As mentioned a number of times in this book, effective coaches are aware of everything they teach. Consequently, be conscious of the values you teach—or want to teach—and incorporate them into your coaching curriculum so that you teach positive values and eliminate negative values you might be inadvertently teaching your athletes.
Encourage your athletes to discover their own personal values. Simon, Howe, and Kirschenbaum (1972) suggest 79 strategies for helping students elaborate and clarify values. Personal values you might teach include acceptance of self and others, acceptance of personal faults and mistakes but still maintaining self-worth, and valuing effort and performance more than winning. One personal value worth teaching is personal responsibility. Historically, humanism has valued autonomy: the individual taking responsibility and control for his or her life.
Stress personal responsibility as a value. You can nurture personal responsibility in many ways. Having athletes set their own goals and select appropriate ways of reaching their goals gives them a sense of control and autonomy. Also, setting up athletes for success helps establish an internal locus of control. According to attribution theory, athletes with an internal locus of control see success as a result of personal effort and not an external factor such as luck. In other words, an athlete with an internal locus of control believes that he is in control of the outcome of events.
Stress personal problem solving as a value. Rather than solve a problem for an athlete, you can facilitate the athlete's effort to solve the problem. This concept is at the center of Roger's client-centered therapy, in which the client, not the counselor, solves the problem. Based on Rogerian theory, a nondirective model of teaching has been developed for fostering a sense of personal responsibility in athletes. The following section outlines the nondirective model.
Read more from Applying Educational Psychology in Coaching Athletes by Jeffery Huber.
Coaches can use behaviorism to increase athletes' motivation
According to the concept of psychological hedonism and the pain–pleasure principle, people are motivated to obtain pleasure and avoid pain.
Behaviorism and Motivation
According to the concept of psychological hedonism and the pain-pleasure principle, people are motivated to obtain pleasure and avoid pain. This simple explanation for human motivation, however, seems incongruous with the picture of the hard-working athlete training through extremely demanding and often painful (not pleasurable) conditions to achieve a long-range goal. How do you account for this type of athlete motivation? According to behaviorism, you would argue that somehow athlete motivation to train under such grueling circumstances is being reinforced. A reinforcer increases the probability that a response will reoccur. When a rat receives a food pellet (reinforcer) for feverishly pressing a lever in the Skinner box, the rat is more likely to press the lever again.
Reinforcement and Praise
When used according to the principles of operant conditioning, reinforcement can have a significant impact on motivation and human behavior. Consider the successful coach who always seems to have upbeat and motivated athletes willing to charge through a brick wall for their coach. Unfortunately, the example of the unsuccessful coach whose athletes always seem to be downcast, downtrodden, and unmotivated also exists. One factor that separates the successful coach from the unsuccessful coach is the use of positive reinforcers, in particular, praise. Although the use of praise is discussed in detail in chapter 10, several rules about the use of praise (pushing the praise button) are worth repeating here.
Praise provides information to athletes not only about performance but also about notion of self. In other words, it tells athletes about the quality of their motor performance, but it often also tells them about their self-worth and competence. For example, when you say, “Jerome, way to think. That's the way to make the correction the first time!” you are letting him know about his improved performance and also, and more important, about his intelligence, effort, and capacity for change. Contrast this coaching comment with the droll and uninspired “Okay. Go on to the next drill.” Often, just a few precisely put words make a significant and long-lasting difference in an athlete's notion of self and motivation.
Praise should be used judiciously. It is easy to use praise too often so that it becomes meaningless to athletes or too infrequently so that it is ineffective in influencing behavior. Young coaches in particular often use praise too frequently. Successful coaches find the right balance for dishing out praise so that when they do use praise, it has real punch and positively affects athlete motivation.
Praise should include specific, constructive encouragement to build self-esteem (Hitz & Driscoll, 1994). Encouraging comments should be clear and specific rather than vague and general. Athletes want to know not only the what but also the why. If they aren't doing something correctly, they want to know why it is wrong and why a different approach is better. At the same time, they also want to be encouraged for their effort and ability to succeed with future attempts. For example, the type of praise in the following statement increases self-esteem and motivation while it concomitantly provides constructive encouragement: “Maria, you took the race out too fast but I admire your determination, adventurousness, and fearlessness! Those are qualities you should be proud of and will serve you well in the future. However, you need to pace yourself and run your own race next time.”
Praise should be sincere. Sincere praise not only provides reinforcement, but it also sends an emotional message that says you genuinely care for your athletes and want to see them succeed. Athletes who perceive that their coaches care for them are motivated to give even greater effort in practice. Conversely, insincere praise, besides being ineffective, communicates to athletes that you have little regard for them and their performances. Sincere praise builds the athlete-coach relationship while insincere praise undermines it. Which type of praise do you give your athletes?
Praising effort is important, particularly for young athletes. Children who are praised for their efforts are more apt to develop a view of ability as something they can control and something that can change (Mueller & Dweck, 1998). Consequently, these athletes are more apt to be motivated to train hard and expect results based on personal effort. In contrast, people who are praised for their talent tend to view ability as fixed and unchanging. Consequently, when these athletes experience failure, they are less motivated to train hard.
External Feedback as Reinforcement
Like praise, external feedback can serve as a reinforcer for athlete behaviors. For example, in the game of hot and cold, people shout out “hotter” and “colder” to express how close the player is to reaching the goal. The hotter game players get (i.e., the closer they get to their achievement goal) the more motivated they become to keep going. In this regard, both knowledge of results (KR) and knowledge of performance (KP) act as reinforcers. Two specific external feedback properties that athletes find motivating are the aptly named motivating feedback and informational feedback.
Motivating feedback is defined as feedback about an individual's progress toward goal achievement that energizes and directs behavior. For example, consider a runner who is on the second to last lap and her coach tells her she is on pace for a personal best time. When athletes believe they are improving and moving toward their goals, they become increasingly motivated in their pursuit of goal achievement.
Informational feedback is defined as feedback that provides performers with error correction information, either descriptive (what happened) or prescriptive (what needs to happen). This type of feedback is motivating to all athletes, but it is particularly motivating for athletes engaged in deliberate practice (i.e., setting specific goals for everything they do in practice). For these athletes, informational feedback is like food to a hungry traveler; they devour it. They want to improve with each practice and informational feedback helps temporarily satisfy their craving for knowledge about their progress toward improved performance.
Extrinsic and Intrinsic Motivation
Some people engage in specific behaviors because they have extrinsic motivation: They engage in the behaviors because they anticipate certain external rewards. For example, some athletes try out for a team because they anticipate earning a varsity letter, a trophy, a college scholarship, and so on. Other people have intrinsic motivation: They engage in athletics because they respond well to internal sources of reinforcement such as personal satisfaction and sense of accomplishment. These athletes derive internal reinforcement from achievements such as throwing a perfect pass, performing a great gymnastics routine, swishing a 3-point shot, running a perfect race, and so on. The beauty of sport is that this list is virtually endless.
Research suggests that people who respond to intrinsic motives are more committed, enjoy their activities more, and are more persistent when they confront failure (Agbor-Baiyee, 1997). While this research examined student behavior, research examining athletes found similar results (Vallerand & Losier, 1999). Close to intrinsic motivation is a concept called interest (Wigfield, Eccles, & Rodriguez, 1998). People who engage in activities simply for the fact that they like doing it and expect no external reward can be said to have an interest in that activity. A primary objective for all coaches should be to encourage athletes to develop a genuine interest in their sport.
Keep in mind, however, that external rewards can be useful for facilitating interest and intrinsic motivation. For example, when I was learning to dive, our coach purchased gold (it was actually yellow, but it looked like gold to my teammates and me) diving suits like the one reigning Olympic champion Bernie Wrightson wore when he won the gold medal. We all aspired to become gold medalists like Bernie, but we could not buy the suit. We could only acquire the suit by earning it, by learning a full list of high-degree-of-difficulty dives on the 3-meter springboard. We wanted to earn that suit so badly that we would do almost anything, including learning scary and difficult new dives that no one our age was performing back then. The suit became a symbol of courage, effort, determination, and noteworthy accomplishment. We did not remain in the sport simply because of the suit, but it sure captured our interest and ignited our intrinsic motivation.
Conditioned Responses
Athletes who associate positive physiological responses, such as relaxation and appropriate arousal level, and enhancing emotions, such as joy and satisfaction, are more likely to love their sport and come to practice highly motivated to train. Therefore, to increase motivation, coaches need to condition their athletes to respond positively to not only their sport but the many aspects of their sport, such as training, stretching, conditioning, drill and skill work, and competing. For many athletes, especially young ones, a positive conditioned response is what brings them back each day, each week, each month, and each season. Because conditioning is so important to the motor learning process and athlete success, chapter 3 examines it in detail (see The Salivating Athlete).
Applying Behaviorism to Increase Athlete Motivation
Based on the theory of behaviorism, coaches can push a number of “behavioral buttons” to increase athletes' motivation.
Follow the guidelines for the effective use of praise. Although praise is an effective reinforcer, it can be misused. Know when, what, and how to use it. Successful coaches are masters at effectively using praise to motivate their athletes.
Use external feedback as you would other types of reinforcers. External feedback for all athletes, but particularly elite athletes, is highly reinforcing. The more accurate the external feedback, the more reinforcing it becomes for them. Years ago when I first began working with an elite athlete, who already was a NCAA champion and world champion, I learned two things rather quickly: Remember what correction you give him and give him accurate feedback about whether or not he made the correction on the subsequent attempt. If I forgot the correction or my feedback was inaccurate, he kindly let me know about it! Highly effective coaches provide accurate and timely external feedback.
Recognize individual differences. No two athletes are exactly alike. It is important to keep these differences in mind when using reinforcement to influence motivation. What is reinforcing for one athlete might not be reinforcing to another athlete. Knowing how to push their buttons in part means knowing what is reinforcing to them. For example, some athletes hate being pulled aside and lectured while other athletes take it as a compliment and a sign that you care about them and their goals.
Reinforce effort in order to encourage intrinsic motivation. In the long run, athletes train harder and longer and persevere in their sport when they are intrinsically motivated. For this reason, reinforce effort. Athletes who associate ability and achievement with effort are more likely to be motivated to train and maintain their motivation during difficult training cycles.
Condition athletes to have a positive physiological response to their sport. Athletes who have an interest and love for their sport (training and competition) will be engaged and motivated. You can facilitate a positive response by continually pairing positive conditioned stimuli with positive unconditioned stimuli. A significant way to create a positive response is to facilitate success and mastery during practice, make practice and competition fun, and focus on effort.
Use external reinforcers. Sometimes external reinforcers can be effective for kick starting or augmenting an athlete's internal motivation. In the case of the gold diving suit, it is interesting to note that every diver on the team did indeed earn a suit. Most went on to successful high school careers and a number of us went on to compete collegiately and nationally. One athlete even made the U.S. Olympic team, and one stayed around long enough to coach collegiate diving for over 37 years. Sometimes, a seemingly small external reward can go a long way toward intrinsically motivating athletes. It is funny how after all these years grown men still occasionally gather and talk about “the suit” and how they cherish it and have it stored away like a rare artifact, precious and immeasurably valuable, a tangible reminder of the intangible rewards they received from their memorable experience in sport. I am sure that athletes in all sports have similar stories and memories.
Read more from Applying Educational Psychology in Coaching Athletes by Jeffery Huber.
Understanding motor learning stages improves skill instruction
As a coach I found this simple paradigm to be extremely helpful for understanding, guiding, and accelerating the motor learning process.
Three Stages of Motor Learning
At this point in the chapter, you might ask, “What does all this discussion about thinking and memory have to do with motor learning and performance?” You want your athletes to respond, not think. You want them to grip it and rip it. You want them to look and automatically react. Well, motor learning, particularly early learning, involves attempts by learners to acquire an idea of the movement (Gentile, 1972) or understand the basic pattern of coordination (Newell, 1985). To achieve these goals, learners must use cognitive (Fitts & Posner, 1967) and verbal processes (Adams, 1971) to solve problems. To this end, Fitts (1964; Fitts & Posner, 1967) suggests that motor skill acquisition follows three stages: the cognitive stage, the associative stage, and the autonomous stage.
As a coach I found this simple paradigm to be extremely helpful for understanding, guiding, and accelerating the motor learning process. Because of its importance, it is worth examining the three stages and their implications for effective coaching.
Cognitive Stage
For the new learner, the problem to be solved in the cognitive stage is understanding what to do (Schmidt & Lee, 2005). It would be extremely difficult for someone to learn a skill without receiving any prior knowledge about the skill, whether that knowledge is visual or verbal. For example, consider the butterfly stroke in swimming. It is a fairly complicated and somewhat unnatural stroke in which to syncopate the movement of the arms with the kick of the legs. It would be difficult indeed for a novice swimmer to learn such a stroke without ever seeing the stroke performed or ever receiving any declarative knowledge about how the stroke is performed. In other words, motor learning begins with the cognitive stage and the processing of information.
Surely the swimmer could discover how to roughly perform the stroke, but it probably would take many long hours of trial and error, experimentation, and some creative problem solving. It is much simpler to learn a skill by first acquiring information about the skill.
The cognitive stage is of great interest to cognitivists because this stage involves information processing. Also called the verbal-motor stage (Adams, 1971), this stage is verbal-cognitive in nature (Schmidt & Lee, 2005) because it involves the conveyance (verbal) and acquisition (cognition) of new information. In this stage, the person is trying to process information in an attempt to cognitively understand the requirements and parameters of motor movement.
Consider several young children taking beginning golf lessons. They might arrive early for their first golf lesson. Having never seen any golfers in action, they are excited and eager to see what golf is all about; each child is a mini tabula rasa ready to learn. They watch the preceding class of golfers and immediately begin collecting visual information. Next, the instructor explains the golf swing, beginning with the grip of the club and stance. Now they are gathering verbal information about the sport. In other words, they don't simply show up and begin golfing. Everything begins with the acquisition and cognitive processing of newly presented information. During this cognitive stage, the beginning athlete ingests information and organizes it into some meaningful form that will ultimately lead to the creation of a motor program.
The cognitive stage is characterized as having large gains in performance and inconsistent performance. During this stage instruction, guidance, slow-motion drills, video analysis, augmented feedback, and other coaching techniques are highly effective (Schmidt & Lee, 2005). Recall the discussion in chapter 4 regarding Adams' closed-loop theory and the importance of error-free learning in the initial learning stage (p. 133). During the cognitive stage it is important that the learner is provided with the necessary information, guidance, and time to establish sound fundamentals of movement. Sometimes making errors and taking a constructivist approach to coaching and learning can be useful (see the discussion on schema theory, p. 196).
Associative Stage
The associative stage is characterized as much less verbal information, smaller gains in performance, conscious performance, adjustment making, awkward and disjointed movement, and taking a long time to complete. During this stage the athlete works at making movement adjustments and stringing together small movement skills. This stage is also called the motor stage (Adams, 1971) because the problem to be solved in the associative stage is learning how to perform the skill (Schmidt & Lee, 2005). From the cognitive perspective, the athlete is attempting to translate declarative knowledge into procedural knowledge. In other words, the athlete is transforming what to do into how to do.
No diver in the history of the sport of diving has ever performed every single dive for perfect 10s in a single competition. There is always room for improvement. This is true for all sports. For example, a baseball or softball pitcher can improve delivery and learn new pitches, a pole-vaulter can learn to use a new pole and a new technique, a gymnast can refine a routine, a basketball player can improve shooting technique, and a swimmer can improve stroke or flip turn technique. Highly successful athletes and highly effective coaches are always looking for ways to get better. Consequently, they frequently revisit the cognitive stage and then the associative stage of motor learning. Revisiting these stages is the relearning process.
Some years ago, I had an opportunity to work with Professor Yu Fen at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. Professor Yu Fen is one of the top diving coaches in the world and has produced numerous world and Olympic champions. One of the things I took away from working with her is the importance of continually revisiting the first and second stages of motor acquisition, no matter how accomplished an athlete might be. If a diver was not performing, say, a forward 3 1/2 somersault in the pike position, she would take the diver to the trampoline and begin working a basic jump or single somersault. During one of her practices, I observed Olympic gold medalist Tian Liang practicing on 1-meter springboard virtually the same drill as a beginning athlete on an adjacent springboard.
Let's say you have a new athlete who recently transferred from another program to your program. The reason for the transfer is that he has hit a plateau. In fact, his level of performance has begun to decrease. After observing him, you realize that the reason for his lack of progress is that some of his fundamentals are badly in need of remedial work. Where do you begin with this adopted athlete with a host of bad habits? Given what you now know about motor acquisition, the best approach is to first explain that if he wants to improve his performance he will have to make changes, and to make changes means letting go of old habits and learning new fundamentals by revisiting the three stages (cognitive, associative, autonomous) of motor learning. This relearning process means acquiring new information (cognitive stage) and then going through the frustrating associative stage.
Getting athletes to buy into relearning can be challenging. Some athletes, especially successful ones, might say, “Hey, I was high school state champion doing it this way! Why should I change? Besides, the new movement feels awkward.” A coach might reply, “Well, you could have won by even more had you done it the new way!” When these athletes try something new it feels uncomfortable and awkward and they sometimes are reluctant to continue with the change. The verbal information you provide about the three stages of motor learning as well as the information about the new technique helps them establish or activate a learning schema (p. 179) and provides a rationale or perspective for persevering with the change. Next, you work with them on the skill in its simplest form until the skill is mastered, automatic, and integrated into the movement program.
Autonomous Stage
According to Fitts' and Posner's paradigm, this is the final stage of motor acquisition. It often requires years of training to arrive at the autonomous stage. But this stage is where it's at for elite athletes, where motor performance becomes largely automatic, where cognitive processing demands are minimal, and athletes are capable of attending to and processing other information, such as the position of defensive players, game strategy, or the form or style of movement (Schmidt & Lee, 2005) in sports such as ice-skating, dance, and synchronized swimming. It is the stage where they can now respond and not think (or think minimally), where they can grip it and rip it, look and automatically react, and enter a state of flow.
Both good outcomes and bad outcomes are associated with the autonomous stage. The good is that performance requires much less attentional and cognitive demand, which thereby frees the performer to engage in secondary tasks, such as the concert pianist who is able to follow random digits or perform arithmetic while simultaneously playing the piano (Shaffer, 1980), or the quarterback who is capable of surveying the defense and detecting an eminent blitz while simultaneously calling the signals and changing the play at the line of scrimmage.
The bad is that since less cognitive demand exists during performance, it leaves ample room for irrelevant and distracting thoughts to sneak into the workshop (working memory) of the mind. Examples of this occurrence are the elite athletes at the Olympic trials who get caught thinking about making the Olympic team instead of focusing exclusively on performance during the last moments of a gymnastics routine, swimming race, or wrestling match. Think of the gymnast who puts together a stellar routine only to make a silly mistake at the end; or the swimmer who swims magnificently but doesn't finish the race and gets touched out at the wall; or the wrestler who dominates the match but loses concentration and allows his opponent to gain an easy reversal in the waning seconds. Some mountain climbing accidents occur as climbers near the top of the mountain. This may be so because those experienced climbers used some of their available attentional capacity to suddenly begin thinking about reaching the peak—the outcome—rather than focusing on what got them to that part of the mountain in the first place—the process.
The other bad outcome about automatic performance is that it reinforces athletes to maintain incorrect movements because a certain amount of comfort and reinforcement is associated with automatic performance, even if it is incorrect. But just because a motor movement can be performed automatically doesn't mean the movement is correct or worthy of being maintained. Moreover, as soon as athletes stop thinking about the new movement during the cognitive and associative stages, they are likely to respond automatically, thereby reverting to the old and incorrect movement in their performance repertoire. The three stages of motor learning are summarized in table 6.2.
Applying Motor Learning Stages in Coaching Athletes
Provide your athletes with detailed information in the early stage of learning. If you want your athletes to perform correctly, give them the correct information. This means that you need to know what you are talking about and you need to be clear and concise with your instruction. If your athletes don't understand what they are supposed to do, they won't do it correctly. And if they don't understand, perhaps the problem is you, not them. In other words, you may need to do a better job of clearly communicating exactly what you want them to do and communicate it in laymen's terms—in language they can understand and at a conceptual level they are prepared to cognitively grasp. For example, you may understand the physics behind what you are teaching, but if your athletes don't comprehend concepts such as angular momentum, shear force, and action-reaction you will have lost them at “Hello.”
Explain the three stages of motor learning and the relearning process. Relearning something is often more difficult than learning it correctly the first time. This difficulty can lead to frustration and frustration acts like a brick wall between the athlete and the desired goal movement being learned. Make sure your athletes understand the motor learning stages and which stage they are at during the relearning process. Continually remind them that if they trust you and stay committed to the new movement, eventually it will become automatic and integrated into their performance. The new movement seems awkward now compared to the old movement because they are in the associative stage, but after enough repetitions the new movement will become smooth, automatic, and, most important, more effective than the old movement. Some coaches are ineffective at fixing movements. They understand how to teach it correctly in the beginning, but not how to change (fix) a bad habit. Understanding cognitive theory and taking a cognitive teaching approach will help you effectively do both: Teach it correctly the first time and change a bad habit.
Be patient with your athletes during the associative stage. Based on the stages of learning, we now know that awkward and disjointed movements characterize the associative stage. Things aren't going to look or feel very smooth at first; it is part of the learning process. If you expect performance to be immediately smooth and flowing, you are going to be disappointed, disillusioned, and perhaps even somewhat distraught—and so too are your athletes. Fear not. It is all part of the learning process. Remain patient and facilitate learning. Your impatience is likely to make your athletes anxious and impede their learning, whereas your patience and confidence will motivate them to persevere during the associative stage.
Stress the importance of positive information in working memory. A goal for you is to get your athletes to be able to perform automatically. As already mentioned, however, automaticity creates empty space in working memory, which makes it easier for athletes to unintentionally entertain negative thoughts and ruminate, which means to repeatedly dwell on negative and unproductive thoughts. For example, some athletes focus on the outcome of competition and the thought What if I lose? Ruminative thoughts are often unconscious thoughts that through sheer volume of constant repetition become overwhelming and overtake working memory. For example, at a major competition some athletes get this blank look on their faces when their coaches talk to them. It's as though their entire focus is on some internal thought and they are lost to the external world of the here and now. Help your athletes keep working memory space filled with the right stuff; teach them to monitor their thoughts, use thought-stopping statements, redirect their thoughts, engage in positive self-talk, and answer negative thoughts and images with positive thoughts and images.
Read more from Applying Educational Psychology in Coaching Athletes by Jeffery Huber.
Emphasize humanistic principles as part of an effective coaching philosophy
Humanism can manifest itself through the coaching process in four ways. These common emphases are affect, self-concept, communication, and personal values.
Applying Education Psychology in Coaching Athletes.
Applying Four Common Emphases of Humanistic Coaching
Humanism can manifest itself through the coaching process in four ways. These common emphases are affect, self-concept, communication, and personal values.
Affect
Emphasizing affect means paying greater attention to thinking and feeling and less attention to acquiring specific information and skills. Following are some suggestions for emphasizing affect.
Set affective objectives. Setting specific affective objectives means you commit to making a conscious effort to integrate humanism into your program. Examples of affective objectives include encouraging and leading athletes to demonstrate a love for their sport and themselves and to demonstrate a concern and respect for teammates. Another affective objective is to demonstrate a concern and respect for your athletes and acceptance of them as unique individuals, not just as a group of athletes. Another goal is to act as a role model and model a love for the sport and belief in the importance of becoming a more complete person.
Pay greater attention to athletes' feelings. Simply asking athletes how they are feeling and what is going on in their lives, showing a genuine concern for them as human beings, listening to their problems, and being sensitive to their emotional responses are all ways of paying greater attention to athlete's feelings.
Have athletes become more aware of their teammates' feelings. Awareness of others' feelings emphasizes affect and helps athletes move outside their egocentrism. One way to facilitate this greater awareness is to hold a team meeting and ask your athletes to express their feelings, understand their teammates' needs, and find ways to support each other at practices, competitions, and outside the practice venue. Also, when disagreements occur between athletes, ask each athlete to try understanding the other's viewpoint.
Stress the importance of learning and thinking strategies. According to Rogers emphasizing affect also means emphasizing thinking. When you emphasize thinking, the information and skills being taught are not as important as the process and strategies for learning. Consequently, a humanistic coach emphasizes learning how to learn and teaches athletes specific strategies to help them become good learners. For example, having athletes mentally review information about drills before, during, and after each practice helps them learn how to learn drills. Many athletes tend to leave a practice and never think about that practice ever again. When taking time to review information discussed in practice, athletes are more apt to organize the information, give it meaning, remember it at the next practice, and, consequently, improve at a faster rate.
Self-Concept
Helping your athletes develop a positive self-concept is another way to emphasize humanism. Remember that your athletes develop their self-concept in part through interaction with you and how you communicate to them about who they are as human beings. How can you facilitate this process? Following are some suggestions.
Maintain positive perceptions and expectations of your athletes. It is easy to form limiting notions of your athletes and unconsciously communicate these limitations to them. These notions then become part of a hidden curriculum: the things you unconsciously teach as the unintended outcome or by-product of your coaching. Statements such as the following ones can become part of a hidden curriculum: “This athlete is mentally weak.” “This athlete will never make it.” “This athlete can do skills A and B great but will never learn skill C.” “This athlete will always be a B-level player.” Rid yourself of preconceived limiting notions of your athletes and avoid any hidden curriculum. Expect the best. When you expect the best, you generally get the best. Don't count out any of your athletes. Like Jimmy, the young lanky boy I coached many years ago, just when you think someone can't do something, you may be surprised.
Communicate these positive perceptions and expectations through word and deed. It is good to have positive perceptions and expectations of your athletes, but make sure you communicate them to your athletes both by what you say and what you do. Take the time to tell your athletes what you think of them and what they are capable of achieving and communicate these expectations through your coaching. Saying, “Well, you didn't make it this time but I know you will at the next competition” is an effective example. Also, demonstrate your confidence in them through your actions. For example, you tell one of your athletes that she can become a champion if she puts in more work and then you stay after practice or volunteer to come in on your day off to work with her.
Maintain positive perceptions and expectations publicly and privately. Coaches sometimes disparage their athletes behind their backs. Getting frustrated and needing to vent some frustration is part of coaching, but you have to support your athletes and believe in them, even when they aren't looking. Being a humanistic coach means, in part, being genuine as a person. Being genuine means acting as you really are as a person and having your words match your internal feelings. In other words, you openly let others know how you feel. Venting is part of human nature and part of dealing with stress. But you have to be true to your athletes. You can't say one thing publicly and then turn around and say something contrary privately. Besides making you a hypocrite and disingenuous, your words ultimately get back to the athlete and ruin the coach-athlete relationship.
Invite rather than disinvite athletes. According to Purkey and Novak (1996), teachers invite students by communicating to them that they are capable, self-directed, and valued, and by expecting behaviors and achievements commensurate with their worth and emerging self-concept. In contrast, teachers who disinvite students send a message that students are irresponsible, incapable, worthless, and undirected. As a coach, do you invite or disinvite your athletes?
Build a positive self-concept by promoting success rather than failure. To promote success, break down learning tasks into small and attainable increments. Coaches sometimes ask athletes to do too much too soon. Perhaps this is because they forget how many smaller tasks comprise a particular movement. They ask athletes to do a skill that actually involves many skills, none of which the athletes have yet mastered. When you ask athletes to do too much too soon, you set them up for guaranteed failure. The result of repeated failure can be a poor self-concept, a feeling of external control, and a sense of helplessness.
Promoting success and a positive self-concept also includes implementing mastery learning (Bloom, 1976). The concept of mastery learning suggests that all learners can learn; the only difference between learners is the amount of time each person requires to learn the material. While Bloom's concept of mastery learning deals mainly with concept learning, mastery learning can be applied to motor learning as well. Not all athletes will learn to perform at the elite level. However, most athletes can learn much of what you teach to some level of proficiency. The humanistic coach focuses on helping each athlete master as many skills as possible for their particular sport and level of experience and ability.
Mastery learning means learning a particular skill to a certain level of proficiency before moving on to the next skill. For example, when you break down a skill into smaller increments, make sure your athlete masters each smaller skill before moving on to the next skill. It may take time and patience on the part of both athlete and coach, but it will be well worth the effort later in the athlete's career.
Communication
A third major emphasis of a humanistic approach to coaching is communication. Communication includes attention to the principles and skills of effective human relations, honest interpersonal communication, and constructive conflict resolution. Following are some suggestions for emphasizing communication in your coaching.
Establish effective human relations through honest and open interpersonal communication. Honest and open communication means being real with your athletes, rather than aloof and unapproachable. Honest communication also means really listening to what your athletes have to say. A shortcoming for many coaches is that they don't take the time or give enough effort to really listen to what their athletes are trying to say. Being a good listener is not easy but sometimes it is all an athlete really wants or needs.
One season I had trouble establishing a relationship with one of my athletes. I was angry with her because I thought she never listened to me. Over the course of the season, our relationship became increasingly distant. Finally, another athlete said to me, “Coach, you need to talk to her.” At first I dismissed her comment, but the more I thought about it, the more I knew she was right. So, one afternoon I took some time to talk with her. I said a few things about how I felt, but then I just listened to what she had to say. The more I listened to her, the more she listened to me. I am positive that our meeting was a turning point in her season and career. And it literally happened overnight. We met on a Wednesday and on Thursday she competed in the NCAA championship. She finished third with a lifetime best performance, a performance that far exceeded anything she had done to that point in her season.
Take time from your daily routine to communicate with your athletes. Maybe it is just a few minutes as they are coming into practice or while they are stretching. Or maybe you connect with a few of your athletes before they leave practice. The more you communicate with them, particularly on a personal level, the more of a relationship you establish with them. Take the time to occasionally meet one-on-one in your office. Have an open-door policy so that your athletes feel comfortable stopping by even if it is only to say hello. Schedule individual goal-setting sessions. Besides nourishing the athlete-coach relationship, these meetings provide athletes with the opportunity to express their feelings and talk about things important to their athletic careers and their personal lives.
Arrange team meetings and team goal-setting sessions. These sessions give your athletes the opportunity to communicate among themselves. It is worthwhile to attend some of these meetings to lay the ground rules for athlete interaction and discussion topics. For other meetings, it is more important that the athletes take responsibility for the meeting and you need not be present. Some of the topics your athletes can consider are how to support one another inside and outside of practice, how to communicate effectively with each other, and how to openly talk about problems and their resolutions.
Use the principles and ideas of humanism and Rogerian theory to constructively resolve conflict. No matter how effective you are as a coach or how great your athletes are as people, you will have conflict at some point within your team and within your program. And the quicker it is resolved, the sooner you right the ship and continue moving forward. It might be a conflict between you and a player, between two players, between an assistant coach and a player, between two assistant coaches, between coach and parent, or between the offense and the defense. The number of potential conflicts lurking on the horizon is great and you and your athletes need to be trained and ready to confront these battles. Humanism and Rogerian theory provide a perfect battle plan.
According to humanism and Rogerian theory, the best way to resolve conflict is for both sides to sit down and communicate. Since people act in accordance with their phenomenological reality, this communication involves having each person really listen and attempt to understand the other person's private world of experiences. Because humanism emphasizes self-direction, self-determination, autonomy, and self-evaluation, it is expected that each person, with the coach acting as facilitator, will assume responsibility for resolving the conflict.
Personal Values
Personal values should be a part of your coaching philosophy and your coaching curriculum. You teach values whether you know it or not. If you are unaware of the values you teach, then they have become part of your hidden curriculum. As mentioned a number of times in this book, effective coaches are aware of everything they teach. Consequently, be conscious of the values you teach—or want to teach—and incorporate them into your coaching curriculum so that you teach positive values and eliminate negative values you might be inadvertently teaching your athletes.
Encourage your athletes to discover their own personal values. Simon, Howe, and Kirschenbaum (1972) suggest 79 strategies for helping students elaborate and clarify values. Personal values you might teach include acceptance of self and others, acceptance of personal faults and mistakes but still maintaining self-worth, and valuing effort and performance more than winning. One personal value worth teaching is personal responsibility. Historically, humanism has valued autonomy: the individual taking responsibility and control for his or her life.
Stress personal responsibility as a value. You can nurture personal responsibility in many ways. Having athletes set their own goals and select appropriate ways of reaching their goals gives them a sense of control and autonomy. Also, setting up athletes for success helps establish an internal locus of control. According to attribution theory, athletes with an internal locus of control see success as a result of personal effort and not an external factor such as luck. In other words, an athlete with an internal locus of control believes that he is in control of the outcome of events.
Stress personal problem solving as a value. Rather than solve a problem for an athlete, you can facilitate the athlete's effort to solve the problem. This concept is at the center of Roger's client-centered therapy, in which the client, not the counselor, solves the problem. Based on Rogerian theory, a nondirective model of teaching has been developed for fostering a sense of personal responsibility in athletes. The following section outlines the nondirective model.
Read more from Applying Educational Psychology in Coaching Athletes by Jeffery Huber.
Coaches can use behaviorism to increase athletes' motivation
According to the concept of psychological hedonism and the pain–pleasure principle, people are motivated to obtain pleasure and avoid pain.
Behaviorism and Motivation
According to the concept of psychological hedonism and the pain-pleasure principle, people are motivated to obtain pleasure and avoid pain. This simple explanation for human motivation, however, seems incongruous with the picture of the hard-working athlete training through extremely demanding and often painful (not pleasurable) conditions to achieve a long-range goal. How do you account for this type of athlete motivation? According to behaviorism, you would argue that somehow athlete motivation to train under such grueling circumstances is being reinforced. A reinforcer increases the probability that a response will reoccur. When a rat receives a food pellet (reinforcer) for feverishly pressing a lever in the Skinner box, the rat is more likely to press the lever again.
Reinforcement and Praise
When used according to the principles of operant conditioning, reinforcement can have a significant impact on motivation and human behavior. Consider the successful coach who always seems to have upbeat and motivated athletes willing to charge through a brick wall for their coach. Unfortunately, the example of the unsuccessful coach whose athletes always seem to be downcast, downtrodden, and unmotivated also exists. One factor that separates the successful coach from the unsuccessful coach is the use of positive reinforcers, in particular, praise. Although the use of praise is discussed in detail in chapter 10, several rules about the use of praise (pushing the praise button) are worth repeating here.
Praise provides information to athletes not only about performance but also about notion of self. In other words, it tells athletes about the quality of their motor performance, but it often also tells them about their self-worth and competence. For example, when you say, “Jerome, way to think. That's the way to make the correction the first time!” you are letting him know about his improved performance and also, and more important, about his intelligence, effort, and capacity for change. Contrast this coaching comment with the droll and uninspired “Okay. Go on to the next drill.” Often, just a few precisely put words make a significant and long-lasting difference in an athlete's notion of self and motivation.
Praise should be used judiciously. It is easy to use praise too often so that it becomes meaningless to athletes or too infrequently so that it is ineffective in influencing behavior. Young coaches in particular often use praise too frequently. Successful coaches find the right balance for dishing out praise so that when they do use praise, it has real punch and positively affects athlete motivation.
Praise should include specific, constructive encouragement to build self-esteem (Hitz & Driscoll, 1994). Encouraging comments should be clear and specific rather than vague and general. Athletes want to know not only the what but also the why. If they aren't doing something correctly, they want to know why it is wrong and why a different approach is better. At the same time, they also want to be encouraged for their effort and ability to succeed with future attempts. For example, the type of praise in the following statement increases self-esteem and motivation while it concomitantly provides constructive encouragement: “Maria, you took the race out too fast but I admire your determination, adventurousness, and fearlessness! Those are qualities you should be proud of and will serve you well in the future. However, you need to pace yourself and run your own race next time.”
Praise should be sincere. Sincere praise not only provides reinforcement, but it also sends an emotional message that says you genuinely care for your athletes and want to see them succeed. Athletes who perceive that their coaches care for them are motivated to give even greater effort in practice. Conversely, insincere praise, besides being ineffective, communicates to athletes that you have little regard for them and their performances. Sincere praise builds the athlete-coach relationship while insincere praise undermines it. Which type of praise do you give your athletes?
Praising effort is important, particularly for young athletes. Children who are praised for their efforts are more apt to develop a view of ability as something they can control and something that can change (Mueller & Dweck, 1998). Consequently, these athletes are more apt to be motivated to train hard and expect results based on personal effort. In contrast, people who are praised for their talent tend to view ability as fixed and unchanging. Consequently, when these athletes experience failure, they are less motivated to train hard.
External Feedback as Reinforcement
Like praise, external feedback can serve as a reinforcer for athlete behaviors. For example, in the game of hot and cold, people shout out “hotter” and “colder” to express how close the player is to reaching the goal. The hotter game players get (i.e., the closer they get to their achievement goal) the more motivated they become to keep going. In this regard, both knowledge of results (KR) and knowledge of performance (KP) act as reinforcers. Two specific external feedback properties that athletes find motivating are the aptly named motivating feedback and informational feedback.
Motivating feedback is defined as feedback about an individual's progress toward goal achievement that energizes and directs behavior. For example, consider a runner who is on the second to last lap and her coach tells her she is on pace for a personal best time. When athletes believe they are improving and moving toward their goals, they become increasingly motivated in their pursuit of goal achievement.
Informational feedback is defined as feedback that provides performers with error correction information, either descriptive (what happened) or prescriptive (what needs to happen). This type of feedback is motivating to all athletes, but it is particularly motivating for athletes engaged in deliberate practice (i.e., setting specific goals for everything they do in practice). For these athletes, informational feedback is like food to a hungry traveler; they devour it. They want to improve with each practice and informational feedback helps temporarily satisfy their craving for knowledge about their progress toward improved performance.
Extrinsic and Intrinsic Motivation
Some people engage in specific behaviors because they have extrinsic motivation: They engage in the behaviors because they anticipate certain external rewards. For example, some athletes try out for a team because they anticipate earning a varsity letter, a trophy, a college scholarship, and so on. Other people have intrinsic motivation: They engage in athletics because they respond well to internal sources of reinforcement such as personal satisfaction and sense of accomplishment. These athletes derive internal reinforcement from achievements such as throwing a perfect pass, performing a great gymnastics routine, swishing a 3-point shot, running a perfect race, and so on. The beauty of sport is that this list is virtually endless.
Research suggests that people who respond to intrinsic motives are more committed, enjoy their activities more, and are more persistent when they confront failure (Agbor-Baiyee, 1997). While this research examined student behavior, research examining athletes found similar results (Vallerand & Losier, 1999). Close to intrinsic motivation is a concept called interest (Wigfield, Eccles, & Rodriguez, 1998). People who engage in activities simply for the fact that they like doing it and expect no external reward can be said to have an interest in that activity. A primary objective for all coaches should be to encourage athletes to develop a genuine interest in their sport.
Keep in mind, however, that external rewards can be useful for facilitating interest and intrinsic motivation. For example, when I was learning to dive, our coach purchased gold (it was actually yellow, but it looked like gold to my teammates and me) diving suits like the one reigning Olympic champion Bernie Wrightson wore when he won the gold medal. We all aspired to become gold medalists like Bernie, but we could not buy the suit. We could only acquire the suit by earning it, by learning a full list of high-degree-of-difficulty dives on the 3-meter springboard. We wanted to earn that suit so badly that we would do almost anything, including learning scary and difficult new dives that no one our age was performing back then. The suit became a symbol of courage, effort, determination, and noteworthy accomplishment. We did not remain in the sport simply because of the suit, but it sure captured our interest and ignited our intrinsic motivation.
Conditioned Responses
Athletes who associate positive physiological responses, such as relaxation and appropriate arousal level, and enhancing emotions, such as joy and satisfaction, are more likely to love their sport and come to practice highly motivated to train. Therefore, to increase motivation, coaches need to condition their athletes to respond positively to not only their sport but the many aspects of their sport, such as training, stretching, conditioning, drill and skill work, and competing. For many athletes, especially young ones, a positive conditioned response is what brings them back each day, each week, each month, and each season. Because conditioning is so important to the motor learning process and athlete success, chapter 3 examines it in detail (see The Salivating Athlete).
Applying Behaviorism to Increase Athlete Motivation
Based on the theory of behaviorism, coaches can push a number of “behavioral buttons” to increase athletes' motivation.
Follow the guidelines for the effective use of praise. Although praise is an effective reinforcer, it can be misused. Know when, what, and how to use it. Successful coaches are masters at effectively using praise to motivate their athletes.
Use external feedback as you would other types of reinforcers. External feedback for all athletes, but particularly elite athletes, is highly reinforcing. The more accurate the external feedback, the more reinforcing it becomes for them. Years ago when I first began working with an elite athlete, who already was a NCAA champion and world champion, I learned two things rather quickly: Remember what correction you give him and give him accurate feedback about whether or not he made the correction on the subsequent attempt. If I forgot the correction or my feedback was inaccurate, he kindly let me know about it! Highly effective coaches provide accurate and timely external feedback.
Recognize individual differences. No two athletes are exactly alike. It is important to keep these differences in mind when using reinforcement to influence motivation. What is reinforcing for one athlete might not be reinforcing to another athlete. Knowing how to push their buttons in part means knowing what is reinforcing to them. For example, some athletes hate being pulled aside and lectured while other athletes take it as a compliment and a sign that you care about them and their goals.
Reinforce effort in order to encourage intrinsic motivation. In the long run, athletes train harder and longer and persevere in their sport when they are intrinsically motivated. For this reason, reinforce effort. Athletes who associate ability and achievement with effort are more likely to be motivated to train and maintain their motivation during difficult training cycles.
Condition athletes to have a positive physiological response to their sport. Athletes who have an interest and love for their sport (training and competition) will be engaged and motivated. You can facilitate a positive response by continually pairing positive conditioned stimuli with positive unconditioned stimuli. A significant way to create a positive response is to facilitate success and mastery during practice, make practice and competition fun, and focus on effort.
Use external reinforcers. Sometimes external reinforcers can be effective for kick starting or augmenting an athlete's internal motivation. In the case of the gold diving suit, it is interesting to note that every diver on the team did indeed earn a suit. Most went on to successful high school careers and a number of us went on to compete collegiately and nationally. One athlete even made the U.S. Olympic team, and one stayed around long enough to coach collegiate diving for over 37 years. Sometimes, a seemingly small external reward can go a long way toward intrinsically motivating athletes. It is funny how after all these years grown men still occasionally gather and talk about “the suit” and how they cherish it and have it stored away like a rare artifact, precious and immeasurably valuable, a tangible reminder of the intangible rewards they received from their memorable experience in sport. I am sure that athletes in all sports have similar stories and memories.
Read more from Applying Educational Psychology in Coaching Athletes by Jeffery Huber.
Understanding motor learning stages improves skill instruction
As a coach I found this simple paradigm to be extremely helpful for understanding, guiding, and accelerating the motor learning process.
Three Stages of Motor Learning
At this point in the chapter, you might ask, “What does all this discussion about thinking and memory have to do with motor learning and performance?” You want your athletes to respond, not think. You want them to grip it and rip it. You want them to look and automatically react. Well, motor learning, particularly early learning, involves attempts by learners to acquire an idea of the movement (Gentile, 1972) or understand the basic pattern of coordination (Newell, 1985). To achieve these goals, learners must use cognitive (Fitts & Posner, 1967) and verbal processes (Adams, 1971) to solve problems. To this end, Fitts (1964; Fitts & Posner, 1967) suggests that motor skill acquisition follows three stages: the cognitive stage, the associative stage, and the autonomous stage.
As a coach I found this simple paradigm to be extremely helpful for understanding, guiding, and accelerating the motor learning process. Because of its importance, it is worth examining the three stages and their implications for effective coaching.
Cognitive Stage
For the new learner, the problem to be solved in the cognitive stage is understanding what to do (Schmidt & Lee, 2005). It would be extremely difficult for someone to learn a skill without receiving any prior knowledge about the skill, whether that knowledge is visual or verbal. For example, consider the butterfly stroke in swimming. It is a fairly complicated and somewhat unnatural stroke in which to syncopate the movement of the arms with the kick of the legs. It would be difficult indeed for a novice swimmer to learn such a stroke without ever seeing the stroke performed or ever receiving any declarative knowledge about how the stroke is performed. In other words, motor learning begins with the cognitive stage and the processing of information.
Surely the swimmer could discover how to roughly perform the stroke, but it probably would take many long hours of trial and error, experimentation, and some creative problem solving. It is much simpler to learn a skill by first acquiring information about the skill.
The cognitive stage is of great interest to cognitivists because this stage involves information processing. Also called the verbal-motor stage (Adams, 1971), this stage is verbal-cognitive in nature (Schmidt & Lee, 2005) because it involves the conveyance (verbal) and acquisition (cognition) of new information. In this stage, the person is trying to process information in an attempt to cognitively understand the requirements and parameters of motor movement.
Consider several young children taking beginning golf lessons. They might arrive early for their first golf lesson. Having never seen any golfers in action, they are excited and eager to see what golf is all about; each child is a mini tabula rasa ready to learn. They watch the preceding class of golfers and immediately begin collecting visual information. Next, the instructor explains the golf swing, beginning with the grip of the club and stance. Now they are gathering verbal information about the sport. In other words, they don't simply show up and begin golfing. Everything begins with the acquisition and cognitive processing of newly presented information. During this cognitive stage, the beginning athlete ingests information and organizes it into some meaningful form that will ultimately lead to the creation of a motor program.
The cognitive stage is characterized as having large gains in performance and inconsistent performance. During this stage instruction, guidance, slow-motion drills, video analysis, augmented feedback, and other coaching techniques are highly effective (Schmidt & Lee, 2005). Recall the discussion in chapter 4 regarding Adams' closed-loop theory and the importance of error-free learning in the initial learning stage (p. 133). During the cognitive stage it is important that the learner is provided with the necessary information, guidance, and time to establish sound fundamentals of movement. Sometimes making errors and taking a constructivist approach to coaching and learning can be useful (see the discussion on schema theory, p. 196).
Associative Stage
The associative stage is characterized as much less verbal information, smaller gains in performance, conscious performance, adjustment making, awkward and disjointed movement, and taking a long time to complete. During this stage the athlete works at making movement adjustments and stringing together small movement skills. This stage is also called the motor stage (Adams, 1971) because the problem to be solved in the associative stage is learning how to perform the skill (Schmidt & Lee, 2005). From the cognitive perspective, the athlete is attempting to translate declarative knowledge into procedural knowledge. In other words, the athlete is transforming what to do into how to do.
No diver in the history of the sport of diving has ever performed every single dive for perfect 10s in a single competition. There is always room for improvement. This is true for all sports. For example, a baseball or softball pitcher can improve delivery and learn new pitches, a pole-vaulter can learn to use a new pole and a new technique, a gymnast can refine a routine, a basketball player can improve shooting technique, and a swimmer can improve stroke or flip turn technique. Highly successful athletes and highly effective coaches are always looking for ways to get better. Consequently, they frequently revisit the cognitive stage and then the associative stage of motor learning. Revisiting these stages is the relearning process.
Some years ago, I had an opportunity to work with Professor Yu Fen at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. Professor Yu Fen is one of the top diving coaches in the world and has produced numerous world and Olympic champions. One of the things I took away from working with her is the importance of continually revisiting the first and second stages of motor acquisition, no matter how accomplished an athlete might be. If a diver was not performing, say, a forward 3 1/2 somersault in the pike position, she would take the diver to the trampoline and begin working a basic jump or single somersault. During one of her practices, I observed Olympic gold medalist Tian Liang practicing on 1-meter springboard virtually the same drill as a beginning athlete on an adjacent springboard.
Let's say you have a new athlete who recently transferred from another program to your program. The reason for the transfer is that he has hit a plateau. In fact, his level of performance has begun to decrease. After observing him, you realize that the reason for his lack of progress is that some of his fundamentals are badly in need of remedial work. Where do you begin with this adopted athlete with a host of bad habits? Given what you now know about motor acquisition, the best approach is to first explain that if he wants to improve his performance he will have to make changes, and to make changes means letting go of old habits and learning new fundamentals by revisiting the three stages (cognitive, associative, autonomous) of motor learning. This relearning process means acquiring new information (cognitive stage) and then going through the frustrating associative stage.
Getting athletes to buy into relearning can be challenging. Some athletes, especially successful ones, might say, “Hey, I was high school state champion doing it this way! Why should I change? Besides, the new movement feels awkward.” A coach might reply, “Well, you could have won by even more had you done it the new way!” When these athletes try something new it feels uncomfortable and awkward and they sometimes are reluctant to continue with the change. The verbal information you provide about the three stages of motor learning as well as the information about the new technique helps them establish or activate a learning schema (p. 179) and provides a rationale or perspective for persevering with the change. Next, you work with them on the skill in its simplest form until the skill is mastered, automatic, and integrated into the movement program.
Autonomous Stage
According to Fitts' and Posner's paradigm, this is the final stage of motor acquisition. It often requires years of training to arrive at the autonomous stage. But this stage is where it's at for elite athletes, where motor performance becomes largely automatic, where cognitive processing demands are minimal, and athletes are capable of attending to and processing other information, such as the position of defensive players, game strategy, or the form or style of movement (Schmidt & Lee, 2005) in sports such as ice-skating, dance, and synchronized swimming. It is the stage where they can now respond and not think (or think minimally), where they can grip it and rip it, look and automatically react, and enter a state of flow.
Both good outcomes and bad outcomes are associated with the autonomous stage. The good is that performance requires much less attentional and cognitive demand, which thereby frees the performer to engage in secondary tasks, such as the concert pianist who is able to follow random digits or perform arithmetic while simultaneously playing the piano (Shaffer, 1980), or the quarterback who is capable of surveying the defense and detecting an eminent blitz while simultaneously calling the signals and changing the play at the line of scrimmage.
The bad is that since less cognitive demand exists during performance, it leaves ample room for irrelevant and distracting thoughts to sneak into the workshop (working memory) of the mind. Examples of this occurrence are the elite athletes at the Olympic trials who get caught thinking about making the Olympic team instead of focusing exclusively on performance during the last moments of a gymnastics routine, swimming race, or wrestling match. Think of the gymnast who puts together a stellar routine only to make a silly mistake at the end; or the swimmer who swims magnificently but doesn't finish the race and gets touched out at the wall; or the wrestler who dominates the match but loses concentration and allows his opponent to gain an easy reversal in the waning seconds. Some mountain climbing accidents occur as climbers near the top of the mountain. This may be so because those experienced climbers used some of their available attentional capacity to suddenly begin thinking about reaching the peak—the outcome—rather than focusing on what got them to that part of the mountain in the first place—the process.
The other bad outcome about automatic performance is that it reinforces athletes to maintain incorrect movements because a certain amount of comfort and reinforcement is associated with automatic performance, even if it is incorrect. But just because a motor movement can be performed automatically doesn't mean the movement is correct or worthy of being maintained. Moreover, as soon as athletes stop thinking about the new movement during the cognitive and associative stages, they are likely to respond automatically, thereby reverting to the old and incorrect movement in their performance repertoire. The three stages of motor learning are summarized in table 6.2.
Applying Motor Learning Stages in Coaching Athletes
Provide your athletes with detailed information in the early stage of learning. If you want your athletes to perform correctly, give them the correct information. This means that you need to know what you are talking about and you need to be clear and concise with your instruction. If your athletes don't understand what they are supposed to do, they won't do it correctly. And if they don't understand, perhaps the problem is you, not them. In other words, you may need to do a better job of clearly communicating exactly what you want them to do and communicate it in laymen's terms—in language they can understand and at a conceptual level they are prepared to cognitively grasp. For example, you may understand the physics behind what you are teaching, but if your athletes don't comprehend concepts such as angular momentum, shear force, and action-reaction you will have lost them at “Hello.”
Explain the three stages of motor learning and the relearning process. Relearning something is often more difficult than learning it correctly the first time. This difficulty can lead to frustration and frustration acts like a brick wall between the athlete and the desired goal movement being learned. Make sure your athletes understand the motor learning stages and which stage they are at during the relearning process. Continually remind them that if they trust you and stay committed to the new movement, eventually it will become automatic and integrated into their performance. The new movement seems awkward now compared to the old movement because they are in the associative stage, but after enough repetitions the new movement will become smooth, automatic, and, most important, more effective than the old movement. Some coaches are ineffective at fixing movements. They understand how to teach it correctly in the beginning, but not how to change (fix) a bad habit. Understanding cognitive theory and taking a cognitive teaching approach will help you effectively do both: Teach it correctly the first time and change a bad habit.
Be patient with your athletes during the associative stage. Based on the stages of learning, we now know that awkward and disjointed movements characterize the associative stage. Things aren't going to look or feel very smooth at first; it is part of the learning process. If you expect performance to be immediately smooth and flowing, you are going to be disappointed, disillusioned, and perhaps even somewhat distraught—and so too are your athletes. Fear not. It is all part of the learning process. Remain patient and facilitate learning. Your impatience is likely to make your athletes anxious and impede their learning, whereas your patience and confidence will motivate them to persevere during the associative stage.
Stress the importance of positive information in working memory. A goal for you is to get your athletes to be able to perform automatically. As already mentioned, however, automaticity creates empty space in working memory, which makes it easier for athletes to unintentionally entertain negative thoughts and ruminate, which means to repeatedly dwell on negative and unproductive thoughts. For example, some athletes focus on the outcome of competition and the thought What if I lose? Ruminative thoughts are often unconscious thoughts that through sheer volume of constant repetition become overwhelming and overtake working memory. For example, at a major competition some athletes get this blank look on their faces when their coaches talk to them. It's as though their entire focus is on some internal thought and they are lost to the external world of the here and now. Help your athletes keep working memory space filled with the right stuff; teach them to monitor their thoughts, use thought-stopping statements, redirect their thoughts, engage in positive self-talk, and answer negative thoughts and images with positive thoughts and images.
Read more from Applying Educational Psychology in Coaching Athletes by Jeffery Huber.
Emphasize humanistic principles as part of an effective coaching philosophy
Humanism can manifest itself through the coaching process in four ways. These common emphases are affect, self-concept, communication, and personal values.
Applying Education Psychology in Coaching Athletes.
Applying Four Common Emphases of Humanistic Coaching
Humanism can manifest itself through the coaching process in four ways. These common emphases are affect, self-concept, communication, and personal values.
Affect
Emphasizing affect means paying greater attention to thinking and feeling and less attention to acquiring specific information and skills. Following are some suggestions for emphasizing affect.
Set affective objectives. Setting specific affective objectives means you commit to making a conscious effort to integrate humanism into your program. Examples of affective objectives include encouraging and leading athletes to demonstrate a love for their sport and themselves and to demonstrate a concern and respect for teammates. Another affective objective is to demonstrate a concern and respect for your athletes and acceptance of them as unique individuals, not just as a group of athletes. Another goal is to act as a role model and model a love for the sport and belief in the importance of becoming a more complete person.
Pay greater attention to athletes' feelings. Simply asking athletes how they are feeling and what is going on in their lives, showing a genuine concern for them as human beings, listening to their problems, and being sensitive to their emotional responses are all ways of paying greater attention to athlete's feelings.
Have athletes become more aware of their teammates' feelings. Awareness of others' feelings emphasizes affect and helps athletes move outside their egocentrism. One way to facilitate this greater awareness is to hold a team meeting and ask your athletes to express their feelings, understand their teammates' needs, and find ways to support each other at practices, competitions, and outside the practice venue. Also, when disagreements occur between athletes, ask each athlete to try understanding the other's viewpoint.
Stress the importance of learning and thinking strategies. According to Rogers emphasizing affect also means emphasizing thinking. When you emphasize thinking, the information and skills being taught are not as important as the process and strategies for learning. Consequently, a humanistic coach emphasizes learning how to learn and teaches athletes specific strategies to help them become good learners. For example, having athletes mentally review information about drills before, during, and after each practice helps them learn how to learn drills. Many athletes tend to leave a practice and never think about that practice ever again. When taking time to review information discussed in practice, athletes are more apt to organize the information, give it meaning, remember it at the next practice, and, consequently, improve at a faster rate.
Self-Concept
Helping your athletes develop a positive self-concept is another way to emphasize humanism. Remember that your athletes develop their self-concept in part through interaction with you and how you communicate to them about who they are as human beings. How can you facilitate this process? Following are some suggestions.
Maintain positive perceptions and expectations of your athletes. It is easy to form limiting notions of your athletes and unconsciously communicate these limitations to them. These notions then become part of a hidden curriculum: the things you unconsciously teach as the unintended outcome or by-product of your coaching. Statements such as the following ones can become part of a hidden curriculum: “This athlete is mentally weak.” “This athlete will never make it.” “This athlete can do skills A and B great but will never learn skill C.” “This athlete will always be a B-level player.” Rid yourself of preconceived limiting notions of your athletes and avoid any hidden curriculum. Expect the best. When you expect the best, you generally get the best. Don't count out any of your athletes. Like Jimmy, the young lanky boy I coached many years ago, just when you think someone can't do something, you may be surprised.
Communicate these positive perceptions and expectations through word and deed. It is good to have positive perceptions and expectations of your athletes, but make sure you communicate them to your athletes both by what you say and what you do. Take the time to tell your athletes what you think of them and what they are capable of achieving and communicate these expectations through your coaching. Saying, “Well, you didn't make it this time but I know you will at the next competition” is an effective example. Also, demonstrate your confidence in them through your actions. For example, you tell one of your athletes that she can become a champion if she puts in more work and then you stay after practice or volunteer to come in on your day off to work with her.
Maintain positive perceptions and expectations publicly and privately. Coaches sometimes disparage their athletes behind their backs. Getting frustrated and needing to vent some frustration is part of coaching, but you have to support your athletes and believe in them, even when they aren't looking. Being a humanistic coach means, in part, being genuine as a person. Being genuine means acting as you really are as a person and having your words match your internal feelings. In other words, you openly let others know how you feel. Venting is part of human nature and part of dealing with stress. But you have to be true to your athletes. You can't say one thing publicly and then turn around and say something contrary privately. Besides making you a hypocrite and disingenuous, your words ultimately get back to the athlete and ruin the coach-athlete relationship.
Invite rather than disinvite athletes. According to Purkey and Novak (1996), teachers invite students by communicating to them that they are capable, self-directed, and valued, and by expecting behaviors and achievements commensurate with their worth and emerging self-concept. In contrast, teachers who disinvite students send a message that students are irresponsible, incapable, worthless, and undirected. As a coach, do you invite or disinvite your athletes?
Build a positive self-concept by promoting success rather than failure. To promote success, break down learning tasks into small and attainable increments. Coaches sometimes ask athletes to do too much too soon. Perhaps this is because they forget how many smaller tasks comprise a particular movement. They ask athletes to do a skill that actually involves many skills, none of which the athletes have yet mastered. When you ask athletes to do too much too soon, you set them up for guaranteed failure. The result of repeated failure can be a poor self-concept, a feeling of external control, and a sense of helplessness.
Promoting success and a positive self-concept also includes implementing mastery learning (Bloom, 1976). The concept of mastery learning suggests that all learners can learn; the only difference between learners is the amount of time each person requires to learn the material. While Bloom's concept of mastery learning deals mainly with concept learning, mastery learning can be applied to motor learning as well. Not all athletes will learn to perform at the elite level. However, most athletes can learn much of what you teach to some level of proficiency. The humanistic coach focuses on helping each athlete master as many skills as possible for their particular sport and level of experience and ability.
Mastery learning means learning a particular skill to a certain level of proficiency before moving on to the next skill. For example, when you break down a skill into smaller increments, make sure your athlete masters each smaller skill before moving on to the next skill. It may take time and patience on the part of both athlete and coach, but it will be well worth the effort later in the athlete's career.
Communication
A third major emphasis of a humanistic approach to coaching is communication. Communication includes attention to the principles and skills of effective human relations, honest interpersonal communication, and constructive conflict resolution. Following are some suggestions for emphasizing communication in your coaching.
Establish effective human relations through honest and open interpersonal communication. Honest and open communication means being real with your athletes, rather than aloof and unapproachable. Honest communication also means really listening to what your athletes have to say. A shortcoming for many coaches is that they don't take the time or give enough effort to really listen to what their athletes are trying to say. Being a good listener is not easy but sometimes it is all an athlete really wants or needs.
One season I had trouble establishing a relationship with one of my athletes. I was angry with her because I thought she never listened to me. Over the course of the season, our relationship became increasingly distant. Finally, another athlete said to me, “Coach, you need to talk to her.” At first I dismissed her comment, but the more I thought about it, the more I knew she was right. So, one afternoon I took some time to talk with her. I said a few things about how I felt, but then I just listened to what she had to say. The more I listened to her, the more she listened to me. I am positive that our meeting was a turning point in her season and career. And it literally happened overnight. We met on a Wednesday and on Thursday she competed in the NCAA championship. She finished third with a lifetime best performance, a performance that far exceeded anything she had done to that point in her season.
Take time from your daily routine to communicate with your athletes. Maybe it is just a few minutes as they are coming into practice or while they are stretching. Or maybe you connect with a few of your athletes before they leave practice. The more you communicate with them, particularly on a personal level, the more of a relationship you establish with them. Take the time to occasionally meet one-on-one in your office. Have an open-door policy so that your athletes feel comfortable stopping by even if it is only to say hello. Schedule individual goal-setting sessions. Besides nourishing the athlete-coach relationship, these meetings provide athletes with the opportunity to express their feelings and talk about things important to their athletic careers and their personal lives.
Arrange team meetings and team goal-setting sessions. These sessions give your athletes the opportunity to communicate among themselves. It is worthwhile to attend some of these meetings to lay the ground rules for athlete interaction and discussion topics. For other meetings, it is more important that the athletes take responsibility for the meeting and you need not be present. Some of the topics your athletes can consider are how to support one another inside and outside of practice, how to communicate effectively with each other, and how to openly talk about problems and their resolutions.
Use the principles and ideas of humanism and Rogerian theory to constructively resolve conflict. No matter how effective you are as a coach or how great your athletes are as people, you will have conflict at some point within your team and within your program. And the quicker it is resolved, the sooner you right the ship and continue moving forward. It might be a conflict between you and a player, between two players, between an assistant coach and a player, between two assistant coaches, between coach and parent, or between the offense and the defense. The number of potential conflicts lurking on the horizon is great and you and your athletes need to be trained and ready to confront these battles. Humanism and Rogerian theory provide a perfect battle plan.
According to humanism and Rogerian theory, the best way to resolve conflict is for both sides to sit down and communicate. Since people act in accordance with their phenomenological reality, this communication involves having each person really listen and attempt to understand the other person's private world of experiences. Because humanism emphasizes self-direction, self-determination, autonomy, and self-evaluation, it is expected that each person, with the coach acting as facilitator, will assume responsibility for resolving the conflict.
Personal Values
Personal values should be a part of your coaching philosophy and your coaching curriculum. You teach values whether you know it or not. If you are unaware of the values you teach, then they have become part of your hidden curriculum. As mentioned a number of times in this book, effective coaches are aware of everything they teach. Consequently, be conscious of the values you teach—or want to teach—and incorporate them into your coaching curriculum so that you teach positive values and eliminate negative values you might be inadvertently teaching your athletes.
Encourage your athletes to discover their own personal values. Simon, Howe, and Kirschenbaum (1972) suggest 79 strategies for helping students elaborate and clarify values. Personal values you might teach include acceptance of self and others, acceptance of personal faults and mistakes but still maintaining self-worth, and valuing effort and performance more than winning. One personal value worth teaching is personal responsibility. Historically, humanism has valued autonomy: the individual taking responsibility and control for his or her life.
Stress personal responsibility as a value. You can nurture personal responsibility in many ways. Having athletes set their own goals and select appropriate ways of reaching their goals gives them a sense of control and autonomy. Also, setting up athletes for success helps establish an internal locus of control. According to attribution theory, athletes with an internal locus of control see success as a result of personal effort and not an external factor such as luck. In other words, an athlete with an internal locus of control believes that he is in control of the outcome of events.
Stress personal problem solving as a value. Rather than solve a problem for an athlete, you can facilitate the athlete's effort to solve the problem. This concept is at the center of Roger's client-centered therapy, in which the client, not the counselor, solves the problem. Based on Rogerian theory, a nondirective model of teaching has been developed for fostering a sense of personal responsibility in athletes. The following section outlines the nondirective model.
Read more from Applying Educational Psychology in Coaching Athletes by Jeffery Huber.
Coaches can use behaviorism to increase athletes' motivation
According to the concept of psychological hedonism and the pain–pleasure principle, people are motivated to obtain pleasure and avoid pain.
Behaviorism and Motivation
According to the concept of psychological hedonism and the pain-pleasure principle, people are motivated to obtain pleasure and avoid pain. This simple explanation for human motivation, however, seems incongruous with the picture of the hard-working athlete training through extremely demanding and often painful (not pleasurable) conditions to achieve a long-range goal. How do you account for this type of athlete motivation? According to behaviorism, you would argue that somehow athlete motivation to train under such grueling circumstances is being reinforced. A reinforcer increases the probability that a response will reoccur. When a rat receives a food pellet (reinforcer) for feverishly pressing a lever in the Skinner box, the rat is more likely to press the lever again.
Reinforcement and Praise
When used according to the principles of operant conditioning, reinforcement can have a significant impact on motivation and human behavior. Consider the successful coach who always seems to have upbeat and motivated athletes willing to charge through a brick wall for their coach. Unfortunately, the example of the unsuccessful coach whose athletes always seem to be downcast, downtrodden, and unmotivated also exists. One factor that separates the successful coach from the unsuccessful coach is the use of positive reinforcers, in particular, praise. Although the use of praise is discussed in detail in chapter 10, several rules about the use of praise (pushing the praise button) are worth repeating here.
Praise provides information to athletes not only about performance but also about notion of self. In other words, it tells athletes about the quality of their motor performance, but it often also tells them about their self-worth and competence. For example, when you say, “Jerome, way to think. That's the way to make the correction the first time!” you are letting him know about his improved performance and also, and more important, about his intelligence, effort, and capacity for change. Contrast this coaching comment with the droll and uninspired “Okay. Go on to the next drill.” Often, just a few precisely put words make a significant and long-lasting difference in an athlete's notion of self and motivation.
Praise should be used judiciously. It is easy to use praise too often so that it becomes meaningless to athletes or too infrequently so that it is ineffective in influencing behavior. Young coaches in particular often use praise too frequently. Successful coaches find the right balance for dishing out praise so that when they do use praise, it has real punch and positively affects athlete motivation.
Praise should include specific, constructive encouragement to build self-esteem (Hitz & Driscoll, 1994). Encouraging comments should be clear and specific rather than vague and general. Athletes want to know not only the what but also the why. If they aren't doing something correctly, they want to know why it is wrong and why a different approach is better. At the same time, they also want to be encouraged for their effort and ability to succeed with future attempts. For example, the type of praise in the following statement increases self-esteem and motivation while it concomitantly provides constructive encouragement: “Maria, you took the race out too fast but I admire your determination, adventurousness, and fearlessness! Those are qualities you should be proud of and will serve you well in the future. However, you need to pace yourself and run your own race next time.”
Praise should be sincere. Sincere praise not only provides reinforcement, but it also sends an emotional message that says you genuinely care for your athletes and want to see them succeed. Athletes who perceive that their coaches care for them are motivated to give even greater effort in practice. Conversely, insincere praise, besides being ineffective, communicates to athletes that you have little regard for them and their performances. Sincere praise builds the athlete-coach relationship while insincere praise undermines it. Which type of praise do you give your athletes?
Praising effort is important, particularly for young athletes. Children who are praised for their efforts are more apt to develop a view of ability as something they can control and something that can change (Mueller & Dweck, 1998). Consequently, these athletes are more apt to be motivated to train hard and expect results based on personal effort. In contrast, people who are praised for their talent tend to view ability as fixed and unchanging. Consequently, when these athletes experience failure, they are less motivated to train hard.
External Feedback as Reinforcement
Like praise, external feedback can serve as a reinforcer for athlete behaviors. For example, in the game of hot and cold, people shout out “hotter” and “colder” to express how close the player is to reaching the goal. The hotter game players get (i.e., the closer they get to their achievement goal) the more motivated they become to keep going. In this regard, both knowledge of results (KR) and knowledge of performance (KP) act as reinforcers. Two specific external feedback properties that athletes find motivating are the aptly named motivating feedback and informational feedback.
Motivating feedback is defined as feedback about an individual's progress toward goal achievement that energizes and directs behavior. For example, consider a runner who is on the second to last lap and her coach tells her she is on pace for a personal best time. When athletes believe they are improving and moving toward their goals, they become increasingly motivated in their pursuit of goal achievement.
Informational feedback is defined as feedback that provides performers with error correction information, either descriptive (what happened) or prescriptive (what needs to happen). This type of feedback is motivating to all athletes, but it is particularly motivating for athletes engaged in deliberate practice (i.e., setting specific goals for everything they do in practice). For these athletes, informational feedback is like food to a hungry traveler; they devour it. They want to improve with each practice and informational feedback helps temporarily satisfy their craving for knowledge about their progress toward improved performance.
Extrinsic and Intrinsic Motivation
Some people engage in specific behaviors because they have extrinsic motivation: They engage in the behaviors because they anticipate certain external rewards. For example, some athletes try out for a team because they anticipate earning a varsity letter, a trophy, a college scholarship, and so on. Other people have intrinsic motivation: They engage in athletics because they respond well to internal sources of reinforcement such as personal satisfaction and sense of accomplishment. These athletes derive internal reinforcement from achievements such as throwing a perfect pass, performing a great gymnastics routine, swishing a 3-point shot, running a perfect race, and so on. The beauty of sport is that this list is virtually endless.
Research suggests that people who respond to intrinsic motives are more committed, enjoy their activities more, and are more persistent when they confront failure (Agbor-Baiyee, 1997). While this research examined student behavior, research examining athletes found similar results (Vallerand & Losier, 1999). Close to intrinsic motivation is a concept called interest (Wigfield, Eccles, & Rodriguez, 1998). People who engage in activities simply for the fact that they like doing it and expect no external reward can be said to have an interest in that activity. A primary objective for all coaches should be to encourage athletes to develop a genuine interest in their sport.
Keep in mind, however, that external rewards can be useful for facilitating interest and intrinsic motivation. For example, when I was learning to dive, our coach purchased gold (it was actually yellow, but it looked like gold to my teammates and me) diving suits like the one reigning Olympic champion Bernie Wrightson wore when he won the gold medal. We all aspired to become gold medalists like Bernie, but we could not buy the suit. We could only acquire the suit by earning it, by learning a full list of high-degree-of-difficulty dives on the 3-meter springboard. We wanted to earn that suit so badly that we would do almost anything, including learning scary and difficult new dives that no one our age was performing back then. The suit became a symbol of courage, effort, determination, and noteworthy accomplishment. We did not remain in the sport simply because of the suit, but it sure captured our interest and ignited our intrinsic motivation.
Conditioned Responses
Athletes who associate positive physiological responses, such as relaxation and appropriate arousal level, and enhancing emotions, such as joy and satisfaction, are more likely to love their sport and come to practice highly motivated to train. Therefore, to increase motivation, coaches need to condition their athletes to respond positively to not only their sport but the many aspects of their sport, such as training, stretching, conditioning, drill and skill work, and competing. For many athletes, especially young ones, a positive conditioned response is what brings them back each day, each week, each month, and each season. Because conditioning is so important to the motor learning process and athlete success, chapter 3 examines it in detail (see The Salivating Athlete).
Applying Behaviorism to Increase Athlete Motivation
Based on the theory of behaviorism, coaches can push a number of “behavioral buttons” to increase athletes' motivation.
Follow the guidelines for the effective use of praise. Although praise is an effective reinforcer, it can be misused. Know when, what, and how to use it. Successful coaches are masters at effectively using praise to motivate their athletes.
Use external feedback as you would other types of reinforcers. External feedback for all athletes, but particularly elite athletes, is highly reinforcing. The more accurate the external feedback, the more reinforcing it becomes for them. Years ago when I first began working with an elite athlete, who already was a NCAA champion and world champion, I learned two things rather quickly: Remember what correction you give him and give him accurate feedback about whether or not he made the correction on the subsequent attempt. If I forgot the correction or my feedback was inaccurate, he kindly let me know about it! Highly effective coaches provide accurate and timely external feedback.
Recognize individual differences. No two athletes are exactly alike. It is important to keep these differences in mind when using reinforcement to influence motivation. What is reinforcing for one athlete might not be reinforcing to another athlete. Knowing how to push their buttons in part means knowing what is reinforcing to them. For example, some athletes hate being pulled aside and lectured while other athletes take it as a compliment and a sign that you care about them and their goals.
Reinforce effort in order to encourage intrinsic motivation. In the long run, athletes train harder and longer and persevere in their sport when they are intrinsically motivated. For this reason, reinforce effort. Athletes who associate ability and achievement with effort are more likely to be motivated to train and maintain their motivation during difficult training cycles.
Condition athletes to have a positive physiological response to their sport. Athletes who have an interest and love for their sport (training and competition) will be engaged and motivated. You can facilitate a positive response by continually pairing positive conditioned stimuli with positive unconditioned stimuli. A significant way to create a positive response is to facilitate success and mastery during practice, make practice and competition fun, and focus on effort.
Use external reinforcers. Sometimes external reinforcers can be effective for kick starting or augmenting an athlete's internal motivation. In the case of the gold diving suit, it is interesting to note that every diver on the team did indeed earn a suit. Most went on to successful high school careers and a number of us went on to compete collegiately and nationally. One athlete even made the U.S. Olympic team, and one stayed around long enough to coach collegiate diving for over 37 years. Sometimes, a seemingly small external reward can go a long way toward intrinsically motivating athletes. It is funny how after all these years grown men still occasionally gather and talk about “the suit” and how they cherish it and have it stored away like a rare artifact, precious and immeasurably valuable, a tangible reminder of the intangible rewards they received from their memorable experience in sport. I am sure that athletes in all sports have similar stories and memories.
Read more from Applying Educational Psychology in Coaching Athletes by Jeffery Huber.
Understanding motor learning stages improves skill instruction
As a coach I found this simple paradigm to be extremely helpful for understanding, guiding, and accelerating the motor learning process.
Three Stages of Motor Learning
At this point in the chapter, you might ask, “What does all this discussion about thinking and memory have to do with motor learning and performance?” You want your athletes to respond, not think. You want them to grip it and rip it. You want them to look and automatically react. Well, motor learning, particularly early learning, involves attempts by learners to acquire an idea of the movement (Gentile, 1972) or understand the basic pattern of coordination (Newell, 1985). To achieve these goals, learners must use cognitive (Fitts & Posner, 1967) and verbal processes (Adams, 1971) to solve problems. To this end, Fitts (1964; Fitts & Posner, 1967) suggests that motor skill acquisition follows three stages: the cognitive stage, the associative stage, and the autonomous stage.
As a coach I found this simple paradigm to be extremely helpful for understanding, guiding, and accelerating the motor learning process. Because of its importance, it is worth examining the three stages and their implications for effective coaching.
Cognitive Stage
For the new learner, the problem to be solved in the cognitive stage is understanding what to do (Schmidt & Lee, 2005). It would be extremely difficult for someone to learn a skill without receiving any prior knowledge about the skill, whether that knowledge is visual or verbal. For example, consider the butterfly stroke in swimming. It is a fairly complicated and somewhat unnatural stroke in which to syncopate the movement of the arms with the kick of the legs. It would be difficult indeed for a novice swimmer to learn such a stroke without ever seeing the stroke performed or ever receiving any declarative knowledge about how the stroke is performed. In other words, motor learning begins with the cognitive stage and the processing of information.
Surely the swimmer could discover how to roughly perform the stroke, but it probably would take many long hours of trial and error, experimentation, and some creative problem solving. It is much simpler to learn a skill by first acquiring information about the skill.
The cognitive stage is of great interest to cognitivists because this stage involves information processing. Also called the verbal-motor stage (Adams, 1971), this stage is verbal-cognitive in nature (Schmidt & Lee, 2005) because it involves the conveyance (verbal) and acquisition (cognition) of new information. In this stage, the person is trying to process information in an attempt to cognitively understand the requirements and parameters of motor movement.
Consider several young children taking beginning golf lessons. They might arrive early for their first golf lesson. Having never seen any golfers in action, they are excited and eager to see what golf is all about; each child is a mini tabula rasa ready to learn. They watch the preceding class of golfers and immediately begin collecting visual information. Next, the instructor explains the golf swing, beginning with the grip of the club and stance. Now they are gathering verbal information about the sport. In other words, they don't simply show up and begin golfing. Everything begins with the acquisition and cognitive processing of newly presented information. During this cognitive stage, the beginning athlete ingests information and organizes it into some meaningful form that will ultimately lead to the creation of a motor program.
The cognitive stage is characterized as having large gains in performance and inconsistent performance. During this stage instruction, guidance, slow-motion drills, video analysis, augmented feedback, and other coaching techniques are highly effective (Schmidt & Lee, 2005). Recall the discussion in chapter 4 regarding Adams' closed-loop theory and the importance of error-free learning in the initial learning stage (p. 133). During the cognitive stage it is important that the learner is provided with the necessary information, guidance, and time to establish sound fundamentals of movement. Sometimes making errors and taking a constructivist approach to coaching and learning can be useful (see the discussion on schema theory, p. 196).
Associative Stage
The associative stage is characterized as much less verbal information, smaller gains in performance, conscious performance, adjustment making, awkward and disjointed movement, and taking a long time to complete. During this stage the athlete works at making movement adjustments and stringing together small movement skills. This stage is also called the motor stage (Adams, 1971) because the problem to be solved in the associative stage is learning how to perform the skill (Schmidt & Lee, 2005). From the cognitive perspective, the athlete is attempting to translate declarative knowledge into procedural knowledge. In other words, the athlete is transforming what to do into how to do.
No diver in the history of the sport of diving has ever performed every single dive for perfect 10s in a single competition. There is always room for improvement. This is true for all sports. For example, a baseball or softball pitcher can improve delivery and learn new pitches, a pole-vaulter can learn to use a new pole and a new technique, a gymnast can refine a routine, a basketball player can improve shooting technique, and a swimmer can improve stroke or flip turn technique. Highly successful athletes and highly effective coaches are always looking for ways to get better. Consequently, they frequently revisit the cognitive stage and then the associative stage of motor learning. Revisiting these stages is the relearning process.
Some years ago, I had an opportunity to work with Professor Yu Fen at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. Professor Yu Fen is one of the top diving coaches in the world and has produced numerous world and Olympic champions. One of the things I took away from working with her is the importance of continually revisiting the first and second stages of motor acquisition, no matter how accomplished an athlete might be. If a diver was not performing, say, a forward 3 1/2 somersault in the pike position, she would take the diver to the trampoline and begin working a basic jump or single somersault. During one of her practices, I observed Olympic gold medalist Tian Liang practicing on 1-meter springboard virtually the same drill as a beginning athlete on an adjacent springboard.
Let's say you have a new athlete who recently transferred from another program to your program. The reason for the transfer is that he has hit a plateau. In fact, his level of performance has begun to decrease. After observing him, you realize that the reason for his lack of progress is that some of his fundamentals are badly in need of remedial work. Where do you begin with this adopted athlete with a host of bad habits? Given what you now know about motor acquisition, the best approach is to first explain that if he wants to improve his performance he will have to make changes, and to make changes means letting go of old habits and learning new fundamentals by revisiting the three stages (cognitive, associative, autonomous) of motor learning. This relearning process means acquiring new information (cognitive stage) and then going through the frustrating associative stage.
Getting athletes to buy into relearning can be challenging. Some athletes, especially successful ones, might say, “Hey, I was high school state champion doing it this way! Why should I change? Besides, the new movement feels awkward.” A coach might reply, “Well, you could have won by even more had you done it the new way!” When these athletes try something new it feels uncomfortable and awkward and they sometimes are reluctant to continue with the change. The verbal information you provide about the three stages of motor learning as well as the information about the new technique helps them establish or activate a learning schema (p. 179) and provides a rationale or perspective for persevering with the change. Next, you work with them on the skill in its simplest form until the skill is mastered, automatic, and integrated into the movement program.
Autonomous Stage
According to Fitts' and Posner's paradigm, this is the final stage of motor acquisition. It often requires years of training to arrive at the autonomous stage. But this stage is where it's at for elite athletes, where motor performance becomes largely automatic, where cognitive processing demands are minimal, and athletes are capable of attending to and processing other information, such as the position of defensive players, game strategy, or the form or style of movement (Schmidt & Lee, 2005) in sports such as ice-skating, dance, and synchronized swimming. It is the stage where they can now respond and not think (or think minimally), where they can grip it and rip it, look and automatically react, and enter a state of flow.
Both good outcomes and bad outcomes are associated with the autonomous stage. The good is that performance requires much less attentional and cognitive demand, which thereby frees the performer to engage in secondary tasks, such as the concert pianist who is able to follow random digits or perform arithmetic while simultaneously playing the piano (Shaffer, 1980), or the quarterback who is capable of surveying the defense and detecting an eminent blitz while simultaneously calling the signals and changing the play at the line of scrimmage.
The bad is that since less cognitive demand exists during performance, it leaves ample room for irrelevant and distracting thoughts to sneak into the workshop (working memory) of the mind. Examples of this occurrence are the elite athletes at the Olympic trials who get caught thinking about making the Olympic team instead of focusing exclusively on performance during the last moments of a gymnastics routine, swimming race, or wrestling match. Think of the gymnast who puts together a stellar routine only to make a silly mistake at the end; or the swimmer who swims magnificently but doesn't finish the race and gets touched out at the wall; or the wrestler who dominates the match but loses concentration and allows his opponent to gain an easy reversal in the waning seconds. Some mountain climbing accidents occur as climbers near the top of the mountain. This may be so because those experienced climbers used some of their available attentional capacity to suddenly begin thinking about reaching the peak—the outcome—rather than focusing on what got them to that part of the mountain in the first place—the process.
The other bad outcome about automatic performance is that it reinforces athletes to maintain incorrect movements because a certain amount of comfort and reinforcement is associated with automatic performance, even if it is incorrect. But just because a motor movement can be performed automatically doesn't mean the movement is correct or worthy of being maintained. Moreover, as soon as athletes stop thinking about the new movement during the cognitive and associative stages, they are likely to respond automatically, thereby reverting to the old and incorrect movement in their performance repertoire. The three stages of motor learning are summarized in table 6.2.
Applying Motor Learning Stages in Coaching Athletes
Provide your athletes with detailed information in the early stage of learning. If you want your athletes to perform correctly, give them the correct information. This means that you need to know what you are talking about and you need to be clear and concise with your instruction. If your athletes don't understand what they are supposed to do, they won't do it correctly. And if they don't understand, perhaps the problem is you, not them. In other words, you may need to do a better job of clearly communicating exactly what you want them to do and communicate it in laymen's terms—in language they can understand and at a conceptual level they are prepared to cognitively grasp. For example, you may understand the physics behind what you are teaching, but if your athletes don't comprehend concepts such as angular momentum, shear force, and action-reaction you will have lost them at “Hello.”
Explain the three stages of motor learning and the relearning process. Relearning something is often more difficult than learning it correctly the first time. This difficulty can lead to frustration and frustration acts like a brick wall between the athlete and the desired goal movement being learned. Make sure your athletes understand the motor learning stages and which stage they are at during the relearning process. Continually remind them that if they trust you and stay committed to the new movement, eventually it will become automatic and integrated into their performance. The new movement seems awkward now compared to the old movement because they are in the associative stage, but after enough repetitions the new movement will become smooth, automatic, and, most important, more effective than the old movement. Some coaches are ineffective at fixing movements. They understand how to teach it correctly in the beginning, but not how to change (fix) a bad habit. Understanding cognitive theory and taking a cognitive teaching approach will help you effectively do both: Teach it correctly the first time and change a bad habit.
Be patient with your athletes during the associative stage. Based on the stages of learning, we now know that awkward and disjointed movements characterize the associative stage. Things aren't going to look or feel very smooth at first; it is part of the learning process. If you expect performance to be immediately smooth and flowing, you are going to be disappointed, disillusioned, and perhaps even somewhat distraught—and so too are your athletes. Fear not. It is all part of the learning process. Remain patient and facilitate learning. Your impatience is likely to make your athletes anxious and impede their learning, whereas your patience and confidence will motivate them to persevere during the associative stage.
Stress the importance of positive information in working memory. A goal for you is to get your athletes to be able to perform automatically. As already mentioned, however, automaticity creates empty space in working memory, which makes it easier for athletes to unintentionally entertain negative thoughts and ruminate, which means to repeatedly dwell on negative and unproductive thoughts. For example, some athletes focus on the outcome of competition and the thought What if I lose? Ruminative thoughts are often unconscious thoughts that through sheer volume of constant repetition become overwhelming and overtake working memory. For example, at a major competition some athletes get this blank look on their faces when their coaches talk to them. It's as though their entire focus is on some internal thought and they are lost to the external world of the here and now. Help your athletes keep working memory space filled with the right stuff; teach them to monitor their thoughts, use thought-stopping statements, redirect their thoughts, engage in positive self-talk, and answer negative thoughts and images with positive thoughts and images.
Read more from Applying Educational Psychology in Coaching Athletes by Jeffery Huber.
Emphasize humanistic principles as part of an effective coaching philosophy
Humanism can manifest itself through the coaching process in four ways. These common emphases are affect, self-concept, communication, and personal values.
Applying Education Psychology in Coaching Athletes.
Applying Four Common Emphases of Humanistic Coaching
Humanism can manifest itself through the coaching process in four ways. These common emphases are affect, self-concept, communication, and personal values.
Affect
Emphasizing affect means paying greater attention to thinking and feeling and less attention to acquiring specific information and skills. Following are some suggestions for emphasizing affect.
Set affective objectives. Setting specific affective objectives means you commit to making a conscious effort to integrate humanism into your program. Examples of affective objectives include encouraging and leading athletes to demonstrate a love for their sport and themselves and to demonstrate a concern and respect for teammates. Another affective objective is to demonstrate a concern and respect for your athletes and acceptance of them as unique individuals, not just as a group of athletes. Another goal is to act as a role model and model a love for the sport and belief in the importance of becoming a more complete person.
Pay greater attention to athletes' feelings. Simply asking athletes how they are feeling and what is going on in their lives, showing a genuine concern for them as human beings, listening to their problems, and being sensitive to their emotional responses are all ways of paying greater attention to athlete's feelings.
Have athletes become more aware of their teammates' feelings. Awareness of others' feelings emphasizes affect and helps athletes move outside their egocentrism. One way to facilitate this greater awareness is to hold a team meeting and ask your athletes to express their feelings, understand their teammates' needs, and find ways to support each other at practices, competitions, and outside the practice venue. Also, when disagreements occur between athletes, ask each athlete to try understanding the other's viewpoint.
Stress the importance of learning and thinking strategies. According to Rogers emphasizing affect also means emphasizing thinking. When you emphasize thinking, the information and skills being taught are not as important as the process and strategies for learning. Consequently, a humanistic coach emphasizes learning how to learn and teaches athletes specific strategies to help them become good learners. For example, having athletes mentally review information about drills before, during, and after each practice helps them learn how to learn drills. Many athletes tend to leave a practice and never think about that practice ever again. When taking time to review information discussed in practice, athletes are more apt to organize the information, give it meaning, remember it at the next practice, and, consequently, improve at a faster rate.
Self-Concept
Helping your athletes develop a positive self-concept is another way to emphasize humanism. Remember that your athletes develop their self-concept in part through interaction with you and how you communicate to them about who they are as human beings. How can you facilitate this process? Following are some suggestions.
Maintain positive perceptions and expectations of your athletes. It is easy to form limiting notions of your athletes and unconsciously communicate these limitations to them. These notions then become part of a hidden curriculum: the things you unconsciously teach as the unintended outcome or by-product of your coaching. Statements such as the following ones can become part of a hidden curriculum: “This athlete is mentally weak.” “This athlete will never make it.” “This athlete can do skills A and B great but will never learn skill C.” “This athlete will always be a B-level player.” Rid yourself of preconceived limiting notions of your athletes and avoid any hidden curriculum. Expect the best. When you expect the best, you generally get the best. Don't count out any of your athletes. Like Jimmy, the young lanky boy I coached many years ago, just when you think someone can't do something, you may be surprised.
Communicate these positive perceptions and expectations through word and deed. It is good to have positive perceptions and expectations of your athletes, but make sure you communicate them to your athletes both by what you say and what you do. Take the time to tell your athletes what you think of them and what they are capable of achieving and communicate these expectations through your coaching. Saying, “Well, you didn't make it this time but I know you will at the next competition” is an effective example. Also, demonstrate your confidence in them through your actions. For example, you tell one of your athletes that she can become a champion if she puts in more work and then you stay after practice or volunteer to come in on your day off to work with her.
Maintain positive perceptions and expectations publicly and privately. Coaches sometimes disparage their athletes behind their backs. Getting frustrated and needing to vent some frustration is part of coaching, but you have to support your athletes and believe in them, even when they aren't looking. Being a humanistic coach means, in part, being genuine as a person. Being genuine means acting as you really are as a person and having your words match your internal feelings. In other words, you openly let others know how you feel. Venting is part of human nature and part of dealing with stress. But you have to be true to your athletes. You can't say one thing publicly and then turn around and say something contrary privately. Besides making you a hypocrite and disingenuous, your words ultimately get back to the athlete and ruin the coach-athlete relationship.
Invite rather than disinvite athletes. According to Purkey and Novak (1996), teachers invite students by communicating to them that they are capable, self-directed, and valued, and by expecting behaviors and achievements commensurate with their worth and emerging self-concept. In contrast, teachers who disinvite students send a message that students are irresponsible, incapable, worthless, and undirected. As a coach, do you invite or disinvite your athletes?
Build a positive self-concept by promoting success rather than failure. To promote success, break down learning tasks into small and attainable increments. Coaches sometimes ask athletes to do too much too soon. Perhaps this is because they forget how many smaller tasks comprise a particular movement. They ask athletes to do a skill that actually involves many skills, none of which the athletes have yet mastered. When you ask athletes to do too much too soon, you set them up for guaranteed failure. The result of repeated failure can be a poor self-concept, a feeling of external control, and a sense of helplessness.
Promoting success and a positive self-concept also includes implementing mastery learning (Bloom, 1976). The concept of mastery learning suggests that all learners can learn; the only difference between learners is the amount of time each person requires to learn the material. While Bloom's concept of mastery learning deals mainly with concept learning, mastery learning can be applied to motor learning as well. Not all athletes will learn to perform at the elite level. However, most athletes can learn much of what you teach to some level of proficiency. The humanistic coach focuses on helping each athlete master as many skills as possible for their particular sport and level of experience and ability.
Mastery learning means learning a particular skill to a certain level of proficiency before moving on to the next skill. For example, when you break down a skill into smaller increments, make sure your athlete masters each smaller skill before moving on to the next skill. It may take time and patience on the part of both athlete and coach, but it will be well worth the effort later in the athlete's career.
Communication
A third major emphasis of a humanistic approach to coaching is communication. Communication includes attention to the principles and skills of effective human relations, honest interpersonal communication, and constructive conflict resolution. Following are some suggestions for emphasizing communication in your coaching.
Establish effective human relations through honest and open interpersonal communication. Honest and open communication means being real with your athletes, rather than aloof and unapproachable. Honest communication also means really listening to what your athletes have to say. A shortcoming for many coaches is that they don't take the time or give enough effort to really listen to what their athletes are trying to say. Being a good listener is not easy but sometimes it is all an athlete really wants or needs.
One season I had trouble establishing a relationship with one of my athletes. I was angry with her because I thought she never listened to me. Over the course of the season, our relationship became increasingly distant. Finally, another athlete said to me, “Coach, you need to talk to her.” At first I dismissed her comment, but the more I thought about it, the more I knew she was right. So, one afternoon I took some time to talk with her. I said a few things about how I felt, but then I just listened to what she had to say. The more I listened to her, the more she listened to me. I am positive that our meeting was a turning point in her season and career. And it literally happened overnight. We met on a Wednesday and on Thursday she competed in the NCAA championship. She finished third with a lifetime best performance, a performance that far exceeded anything she had done to that point in her season.
Take time from your daily routine to communicate with your athletes. Maybe it is just a few minutes as they are coming into practice or while they are stretching. Or maybe you connect with a few of your athletes before they leave practice. The more you communicate with them, particularly on a personal level, the more of a relationship you establish with them. Take the time to occasionally meet one-on-one in your office. Have an open-door policy so that your athletes feel comfortable stopping by even if it is only to say hello. Schedule individual goal-setting sessions. Besides nourishing the athlete-coach relationship, these meetings provide athletes with the opportunity to express their feelings and talk about things important to their athletic careers and their personal lives.
Arrange team meetings and team goal-setting sessions. These sessions give your athletes the opportunity to communicate among themselves. It is worthwhile to attend some of these meetings to lay the ground rules for athlete interaction and discussion topics. For other meetings, it is more important that the athletes take responsibility for the meeting and you need not be present. Some of the topics your athletes can consider are how to support one another inside and outside of practice, how to communicate effectively with each other, and how to openly talk about problems and their resolutions.
Use the principles and ideas of humanism and Rogerian theory to constructively resolve conflict. No matter how effective you are as a coach or how great your athletes are as people, you will have conflict at some point within your team and within your program. And the quicker it is resolved, the sooner you right the ship and continue moving forward. It might be a conflict between you and a player, between two players, between an assistant coach and a player, between two assistant coaches, between coach and parent, or between the offense and the defense. The number of potential conflicts lurking on the horizon is great and you and your athletes need to be trained and ready to confront these battles. Humanism and Rogerian theory provide a perfect battle plan.
According to humanism and Rogerian theory, the best way to resolve conflict is for both sides to sit down and communicate. Since people act in accordance with their phenomenological reality, this communication involves having each person really listen and attempt to understand the other person's private world of experiences. Because humanism emphasizes self-direction, self-determination, autonomy, and self-evaluation, it is expected that each person, with the coach acting as facilitator, will assume responsibility for resolving the conflict.
Personal Values
Personal values should be a part of your coaching philosophy and your coaching curriculum. You teach values whether you know it or not. If you are unaware of the values you teach, then they have become part of your hidden curriculum. As mentioned a number of times in this book, effective coaches are aware of everything they teach. Consequently, be conscious of the values you teach—or want to teach—and incorporate them into your coaching curriculum so that you teach positive values and eliminate negative values you might be inadvertently teaching your athletes.
Encourage your athletes to discover their own personal values. Simon, Howe, and Kirschenbaum (1972) suggest 79 strategies for helping students elaborate and clarify values. Personal values you might teach include acceptance of self and others, acceptance of personal faults and mistakes but still maintaining self-worth, and valuing effort and performance more than winning. One personal value worth teaching is personal responsibility. Historically, humanism has valued autonomy: the individual taking responsibility and control for his or her life.
Stress personal responsibility as a value. You can nurture personal responsibility in many ways. Having athletes set their own goals and select appropriate ways of reaching their goals gives them a sense of control and autonomy. Also, setting up athletes for success helps establish an internal locus of control. According to attribution theory, athletes with an internal locus of control see success as a result of personal effort and not an external factor such as luck. In other words, an athlete with an internal locus of control believes that he is in control of the outcome of events.
Stress personal problem solving as a value. Rather than solve a problem for an athlete, you can facilitate the athlete's effort to solve the problem. This concept is at the center of Roger's client-centered therapy, in which the client, not the counselor, solves the problem. Based on Rogerian theory, a nondirective model of teaching has been developed for fostering a sense of personal responsibility in athletes. The following section outlines the nondirective model.
Read more from Applying Educational Psychology in Coaching Athletes by Jeffery Huber.
Coaches can use behaviorism to increase athletes' motivation
According to the concept of psychological hedonism and the pain–pleasure principle, people are motivated to obtain pleasure and avoid pain.
Behaviorism and Motivation
According to the concept of psychological hedonism and the pain-pleasure principle, people are motivated to obtain pleasure and avoid pain. This simple explanation for human motivation, however, seems incongruous with the picture of the hard-working athlete training through extremely demanding and often painful (not pleasurable) conditions to achieve a long-range goal. How do you account for this type of athlete motivation? According to behaviorism, you would argue that somehow athlete motivation to train under such grueling circumstances is being reinforced. A reinforcer increases the probability that a response will reoccur. When a rat receives a food pellet (reinforcer) for feverishly pressing a lever in the Skinner box, the rat is more likely to press the lever again.
Reinforcement and Praise
When used according to the principles of operant conditioning, reinforcement can have a significant impact on motivation and human behavior. Consider the successful coach who always seems to have upbeat and motivated athletes willing to charge through a brick wall for their coach. Unfortunately, the example of the unsuccessful coach whose athletes always seem to be downcast, downtrodden, and unmotivated also exists. One factor that separates the successful coach from the unsuccessful coach is the use of positive reinforcers, in particular, praise. Although the use of praise is discussed in detail in chapter 10, several rules about the use of praise (pushing the praise button) are worth repeating here.
Praise provides information to athletes not only about performance but also about notion of self. In other words, it tells athletes about the quality of their motor performance, but it often also tells them about their self-worth and competence. For example, when you say, “Jerome, way to think. That's the way to make the correction the first time!” you are letting him know about his improved performance and also, and more important, about his intelligence, effort, and capacity for change. Contrast this coaching comment with the droll and uninspired “Okay. Go on to the next drill.” Often, just a few precisely put words make a significant and long-lasting difference in an athlete's notion of self and motivation.
Praise should be used judiciously. It is easy to use praise too often so that it becomes meaningless to athletes or too infrequently so that it is ineffective in influencing behavior. Young coaches in particular often use praise too frequently. Successful coaches find the right balance for dishing out praise so that when they do use praise, it has real punch and positively affects athlete motivation.
Praise should include specific, constructive encouragement to build self-esteem (Hitz & Driscoll, 1994). Encouraging comments should be clear and specific rather than vague and general. Athletes want to know not only the what but also the why. If they aren't doing something correctly, they want to know why it is wrong and why a different approach is better. At the same time, they also want to be encouraged for their effort and ability to succeed with future attempts. For example, the type of praise in the following statement increases self-esteem and motivation while it concomitantly provides constructive encouragement: “Maria, you took the race out too fast but I admire your determination, adventurousness, and fearlessness! Those are qualities you should be proud of and will serve you well in the future. However, you need to pace yourself and run your own race next time.”
Praise should be sincere. Sincere praise not only provides reinforcement, but it also sends an emotional message that says you genuinely care for your athletes and want to see them succeed. Athletes who perceive that their coaches care for them are motivated to give even greater effort in practice. Conversely, insincere praise, besides being ineffective, communicates to athletes that you have little regard for them and their performances. Sincere praise builds the athlete-coach relationship while insincere praise undermines it. Which type of praise do you give your athletes?
Praising effort is important, particularly for young athletes. Children who are praised for their efforts are more apt to develop a view of ability as something they can control and something that can change (Mueller & Dweck, 1998). Consequently, these athletes are more apt to be motivated to train hard and expect results based on personal effort. In contrast, people who are praised for their talent tend to view ability as fixed and unchanging. Consequently, when these athletes experience failure, they are less motivated to train hard.
External Feedback as Reinforcement
Like praise, external feedback can serve as a reinforcer for athlete behaviors. For example, in the game of hot and cold, people shout out “hotter” and “colder” to express how close the player is to reaching the goal. The hotter game players get (i.e., the closer they get to their achievement goal) the more motivated they become to keep going. In this regard, both knowledge of results (KR) and knowledge of performance (KP) act as reinforcers. Two specific external feedback properties that athletes find motivating are the aptly named motivating feedback and informational feedback.
Motivating feedback is defined as feedback about an individual's progress toward goal achievement that energizes and directs behavior. For example, consider a runner who is on the second to last lap and her coach tells her she is on pace for a personal best time. When athletes believe they are improving and moving toward their goals, they become increasingly motivated in their pursuit of goal achievement.
Informational feedback is defined as feedback that provides performers with error correction information, either descriptive (what happened) or prescriptive (what needs to happen). This type of feedback is motivating to all athletes, but it is particularly motivating for athletes engaged in deliberate practice (i.e., setting specific goals for everything they do in practice). For these athletes, informational feedback is like food to a hungry traveler; they devour it. They want to improve with each practice and informational feedback helps temporarily satisfy their craving for knowledge about their progress toward improved performance.
Extrinsic and Intrinsic Motivation
Some people engage in specific behaviors because they have extrinsic motivation: They engage in the behaviors because they anticipate certain external rewards. For example, some athletes try out for a team because they anticipate earning a varsity letter, a trophy, a college scholarship, and so on. Other people have intrinsic motivation: They engage in athletics because they respond well to internal sources of reinforcement such as personal satisfaction and sense of accomplishment. These athletes derive internal reinforcement from achievements such as throwing a perfect pass, performing a great gymnastics routine, swishing a 3-point shot, running a perfect race, and so on. The beauty of sport is that this list is virtually endless.
Research suggests that people who respond to intrinsic motives are more committed, enjoy their activities more, and are more persistent when they confront failure (Agbor-Baiyee, 1997). While this research examined student behavior, research examining athletes found similar results (Vallerand & Losier, 1999). Close to intrinsic motivation is a concept called interest (Wigfield, Eccles, & Rodriguez, 1998). People who engage in activities simply for the fact that they like doing it and expect no external reward can be said to have an interest in that activity. A primary objective for all coaches should be to encourage athletes to develop a genuine interest in their sport.
Keep in mind, however, that external rewards can be useful for facilitating interest and intrinsic motivation. For example, when I was learning to dive, our coach purchased gold (it was actually yellow, but it looked like gold to my teammates and me) diving suits like the one reigning Olympic champion Bernie Wrightson wore when he won the gold medal. We all aspired to become gold medalists like Bernie, but we could not buy the suit. We could only acquire the suit by earning it, by learning a full list of high-degree-of-difficulty dives on the 3-meter springboard. We wanted to earn that suit so badly that we would do almost anything, including learning scary and difficult new dives that no one our age was performing back then. The suit became a symbol of courage, effort, determination, and noteworthy accomplishment. We did not remain in the sport simply because of the suit, but it sure captured our interest and ignited our intrinsic motivation.
Conditioned Responses
Athletes who associate positive physiological responses, such as relaxation and appropriate arousal level, and enhancing emotions, such as joy and satisfaction, are more likely to love their sport and come to practice highly motivated to train. Therefore, to increase motivation, coaches need to condition their athletes to respond positively to not only their sport but the many aspects of their sport, such as training, stretching, conditioning, drill and skill work, and competing. For many athletes, especially young ones, a positive conditioned response is what brings them back each day, each week, each month, and each season. Because conditioning is so important to the motor learning process and athlete success, chapter 3 examines it in detail (see The Salivating Athlete).
Applying Behaviorism to Increase Athlete Motivation
Based on the theory of behaviorism, coaches can push a number of “behavioral buttons” to increase athletes' motivation.
Follow the guidelines for the effective use of praise. Although praise is an effective reinforcer, it can be misused. Know when, what, and how to use it. Successful coaches are masters at effectively using praise to motivate their athletes.
Use external feedback as you would other types of reinforcers. External feedback for all athletes, but particularly elite athletes, is highly reinforcing. The more accurate the external feedback, the more reinforcing it becomes for them. Years ago when I first began working with an elite athlete, who already was a NCAA champion and world champion, I learned two things rather quickly: Remember what correction you give him and give him accurate feedback about whether or not he made the correction on the subsequent attempt. If I forgot the correction or my feedback was inaccurate, he kindly let me know about it! Highly effective coaches provide accurate and timely external feedback.
Recognize individual differences. No two athletes are exactly alike. It is important to keep these differences in mind when using reinforcement to influence motivation. What is reinforcing for one athlete might not be reinforcing to another athlete. Knowing how to push their buttons in part means knowing what is reinforcing to them. For example, some athletes hate being pulled aside and lectured while other athletes take it as a compliment and a sign that you care about them and their goals.
Reinforce effort in order to encourage intrinsic motivation. In the long run, athletes train harder and longer and persevere in their sport when they are intrinsically motivated. For this reason, reinforce effort. Athletes who associate ability and achievement with effort are more likely to be motivated to train and maintain their motivation during difficult training cycles.
Condition athletes to have a positive physiological response to their sport. Athletes who have an interest and love for their sport (training and competition) will be engaged and motivated. You can facilitate a positive response by continually pairing positive conditioned stimuli with positive unconditioned stimuli. A significant way to create a positive response is to facilitate success and mastery during practice, make practice and competition fun, and focus on effort.
Use external reinforcers. Sometimes external reinforcers can be effective for kick starting or augmenting an athlete's internal motivation. In the case of the gold diving suit, it is interesting to note that every diver on the team did indeed earn a suit. Most went on to successful high school careers and a number of us went on to compete collegiately and nationally. One athlete even made the U.S. Olympic team, and one stayed around long enough to coach collegiate diving for over 37 years. Sometimes, a seemingly small external reward can go a long way toward intrinsically motivating athletes. It is funny how after all these years grown men still occasionally gather and talk about “the suit” and how they cherish it and have it stored away like a rare artifact, precious and immeasurably valuable, a tangible reminder of the intangible rewards they received from their memorable experience in sport. I am sure that athletes in all sports have similar stories and memories.
Read more from Applying Educational Psychology in Coaching Athletes by Jeffery Huber.
Understanding motor learning stages improves skill instruction
As a coach I found this simple paradigm to be extremely helpful for understanding, guiding, and accelerating the motor learning process.
Three Stages of Motor Learning
At this point in the chapter, you might ask, “What does all this discussion about thinking and memory have to do with motor learning and performance?” You want your athletes to respond, not think. You want them to grip it and rip it. You want them to look and automatically react. Well, motor learning, particularly early learning, involves attempts by learners to acquire an idea of the movement (Gentile, 1972) or understand the basic pattern of coordination (Newell, 1985). To achieve these goals, learners must use cognitive (Fitts & Posner, 1967) and verbal processes (Adams, 1971) to solve problems. To this end, Fitts (1964; Fitts & Posner, 1967) suggests that motor skill acquisition follows three stages: the cognitive stage, the associative stage, and the autonomous stage.
As a coach I found this simple paradigm to be extremely helpful for understanding, guiding, and accelerating the motor learning process. Because of its importance, it is worth examining the three stages and their implications for effective coaching.
Cognitive Stage
For the new learner, the problem to be solved in the cognitive stage is understanding what to do (Schmidt & Lee, 2005). It would be extremely difficult for someone to learn a skill without receiving any prior knowledge about the skill, whether that knowledge is visual or verbal. For example, consider the butterfly stroke in swimming. It is a fairly complicated and somewhat unnatural stroke in which to syncopate the movement of the arms with the kick of the legs. It would be difficult indeed for a novice swimmer to learn such a stroke without ever seeing the stroke performed or ever receiving any declarative knowledge about how the stroke is performed. In other words, motor learning begins with the cognitive stage and the processing of information.
Surely the swimmer could discover how to roughly perform the stroke, but it probably would take many long hours of trial and error, experimentation, and some creative problem solving. It is much simpler to learn a skill by first acquiring information about the skill.
The cognitive stage is of great interest to cognitivists because this stage involves information processing. Also called the verbal-motor stage (Adams, 1971), this stage is verbal-cognitive in nature (Schmidt & Lee, 2005) because it involves the conveyance (verbal) and acquisition (cognition) of new information. In this stage, the person is trying to process information in an attempt to cognitively understand the requirements and parameters of motor movement.
Consider several young children taking beginning golf lessons. They might arrive early for their first golf lesson. Having never seen any golfers in action, they are excited and eager to see what golf is all about; each child is a mini tabula rasa ready to learn. They watch the preceding class of golfers and immediately begin collecting visual information. Next, the instructor explains the golf swing, beginning with the grip of the club and stance. Now they are gathering verbal information about the sport. In other words, they don't simply show up and begin golfing. Everything begins with the acquisition and cognitive processing of newly presented information. During this cognitive stage, the beginning athlete ingests information and organizes it into some meaningful form that will ultimately lead to the creation of a motor program.
The cognitive stage is characterized as having large gains in performance and inconsistent performance. During this stage instruction, guidance, slow-motion drills, video analysis, augmented feedback, and other coaching techniques are highly effective (Schmidt & Lee, 2005). Recall the discussion in chapter 4 regarding Adams' closed-loop theory and the importance of error-free learning in the initial learning stage (p. 133). During the cognitive stage it is important that the learner is provided with the necessary information, guidance, and time to establish sound fundamentals of movement. Sometimes making errors and taking a constructivist approach to coaching and learning can be useful (see the discussion on schema theory, p. 196).
Associative Stage
The associative stage is characterized as much less verbal information, smaller gains in performance, conscious performance, adjustment making, awkward and disjointed movement, and taking a long time to complete. During this stage the athlete works at making movement adjustments and stringing together small movement skills. This stage is also called the motor stage (Adams, 1971) because the problem to be solved in the associative stage is learning how to perform the skill (Schmidt & Lee, 2005). From the cognitive perspective, the athlete is attempting to translate declarative knowledge into procedural knowledge. In other words, the athlete is transforming what to do into how to do.
No diver in the history of the sport of diving has ever performed every single dive for perfect 10s in a single competition. There is always room for improvement. This is true for all sports. For example, a baseball or softball pitcher can improve delivery and learn new pitches, a pole-vaulter can learn to use a new pole and a new technique, a gymnast can refine a routine, a basketball player can improve shooting technique, and a swimmer can improve stroke or flip turn technique. Highly successful athletes and highly effective coaches are always looking for ways to get better. Consequently, they frequently revisit the cognitive stage and then the associative stage of motor learning. Revisiting these stages is the relearning process.
Some years ago, I had an opportunity to work with Professor Yu Fen at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. Professor Yu Fen is one of the top diving coaches in the world and has produced numerous world and Olympic champions. One of the things I took away from working with her is the importance of continually revisiting the first and second stages of motor acquisition, no matter how accomplished an athlete might be. If a diver was not performing, say, a forward 3 1/2 somersault in the pike position, she would take the diver to the trampoline and begin working a basic jump or single somersault. During one of her practices, I observed Olympic gold medalist Tian Liang practicing on 1-meter springboard virtually the same drill as a beginning athlete on an adjacent springboard.
Let's say you have a new athlete who recently transferred from another program to your program. The reason for the transfer is that he has hit a plateau. In fact, his level of performance has begun to decrease. After observing him, you realize that the reason for his lack of progress is that some of his fundamentals are badly in need of remedial work. Where do you begin with this adopted athlete with a host of bad habits? Given what you now know about motor acquisition, the best approach is to first explain that if he wants to improve his performance he will have to make changes, and to make changes means letting go of old habits and learning new fundamentals by revisiting the three stages (cognitive, associative, autonomous) of motor learning. This relearning process means acquiring new information (cognitive stage) and then going through the frustrating associative stage.
Getting athletes to buy into relearning can be challenging. Some athletes, especially successful ones, might say, “Hey, I was high school state champion doing it this way! Why should I change? Besides, the new movement feels awkward.” A coach might reply, “Well, you could have won by even more had you done it the new way!” When these athletes try something new it feels uncomfortable and awkward and they sometimes are reluctant to continue with the change. The verbal information you provide about the three stages of motor learning as well as the information about the new technique helps them establish or activate a learning schema (p. 179) and provides a rationale or perspective for persevering with the change. Next, you work with them on the skill in its simplest form until the skill is mastered, automatic, and integrated into the movement program.
Autonomous Stage
According to Fitts' and Posner's paradigm, this is the final stage of motor acquisition. It often requires years of training to arrive at the autonomous stage. But this stage is where it's at for elite athletes, where motor performance becomes largely automatic, where cognitive processing demands are minimal, and athletes are capable of attending to and processing other information, such as the position of defensive players, game strategy, or the form or style of movement (Schmidt & Lee, 2005) in sports such as ice-skating, dance, and synchronized swimming. It is the stage where they can now respond and not think (or think minimally), where they can grip it and rip it, look and automatically react, and enter a state of flow.
Both good outcomes and bad outcomes are associated with the autonomous stage. The good is that performance requires much less attentional and cognitive demand, which thereby frees the performer to engage in secondary tasks, such as the concert pianist who is able to follow random digits or perform arithmetic while simultaneously playing the piano (Shaffer, 1980), or the quarterback who is capable of surveying the defense and detecting an eminent blitz while simultaneously calling the signals and changing the play at the line of scrimmage.
The bad is that since less cognitive demand exists during performance, it leaves ample room for irrelevant and distracting thoughts to sneak into the workshop (working memory) of the mind. Examples of this occurrence are the elite athletes at the Olympic trials who get caught thinking about making the Olympic team instead of focusing exclusively on performance during the last moments of a gymnastics routine, swimming race, or wrestling match. Think of the gymnast who puts together a stellar routine only to make a silly mistake at the end; or the swimmer who swims magnificently but doesn't finish the race and gets touched out at the wall; or the wrestler who dominates the match but loses concentration and allows his opponent to gain an easy reversal in the waning seconds. Some mountain climbing accidents occur as climbers near the top of the mountain. This may be so because those experienced climbers used some of their available attentional capacity to suddenly begin thinking about reaching the peak—the outcome—rather than focusing on what got them to that part of the mountain in the first place—the process.
The other bad outcome about automatic performance is that it reinforces athletes to maintain incorrect movements because a certain amount of comfort and reinforcement is associated with automatic performance, even if it is incorrect. But just because a motor movement can be performed automatically doesn't mean the movement is correct or worthy of being maintained. Moreover, as soon as athletes stop thinking about the new movement during the cognitive and associative stages, they are likely to respond automatically, thereby reverting to the old and incorrect movement in their performance repertoire. The three stages of motor learning are summarized in table 6.2.
Applying Motor Learning Stages in Coaching Athletes
Provide your athletes with detailed information in the early stage of learning. If you want your athletes to perform correctly, give them the correct information. This means that you need to know what you are talking about and you need to be clear and concise with your instruction. If your athletes don't understand what they are supposed to do, they won't do it correctly. And if they don't understand, perhaps the problem is you, not them. In other words, you may need to do a better job of clearly communicating exactly what you want them to do and communicate it in laymen's terms—in language they can understand and at a conceptual level they are prepared to cognitively grasp. For example, you may understand the physics behind what you are teaching, but if your athletes don't comprehend concepts such as angular momentum, shear force, and action-reaction you will have lost them at “Hello.”
Explain the three stages of motor learning and the relearning process. Relearning something is often more difficult than learning it correctly the first time. This difficulty can lead to frustration and frustration acts like a brick wall between the athlete and the desired goal movement being learned. Make sure your athletes understand the motor learning stages and which stage they are at during the relearning process. Continually remind them that if they trust you and stay committed to the new movement, eventually it will become automatic and integrated into their performance. The new movement seems awkward now compared to the old movement because they are in the associative stage, but after enough repetitions the new movement will become smooth, automatic, and, most important, more effective than the old movement. Some coaches are ineffective at fixing movements. They understand how to teach it correctly in the beginning, but not how to change (fix) a bad habit. Understanding cognitive theory and taking a cognitive teaching approach will help you effectively do both: Teach it correctly the first time and change a bad habit.
Be patient with your athletes during the associative stage. Based on the stages of learning, we now know that awkward and disjointed movements characterize the associative stage. Things aren't going to look or feel very smooth at first; it is part of the learning process. If you expect performance to be immediately smooth and flowing, you are going to be disappointed, disillusioned, and perhaps even somewhat distraught—and so too are your athletes. Fear not. It is all part of the learning process. Remain patient and facilitate learning. Your impatience is likely to make your athletes anxious and impede their learning, whereas your patience and confidence will motivate them to persevere during the associative stage.
Stress the importance of positive information in working memory. A goal for you is to get your athletes to be able to perform automatically. As already mentioned, however, automaticity creates empty space in working memory, which makes it easier for athletes to unintentionally entertain negative thoughts and ruminate, which means to repeatedly dwell on negative and unproductive thoughts. For example, some athletes focus on the outcome of competition and the thought What if I lose? Ruminative thoughts are often unconscious thoughts that through sheer volume of constant repetition become overwhelming and overtake working memory. For example, at a major competition some athletes get this blank look on their faces when their coaches talk to them. It's as though their entire focus is on some internal thought and they are lost to the external world of the here and now. Help your athletes keep working memory space filled with the right stuff; teach them to monitor their thoughts, use thought-stopping statements, redirect their thoughts, engage in positive self-talk, and answer negative thoughts and images with positive thoughts and images.
Read more from Applying Educational Psychology in Coaching Athletes by Jeffery Huber.
Emphasize humanistic principles as part of an effective coaching philosophy
Humanism can manifest itself through the coaching process in four ways. These common emphases are affect, self-concept, communication, and personal values.
Applying Education Psychology in Coaching Athletes.
Applying Four Common Emphases of Humanistic Coaching
Humanism can manifest itself through the coaching process in four ways. These common emphases are affect, self-concept, communication, and personal values.
Affect
Emphasizing affect means paying greater attention to thinking and feeling and less attention to acquiring specific information and skills. Following are some suggestions for emphasizing affect.
Set affective objectives. Setting specific affective objectives means you commit to making a conscious effort to integrate humanism into your program. Examples of affective objectives include encouraging and leading athletes to demonstrate a love for their sport and themselves and to demonstrate a concern and respect for teammates. Another affective objective is to demonstrate a concern and respect for your athletes and acceptance of them as unique individuals, not just as a group of athletes. Another goal is to act as a role model and model a love for the sport and belief in the importance of becoming a more complete person.
Pay greater attention to athletes' feelings. Simply asking athletes how they are feeling and what is going on in their lives, showing a genuine concern for them as human beings, listening to their problems, and being sensitive to their emotional responses are all ways of paying greater attention to athlete's feelings.
Have athletes become more aware of their teammates' feelings. Awareness of others' feelings emphasizes affect and helps athletes move outside their egocentrism. One way to facilitate this greater awareness is to hold a team meeting and ask your athletes to express their feelings, understand their teammates' needs, and find ways to support each other at practices, competitions, and outside the practice venue. Also, when disagreements occur between athletes, ask each athlete to try understanding the other's viewpoint.
Stress the importance of learning and thinking strategies. According to Rogers emphasizing affect also means emphasizing thinking. When you emphasize thinking, the information and skills being taught are not as important as the process and strategies for learning. Consequently, a humanistic coach emphasizes learning how to learn and teaches athletes specific strategies to help them become good learners. For example, having athletes mentally review information about drills before, during, and after each practice helps them learn how to learn drills. Many athletes tend to leave a practice and never think about that practice ever again. When taking time to review information discussed in practice, athletes are more apt to organize the information, give it meaning, remember it at the next practice, and, consequently, improve at a faster rate.
Self-Concept
Helping your athletes develop a positive self-concept is another way to emphasize humanism. Remember that your athletes develop their self-concept in part through interaction with you and how you communicate to them about who they are as human beings. How can you facilitate this process? Following are some suggestions.
Maintain positive perceptions and expectations of your athletes. It is easy to form limiting notions of your athletes and unconsciously communicate these limitations to them. These notions then become part of a hidden curriculum: the things you unconsciously teach as the unintended outcome or by-product of your coaching. Statements such as the following ones can become part of a hidden curriculum: “This athlete is mentally weak.” “This athlete will never make it.” “This athlete can do skills A and B great but will never learn skill C.” “This athlete will always be a B-level player.” Rid yourself of preconceived limiting notions of your athletes and avoid any hidden curriculum. Expect the best. When you expect the best, you generally get the best. Don't count out any of your athletes. Like Jimmy, the young lanky boy I coached many years ago, just when you think someone can't do something, you may be surprised.
Communicate these positive perceptions and expectations through word and deed. It is good to have positive perceptions and expectations of your athletes, but make sure you communicate them to your athletes both by what you say and what you do. Take the time to tell your athletes what you think of them and what they are capable of achieving and communicate these expectations through your coaching. Saying, “Well, you didn't make it this time but I know you will at the next competition” is an effective example. Also, demonstrate your confidence in them through your actions. For example, you tell one of your athletes that she can become a champion if she puts in more work and then you stay after practice or volunteer to come in on your day off to work with her.
Maintain positive perceptions and expectations publicly and privately. Coaches sometimes disparage their athletes behind their backs. Getting frustrated and needing to vent some frustration is part of coaching, but you have to support your athletes and believe in them, even when they aren't looking. Being a humanistic coach means, in part, being genuine as a person. Being genuine means acting as you really are as a person and having your words match your internal feelings. In other words, you openly let others know how you feel. Venting is part of human nature and part of dealing with stress. But you have to be true to your athletes. You can't say one thing publicly and then turn around and say something contrary privately. Besides making you a hypocrite and disingenuous, your words ultimately get back to the athlete and ruin the coach-athlete relationship.
Invite rather than disinvite athletes. According to Purkey and Novak (1996), teachers invite students by communicating to them that they are capable, self-directed, and valued, and by expecting behaviors and achievements commensurate with their worth and emerging self-concept. In contrast, teachers who disinvite students send a message that students are irresponsible, incapable, worthless, and undirected. As a coach, do you invite or disinvite your athletes?
Build a positive self-concept by promoting success rather than failure. To promote success, break down learning tasks into small and attainable increments. Coaches sometimes ask athletes to do too much too soon. Perhaps this is because they forget how many smaller tasks comprise a particular movement. They ask athletes to do a skill that actually involves many skills, none of which the athletes have yet mastered. When you ask athletes to do too much too soon, you set them up for guaranteed failure. The result of repeated failure can be a poor self-concept, a feeling of external control, and a sense of helplessness.
Promoting success and a positive self-concept also includes implementing mastery learning (Bloom, 1976). The concept of mastery learning suggests that all learners can learn; the only difference between learners is the amount of time each person requires to learn the material. While Bloom's concept of mastery learning deals mainly with concept learning, mastery learning can be applied to motor learning as well. Not all athletes will learn to perform at the elite level. However, most athletes can learn much of what you teach to some level of proficiency. The humanistic coach focuses on helping each athlete master as many skills as possible for their particular sport and level of experience and ability.
Mastery learning means learning a particular skill to a certain level of proficiency before moving on to the next skill. For example, when you break down a skill into smaller increments, make sure your athlete masters each smaller skill before moving on to the next skill. It may take time and patience on the part of both athlete and coach, but it will be well worth the effort later in the athlete's career.
Communication
A third major emphasis of a humanistic approach to coaching is communication. Communication includes attention to the principles and skills of effective human relations, honest interpersonal communication, and constructive conflict resolution. Following are some suggestions for emphasizing communication in your coaching.
Establish effective human relations through honest and open interpersonal communication. Honest and open communication means being real with your athletes, rather than aloof and unapproachable. Honest communication also means really listening to what your athletes have to say. A shortcoming for many coaches is that they don't take the time or give enough effort to really listen to what their athletes are trying to say. Being a good listener is not easy but sometimes it is all an athlete really wants or needs.
One season I had trouble establishing a relationship with one of my athletes. I was angry with her because I thought she never listened to me. Over the course of the season, our relationship became increasingly distant. Finally, another athlete said to me, “Coach, you need to talk to her.” At first I dismissed her comment, but the more I thought about it, the more I knew she was right. So, one afternoon I took some time to talk with her. I said a few things about how I felt, but then I just listened to what she had to say. The more I listened to her, the more she listened to me. I am positive that our meeting was a turning point in her season and career. And it literally happened overnight. We met on a Wednesday and on Thursday she competed in the NCAA championship. She finished third with a lifetime best performance, a performance that far exceeded anything she had done to that point in her season.
Take time from your daily routine to communicate with your athletes. Maybe it is just a few minutes as they are coming into practice or while they are stretching. Or maybe you connect with a few of your athletes before they leave practice. The more you communicate with them, particularly on a personal level, the more of a relationship you establish with them. Take the time to occasionally meet one-on-one in your office. Have an open-door policy so that your athletes feel comfortable stopping by even if it is only to say hello. Schedule individual goal-setting sessions. Besides nourishing the athlete-coach relationship, these meetings provide athletes with the opportunity to express their feelings and talk about things important to their athletic careers and their personal lives.
Arrange team meetings and team goal-setting sessions. These sessions give your athletes the opportunity to communicate among themselves. It is worthwhile to attend some of these meetings to lay the ground rules for athlete interaction and discussion topics. For other meetings, it is more important that the athletes take responsibility for the meeting and you need not be present. Some of the topics your athletes can consider are how to support one another inside and outside of practice, how to communicate effectively with each other, and how to openly talk about problems and their resolutions.
Use the principles and ideas of humanism and Rogerian theory to constructively resolve conflict. No matter how effective you are as a coach or how great your athletes are as people, you will have conflict at some point within your team and within your program. And the quicker it is resolved, the sooner you right the ship and continue moving forward. It might be a conflict between you and a player, between two players, between an assistant coach and a player, between two assistant coaches, between coach and parent, or between the offense and the defense. The number of potential conflicts lurking on the horizon is great and you and your athletes need to be trained and ready to confront these battles. Humanism and Rogerian theory provide a perfect battle plan.
According to humanism and Rogerian theory, the best way to resolve conflict is for both sides to sit down and communicate. Since people act in accordance with their phenomenological reality, this communication involves having each person really listen and attempt to understand the other person's private world of experiences. Because humanism emphasizes self-direction, self-determination, autonomy, and self-evaluation, it is expected that each person, with the coach acting as facilitator, will assume responsibility for resolving the conflict.
Personal Values
Personal values should be a part of your coaching philosophy and your coaching curriculum. You teach values whether you know it or not. If you are unaware of the values you teach, then they have become part of your hidden curriculum. As mentioned a number of times in this book, effective coaches are aware of everything they teach. Consequently, be conscious of the values you teach—or want to teach—and incorporate them into your coaching curriculum so that you teach positive values and eliminate negative values you might be inadvertently teaching your athletes.
Encourage your athletes to discover their own personal values. Simon, Howe, and Kirschenbaum (1972) suggest 79 strategies for helping students elaborate and clarify values. Personal values you might teach include acceptance of self and others, acceptance of personal faults and mistakes but still maintaining self-worth, and valuing effort and performance more than winning. One personal value worth teaching is personal responsibility. Historically, humanism has valued autonomy: the individual taking responsibility and control for his or her life.
Stress personal responsibility as a value. You can nurture personal responsibility in many ways. Having athletes set their own goals and select appropriate ways of reaching their goals gives them a sense of control and autonomy. Also, setting up athletes for success helps establish an internal locus of control. According to attribution theory, athletes with an internal locus of control see success as a result of personal effort and not an external factor such as luck. In other words, an athlete with an internal locus of control believes that he is in control of the outcome of events.
Stress personal problem solving as a value. Rather than solve a problem for an athlete, you can facilitate the athlete's effort to solve the problem. This concept is at the center of Roger's client-centered therapy, in which the client, not the counselor, solves the problem. Based on Rogerian theory, a nondirective model of teaching has been developed for fostering a sense of personal responsibility in athletes. The following section outlines the nondirective model.
Read more from Applying Educational Psychology in Coaching Athletes by Jeffery Huber.
Coaches can use behaviorism to increase athletes' motivation
According to the concept of psychological hedonism and the pain–pleasure principle, people are motivated to obtain pleasure and avoid pain.
Behaviorism and Motivation
According to the concept of psychological hedonism and the pain-pleasure principle, people are motivated to obtain pleasure and avoid pain. This simple explanation for human motivation, however, seems incongruous with the picture of the hard-working athlete training through extremely demanding and often painful (not pleasurable) conditions to achieve a long-range goal. How do you account for this type of athlete motivation? According to behaviorism, you would argue that somehow athlete motivation to train under such grueling circumstances is being reinforced. A reinforcer increases the probability that a response will reoccur. When a rat receives a food pellet (reinforcer) for feverishly pressing a lever in the Skinner box, the rat is more likely to press the lever again.
Reinforcement and Praise
When used according to the principles of operant conditioning, reinforcement can have a significant impact on motivation and human behavior. Consider the successful coach who always seems to have upbeat and motivated athletes willing to charge through a brick wall for their coach. Unfortunately, the example of the unsuccessful coach whose athletes always seem to be downcast, downtrodden, and unmotivated also exists. One factor that separates the successful coach from the unsuccessful coach is the use of positive reinforcers, in particular, praise. Although the use of praise is discussed in detail in chapter 10, several rules about the use of praise (pushing the praise button) are worth repeating here.
Praise provides information to athletes not only about performance but also about notion of self. In other words, it tells athletes about the quality of their motor performance, but it often also tells them about their self-worth and competence. For example, when you say, “Jerome, way to think. That's the way to make the correction the first time!” you are letting him know about his improved performance and also, and more important, about his intelligence, effort, and capacity for change. Contrast this coaching comment with the droll and uninspired “Okay. Go on to the next drill.” Often, just a few precisely put words make a significant and long-lasting difference in an athlete's notion of self and motivation.
Praise should be used judiciously. It is easy to use praise too often so that it becomes meaningless to athletes or too infrequently so that it is ineffective in influencing behavior. Young coaches in particular often use praise too frequently. Successful coaches find the right balance for dishing out praise so that when they do use praise, it has real punch and positively affects athlete motivation.
Praise should include specific, constructive encouragement to build self-esteem (Hitz & Driscoll, 1994). Encouraging comments should be clear and specific rather than vague and general. Athletes want to know not only the what but also the why. If they aren't doing something correctly, they want to know why it is wrong and why a different approach is better. At the same time, they also want to be encouraged for their effort and ability to succeed with future attempts. For example, the type of praise in the following statement increases self-esteem and motivation while it concomitantly provides constructive encouragement: “Maria, you took the race out too fast but I admire your determination, adventurousness, and fearlessness! Those are qualities you should be proud of and will serve you well in the future. However, you need to pace yourself and run your own race next time.”
Praise should be sincere. Sincere praise not only provides reinforcement, but it also sends an emotional message that says you genuinely care for your athletes and want to see them succeed. Athletes who perceive that their coaches care for them are motivated to give even greater effort in practice. Conversely, insincere praise, besides being ineffective, communicates to athletes that you have little regard for them and their performances. Sincere praise builds the athlete-coach relationship while insincere praise undermines it. Which type of praise do you give your athletes?
Praising effort is important, particularly for young athletes. Children who are praised for their efforts are more apt to develop a view of ability as something they can control and something that can change (Mueller & Dweck, 1998). Consequently, these athletes are more apt to be motivated to train hard and expect results based on personal effort. In contrast, people who are praised for their talent tend to view ability as fixed and unchanging. Consequently, when these athletes experience failure, they are less motivated to train hard.
External Feedback as Reinforcement
Like praise, external feedback can serve as a reinforcer for athlete behaviors. For example, in the game of hot and cold, people shout out “hotter” and “colder” to express how close the player is to reaching the goal. The hotter game players get (i.e., the closer they get to their achievement goal) the more motivated they become to keep going. In this regard, both knowledge of results (KR) and knowledge of performance (KP) act as reinforcers. Two specific external feedback properties that athletes find motivating are the aptly named motivating feedback and informational feedback.
Motivating feedback is defined as feedback about an individual's progress toward goal achievement that energizes and directs behavior. For example, consider a runner who is on the second to last lap and her coach tells her she is on pace for a personal best time. When athletes believe they are improving and moving toward their goals, they become increasingly motivated in their pursuit of goal achievement.
Informational feedback is defined as feedback that provides performers with error correction information, either descriptive (what happened) or prescriptive (what needs to happen). This type of feedback is motivating to all athletes, but it is particularly motivating for athletes engaged in deliberate practice (i.e., setting specific goals for everything they do in practice). For these athletes, informational feedback is like food to a hungry traveler; they devour it. They want to improve with each practice and informational feedback helps temporarily satisfy their craving for knowledge about their progress toward improved performance.
Extrinsic and Intrinsic Motivation
Some people engage in specific behaviors because they have extrinsic motivation: They engage in the behaviors because they anticipate certain external rewards. For example, some athletes try out for a team because they anticipate earning a varsity letter, a trophy, a college scholarship, and so on. Other people have intrinsic motivation: They engage in athletics because they respond well to internal sources of reinforcement such as personal satisfaction and sense of accomplishment. These athletes derive internal reinforcement from achievements such as throwing a perfect pass, performing a great gymnastics routine, swishing a 3-point shot, running a perfect race, and so on. The beauty of sport is that this list is virtually endless.
Research suggests that people who respond to intrinsic motives are more committed, enjoy their activities more, and are more persistent when they confront failure (Agbor-Baiyee, 1997). While this research examined student behavior, research examining athletes found similar results (Vallerand & Losier, 1999). Close to intrinsic motivation is a concept called interest (Wigfield, Eccles, & Rodriguez, 1998). People who engage in activities simply for the fact that they like doing it and expect no external reward can be said to have an interest in that activity. A primary objective for all coaches should be to encourage athletes to develop a genuine interest in their sport.
Keep in mind, however, that external rewards can be useful for facilitating interest and intrinsic motivation. For example, when I was learning to dive, our coach purchased gold (it was actually yellow, but it looked like gold to my teammates and me) diving suits like the one reigning Olympic champion Bernie Wrightson wore when he won the gold medal. We all aspired to become gold medalists like Bernie, but we could not buy the suit. We could only acquire the suit by earning it, by learning a full list of high-degree-of-difficulty dives on the 3-meter springboard. We wanted to earn that suit so badly that we would do almost anything, including learning scary and difficult new dives that no one our age was performing back then. The suit became a symbol of courage, effort, determination, and noteworthy accomplishment. We did not remain in the sport simply because of the suit, but it sure captured our interest and ignited our intrinsic motivation.
Conditioned Responses
Athletes who associate positive physiological responses, such as relaxation and appropriate arousal level, and enhancing emotions, such as joy and satisfaction, are more likely to love their sport and come to practice highly motivated to train. Therefore, to increase motivation, coaches need to condition their athletes to respond positively to not only their sport but the many aspects of their sport, such as training, stretching, conditioning, drill and skill work, and competing. For many athletes, especially young ones, a positive conditioned response is what brings them back each day, each week, each month, and each season. Because conditioning is so important to the motor learning process and athlete success, chapter 3 examines it in detail (see The Salivating Athlete).
Applying Behaviorism to Increase Athlete Motivation
Based on the theory of behaviorism, coaches can push a number of “behavioral buttons” to increase athletes' motivation.
Follow the guidelines for the effective use of praise. Although praise is an effective reinforcer, it can be misused. Know when, what, and how to use it. Successful coaches are masters at effectively using praise to motivate their athletes.
Use external feedback as you would other types of reinforcers. External feedback for all athletes, but particularly elite athletes, is highly reinforcing. The more accurate the external feedback, the more reinforcing it becomes for them. Years ago when I first began working with an elite athlete, who already was a NCAA champion and world champion, I learned two things rather quickly: Remember what correction you give him and give him accurate feedback about whether or not he made the correction on the subsequent attempt. If I forgot the correction or my feedback was inaccurate, he kindly let me know about it! Highly effective coaches provide accurate and timely external feedback.
Recognize individual differences. No two athletes are exactly alike. It is important to keep these differences in mind when using reinforcement to influence motivation. What is reinforcing for one athlete might not be reinforcing to another athlete. Knowing how to push their buttons in part means knowing what is reinforcing to them. For example, some athletes hate being pulled aside and lectured while other athletes take it as a compliment and a sign that you care about them and their goals.
Reinforce effort in order to encourage intrinsic motivation. In the long run, athletes train harder and longer and persevere in their sport when they are intrinsically motivated. For this reason, reinforce effort. Athletes who associate ability and achievement with effort are more likely to be motivated to train and maintain their motivation during difficult training cycles.
Condition athletes to have a positive physiological response to their sport. Athletes who have an interest and love for their sport (training and competition) will be engaged and motivated. You can facilitate a positive response by continually pairing positive conditioned stimuli with positive unconditioned stimuli. A significant way to create a positive response is to facilitate success and mastery during practice, make practice and competition fun, and focus on effort.
Use external reinforcers. Sometimes external reinforcers can be effective for kick starting or augmenting an athlete's internal motivation. In the case of the gold diving suit, it is interesting to note that every diver on the team did indeed earn a suit. Most went on to successful high school careers and a number of us went on to compete collegiately and nationally. One athlete even made the U.S. Olympic team, and one stayed around long enough to coach collegiate diving for over 37 years. Sometimes, a seemingly small external reward can go a long way toward intrinsically motivating athletes. It is funny how after all these years grown men still occasionally gather and talk about “the suit” and how they cherish it and have it stored away like a rare artifact, precious and immeasurably valuable, a tangible reminder of the intangible rewards they received from their memorable experience in sport. I am sure that athletes in all sports have similar stories and memories.
Read more from Applying Educational Psychology in Coaching Athletes by Jeffery Huber.
Understanding motor learning stages improves skill instruction
As a coach I found this simple paradigm to be extremely helpful for understanding, guiding, and accelerating the motor learning process.
Three Stages of Motor Learning
At this point in the chapter, you might ask, “What does all this discussion about thinking and memory have to do with motor learning and performance?” You want your athletes to respond, not think. You want them to grip it and rip it. You want them to look and automatically react. Well, motor learning, particularly early learning, involves attempts by learners to acquire an idea of the movement (Gentile, 1972) or understand the basic pattern of coordination (Newell, 1985). To achieve these goals, learners must use cognitive (Fitts & Posner, 1967) and verbal processes (Adams, 1971) to solve problems. To this end, Fitts (1964; Fitts & Posner, 1967) suggests that motor skill acquisition follows three stages: the cognitive stage, the associative stage, and the autonomous stage.
As a coach I found this simple paradigm to be extremely helpful for understanding, guiding, and accelerating the motor learning process. Because of its importance, it is worth examining the three stages and their implications for effective coaching.
Cognitive Stage
For the new learner, the problem to be solved in the cognitive stage is understanding what to do (Schmidt & Lee, 2005). It would be extremely difficult for someone to learn a skill without receiving any prior knowledge about the skill, whether that knowledge is visual or verbal. For example, consider the butterfly stroke in swimming. It is a fairly complicated and somewhat unnatural stroke in which to syncopate the movement of the arms with the kick of the legs. It would be difficult indeed for a novice swimmer to learn such a stroke without ever seeing the stroke performed or ever receiving any declarative knowledge about how the stroke is performed. In other words, motor learning begins with the cognitive stage and the processing of information.
Surely the swimmer could discover how to roughly perform the stroke, but it probably would take many long hours of trial and error, experimentation, and some creative problem solving. It is much simpler to learn a skill by first acquiring information about the skill.
The cognitive stage is of great interest to cognitivists because this stage involves information processing. Also called the verbal-motor stage (Adams, 1971), this stage is verbal-cognitive in nature (Schmidt & Lee, 2005) because it involves the conveyance (verbal) and acquisition (cognition) of new information. In this stage, the person is trying to process information in an attempt to cognitively understand the requirements and parameters of motor movement.
Consider several young children taking beginning golf lessons. They might arrive early for their first golf lesson. Having never seen any golfers in action, they are excited and eager to see what golf is all about; each child is a mini tabula rasa ready to learn. They watch the preceding class of golfers and immediately begin collecting visual information. Next, the instructor explains the golf swing, beginning with the grip of the club and stance. Now they are gathering verbal information about the sport. In other words, they don't simply show up and begin golfing. Everything begins with the acquisition and cognitive processing of newly presented information. During this cognitive stage, the beginning athlete ingests information and organizes it into some meaningful form that will ultimately lead to the creation of a motor program.
The cognitive stage is characterized as having large gains in performance and inconsistent performance. During this stage instruction, guidance, slow-motion drills, video analysis, augmented feedback, and other coaching techniques are highly effective (Schmidt & Lee, 2005). Recall the discussion in chapter 4 regarding Adams' closed-loop theory and the importance of error-free learning in the initial learning stage (p. 133). During the cognitive stage it is important that the learner is provided with the necessary information, guidance, and time to establish sound fundamentals of movement. Sometimes making errors and taking a constructivist approach to coaching and learning can be useful (see the discussion on schema theory, p. 196).
Associative Stage
The associative stage is characterized as much less verbal information, smaller gains in performance, conscious performance, adjustment making, awkward and disjointed movement, and taking a long time to complete. During this stage the athlete works at making movement adjustments and stringing together small movement skills. This stage is also called the motor stage (Adams, 1971) because the problem to be solved in the associative stage is learning how to perform the skill (Schmidt & Lee, 2005). From the cognitive perspective, the athlete is attempting to translate declarative knowledge into procedural knowledge. In other words, the athlete is transforming what to do into how to do.
No diver in the history of the sport of diving has ever performed every single dive for perfect 10s in a single competition. There is always room for improvement. This is true for all sports. For example, a baseball or softball pitcher can improve delivery and learn new pitches, a pole-vaulter can learn to use a new pole and a new technique, a gymnast can refine a routine, a basketball player can improve shooting technique, and a swimmer can improve stroke or flip turn technique. Highly successful athletes and highly effective coaches are always looking for ways to get better. Consequently, they frequently revisit the cognitive stage and then the associative stage of motor learning. Revisiting these stages is the relearning process.
Some years ago, I had an opportunity to work with Professor Yu Fen at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. Professor Yu Fen is one of the top diving coaches in the world and has produced numerous world and Olympic champions. One of the things I took away from working with her is the importance of continually revisiting the first and second stages of motor acquisition, no matter how accomplished an athlete might be. If a diver was not performing, say, a forward 3 1/2 somersault in the pike position, she would take the diver to the trampoline and begin working a basic jump or single somersault. During one of her practices, I observed Olympic gold medalist Tian Liang practicing on 1-meter springboard virtually the same drill as a beginning athlete on an adjacent springboard.
Let's say you have a new athlete who recently transferred from another program to your program. The reason for the transfer is that he has hit a plateau. In fact, his level of performance has begun to decrease. After observing him, you realize that the reason for his lack of progress is that some of his fundamentals are badly in need of remedial work. Where do you begin with this adopted athlete with a host of bad habits? Given what you now know about motor acquisition, the best approach is to first explain that if he wants to improve his performance he will have to make changes, and to make changes means letting go of old habits and learning new fundamentals by revisiting the three stages (cognitive, associative, autonomous) of motor learning. This relearning process means acquiring new information (cognitive stage) and then going through the frustrating associative stage.
Getting athletes to buy into relearning can be challenging. Some athletes, especially successful ones, might say, “Hey, I was high school state champion doing it this way! Why should I change? Besides, the new movement feels awkward.” A coach might reply, “Well, you could have won by even more had you done it the new way!” When these athletes try something new it feels uncomfortable and awkward and they sometimes are reluctant to continue with the change. The verbal information you provide about the three stages of motor learning as well as the information about the new technique helps them establish or activate a learning schema (p. 179) and provides a rationale or perspective for persevering with the change. Next, you work with them on the skill in its simplest form until the skill is mastered, automatic, and integrated into the movement program.
Autonomous Stage
According to Fitts' and Posner's paradigm, this is the final stage of motor acquisition. It often requires years of training to arrive at the autonomous stage. But this stage is where it's at for elite athletes, where motor performance becomes largely automatic, where cognitive processing demands are minimal, and athletes are capable of attending to and processing other information, such as the position of defensive players, game strategy, or the form or style of movement (Schmidt & Lee, 2005) in sports such as ice-skating, dance, and synchronized swimming. It is the stage where they can now respond and not think (or think minimally), where they can grip it and rip it, look and automatically react, and enter a state of flow.
Both good outcomes and bad outcomes are associated with the autonomous stage. The good is that performance requires much less attentional and cognitive demand, which thereby frees the performer to engage in secondary tasks, such as the concert pianist who is able to follow random digits or perform arithmetic while simultaneously playing the piano (Shaffer, 1980), or the quarterback who is capable of surveying the defense and detecting an eminent blitz while simultaneously calling the signals and changing the play at the line of scrimmage.
The bad is that since less cognitive demand exists during performance, it leaves ample room for irrelevant and distracting thoughts to sneak into the workshop (working memory) of the mind. Examples of this occurrence are the elite athletes at the Olympic trials who get caught thinking about making the Olympic team instead of focusing exclusively on performance during the last moments of a gymnastics routine, swimming race, or wrestling match. Think of the gymnast who puts together a stellar routine only to make a silly mistake at the end; or the swimmer who swims magnificently but doesn't finish the race and gets touched out at the wall; or the wrestler who dominates the match but loses concentration and allows his opponent to gain an easy reversal in the waning seconds. Some mountain climbing accidents occur as climbers near the top of the mountain. This may be so because those experienced climbers used some of their available attentional capacity to suddenly begin thinking about reaching the peak—the outcome—rather than focusing on what got them to that part of the mountain in the first place—the process.
The other bad outcome about automatic performance is that it reinforces athletes to maintain incorrect movements because a certain amount of comfort and reinforcement is associated with automatic performance, even if it is incorrect. But just because a motor movement can be performed automatically doesn't mean the movement is correct or worthy of being maintained. Moreover, as soon as athletes stop thinking about the new movement during the cognitive and associative stages, they are likely to respond automatically, thereby reverting to the old and incorrect movement in their performance repertoire. The three stages of motor learning are summarized in table 6.2.
Applying Motor Learning Stages in Coaching Athletes
Provide your athletes with detailed information in the early stage of learning. If you want your athletes to perform correctly, give them the correct information. This means that you need to know what you are talking about and you need to be clear and concise with your instruction. If your athletes don't understand what they are supposed to do, they won't do it correctly. And if they don't understand, perhaps the problem is you, not them. In other words, you may need to do a better job of clearly communicating exactly what you want them to do and communicate it in laymen's terms—in language they can understand and at a conceptual level they are prepared to cognitively grasp. For example, you may understand the physics behind what you are teaching, but if your athletes don't comprehend concepts such as angular momentum, shear force, and action-reaction you will have lost them at “Hello.”
Explain the three stages of motor learning and the relearning process. Relearning something is often more difficult than learning it correctly the first time. This difficulty can lead to frustration and frustration acts like a brick wall between the athlete and the desired goal movement being learned. Make sure your athletes understand the motor learning stages and which stage they are at during the relearning process. Continually remind them that if they trust you and stay committed to the new movement, eventually it will become automatic and integrated into their performance. The new movement seems awkward now compared to the old movement because they are in the associative stage, but after enough repetitions the new movement will become smooth, automatic, and, most important, more effective than the old movement. Some coaches are ineffective at fixing movements. They understand how to teach it correctly in the beginning, but not how to change (fix) a bad habit. Understanding cognitive theory and taking a cognitive teaching approach will help you effectively do both: Teach it correctly the first time and change a bad habit.
Be patient with your athletes during the associative stage. Based on the stages of learning, we now know that awkward and disjointed movements characterize the associative stage. Things aren't going to look or feel very smooth at first; it is part of the learning process. If you expect performance to be immediately smooth and flowing, you are going to be disappointed, disillusioned, and perhaps even somewhat distraught—and so too are your athletes. Fear not. It is all part of the learning process. Remain patient and facilitate learning. Your impatience is likely to make your athletes anxious and impede their learning, whereas your patience and confidence will motivate them to persevere during the associative stage.
Stress the importance of positive information in working memory. A goal for you is to get your athletes to be able to perform automatically. As already mentioned, however, automaticity creates empty space in working memory, which makes it easier for athletes to unintentionally entertain negative thoughts and ruminate, which means to repeatedly dwell on negative and unproductive thoughts. For example, some athletes focus on the outcome of competition and the thought What if I lose? Ruminative thoughts are often unconscious thoughts that through sheer volume of constant repetition become overwhelming and overtake working memory. For example, at a major competition some athletes get this blank look on their faces when their coaches talk to them. It's as though their entire focus is on some internal thought and they are lost to the external world of the here and now. Help your athletes keep working memory space filled with the right stuff; teach them to monitor their thoughts, use thought-stopping statements, redirect their thoughts, engage in positive self-talk, and answer negative thoughts and images with positive thoughts and images.
Read more from Applying Educational Psychology in Coaching Athletes by Jeffery Huber.
Emphasize humanistic principles as part of an effective coaching philosophy
Humanism can manifest itself through the coaching process in four ways. These common emphases are affect, self-concept, communication, and personal values.
Applying Education Psychology in Coaching Athletes.
Applying Four Common Emphases of Humanistic Coaching
Humanism can manifest itself through the coaching process in four ways. These common emphases are affect, self-concept, communication, and personal values.
Affect
Emphasizing affect means paying greater attention to thinking and feeling and less attention to acquiring specific information and skills. Following are some suggestions for emphasizing affect.
Set affective objectives. Setting specific affective objectives means you commit to making a conscious effort to integrate humanism into your program. Examples of affective objectives include encouraging and leading athletes to demonstrate a love for their sport and themselves and to demonstrate a concern and respect for teammates. Another affective objective is to demonstrate a concern and respect for your athletes and acceptance of them as unique individuals, not just as a group of athletes. Another goal is to act as a role model and model a love for the sport and belief in the importance of becoming a more complete person.
Pay greater attention to athletes' feelings. Simply asking athletes how they are feeling and what is going on in their lives, showing a genuine concern for them as human beings, listening to their problems, and being sensitive to their emotional responses are all ways of paying greater attention to athlete's feelings.
Have athletes become more aware of their teammates' feelings. Awareness of others' feelings emphasizes affect and helps athletes move outside their egocentrism. One way to facilitate this greater awareness is to hold a team meeting and ask your athletes to express their feelings, understand their teammates' needs, and find ways to support each other at practices, competitions, and outside the practice venue. Also, when disagreements occur between athletes, ask each athlete to try understanding the other's viewpoint.
Stress the importance of learning and thinking strategies. According to Rogers emphasizing affect also means emphasizing thinking. When you emphasize thinking, the information and skills being taught are not as important as the process and strategies for learning. Consequently, a humanistic coach emphasizes learning how to learn and teaches athletes specific strategies to help them become good learners. For example, having athletes mentally review information about drills before, during, and after each practice helps them learn how to learn drills. Many athletes tend to leave a practice and never think about that practice ever again. When taking time to review information discussed in practice, athletes are more apt to organize the information, give it meaning, remember it at the next practice, and, consequently, improve at a faster rate.
Self-Concept
Helping your athletes develop a positive self-concept is another way to emphasize humanism. Remember that your athletes develop their self-concept in part through interaction with you and how you communicate to them about who they are as human beings. How can you facilitate this process? Following are some suggestions.
Maintain positive perceptions and expectations of your athletes. It is easy to form limiting notions of your athletes and unconsciously communicate these limitations to them. These notions then become part of a hidden curriculum: the things you unconsciously teach as the unintended outcome or by-product of your coaching. Statements such as the following ones can become part of a hidden curriculum: “This athlete is mentally weak.” “This athlete will never make it.” “This athlete can do skills A and B great but will never learn skill C.” “This athlete will always be a B-level player.” Rid yourself of preconceived limiting notions of your athletes and avoid any hidden curriculum. Expect the best. When you expect the best, you generally get the best. Don't count out any of your athletes. Like Jimmy, the young lanky boy I coached many years ago, just when you think someone can't do something, you may be surprised.
Communicate these positive perceptions and expectations through word and deed. It is good to have positive perceptions and expectations of your athletes, but make sure you communicate them to your athletes both by what you say and what you do. Take the time to tell your athletes what you think of them and what they are capable of achieving and communicate these expectations through your coaching. Saying, “Well, you didn't make it this time but I know you will at the next competition” is an effective example. Also, demonstrate your confidence in them through your actions. For example, you tell one of your athletes that she can become a champion if she puts in more work and then you stay after practice or volunteer to come in on your day off to work with her.
Maintain positive perceptions and expectations publicly and privately. Coaches sometimes disparage their athletes behind their backs. Getting frustrated and needing to vent some frustration is part of coaching, but you have to support your athletes and believe in them, even when they aren't looking. Being a humanistic coach means, in part, being genuine as a person. Being genuine means acting as you really are as a person and having your words match your internal feelings. In other words, you openly let others know how you feel. Venting is part of human nature and part of dealing with stress. But you have to be true to your athletes. You can't say one thing publicly and then turn around and say something contrary privately. Besides making you a hypocrite and disingenuous, your words ultimately get back to the athlete and ruin the coach-athlete relationship.
Invite rather than disinvite athletes. According to Purkey and Novak (1996), teachers invite students by communicating to them that they are capable, self-directed, and valued, and by expecting behaviors and achievements commensurate with their worth and emerging self-concept. In contrast, teachers who disinvite students send a message that students are irresponsible, incapable, worthless, and undirected. As a coach, do you invite or disinvite your athletes?
Build a positive self-concept by promoting success rather than failure. To promote success, break down learning tasks into small and attainable increments. Coaches sometimes ask athletes to do too much too soon. Perhaps this is because they forget how many smaller tasks comprise a particular movement. They ask athletes to do a skill that actually involves many skills, none of which the athletes have yet mastered. When you ask athletes to do too much too soon, you set them up for guaranteed failure. The result of repeated failure can be a poor self-concept, a feeling of external control, and a sense of helplessness.
Promoting success and a positive self-concept also includes implementing mastery learning (Bloom, 1976). The concept of mastery learning suggests that all learners can learn; the only difference between learners is the amount of time each person requires to learn the material. While Bloom's concept of mastery learning deals mainly with concept learning, mastery learning can be applied to motor learning as well. Not all athletes will learn to perform at the elite level. However, most athletes can learn much of what you teach to some level of proficiency. The humanistic coach focuses on helping each athlete master as many skills as possible for their particular sport and level of experience and ability.
Mastery learning means learning a particular skill to a certain level of proficiency before moving on to the next skill. For example, when you break down a skill into smaller increments, make sure your athlete masters each smaller skill before moving on to the next skill. It may take time and patience on the part of both athlete and coach, but it will be well worth the effort later in the athlete's career.
Communication
A third major emphasis of a humanistic approach to coaching is communication. Communication includes attention to the principles and skills of effective human relations, honest interpersonal communication, and constructive conflict resolution. Following are some suggestions for emphasizing communication in your coaching.
Establish effective human relations through honest and open interpersonal communication. Honest and open communication means being real with your athletes, rather than aloof and unapproachable. Honest communication also means really listening to what your athletes have to say. A shortcoming for many coaches is that they don't take the time or give enough effort to really listen to what their athletes are trying to say. Being a good listener is not easy but sometimes it is all an athlete really wants or needs.
One season I had trouble establishing a relationship with one of my athletes. I was angry with her because I thought she never listened to me. Over the course of the season, our relationship became increasingly distant. Finally, another athlete said to me, “Coach, you need to talk to her.” At first I dismissed her comment, but the more I thought about it, the more I knew she was right. So, one afternoon I took some time to talk with her. I said a few things about how I felt, but then I just listened to what she had to say. The more I listened to her, the more she listened to me. I am positive that our meeting was a turning point in her season and career. And it literally happened overnight. We met on a Wednesday and on Thursday she competed in the NCAA championship. She finished third with a lifetime best performance, a performance that far exceeded anything she had done to that point in her season.
Take time from your daily routine to communicate with your athletes. Maybe it is just a few minutes as they are coming into practice or while they are stretching. Or maybe you connect with a few of your athletes before they leave practice. The more you communicate with them, particularly on a personal level, the more of a relationship you establish with them. Take the time to occasionally meet one-on-one in your office. Have an open-door policy so that your athletes feel comfortable stopping by even if it is only to say hello. Schedule individual goal-setting sessions. Besides nourishing the athlete-coach relationship, these meetings provide athletes with the opportunity to express their feelings and talk about things important to their athletic careers and their personal lives.
Arrange team meetings and team goal-setting sessions. These sessions give your athletes the opportunity to communicate among themselves. It is worthwhile to attend some of these meetings to lay the ground rules for athlete interaction and discussion topics. For other meetings, it is more important that the athletes take responsibility for the meeting and you need not be present. Some of the topics your athletes can consider are how to support one another inside and outside of practice, how to communicate effectively with each other, and how to openly talk about problems and their resolutions.
Use the principles and ideas of humanism and Rogerian theory to constructively resolve conflict. No matter how effective you are as a coach or how great your athletes are as people, you will have conflict at some point within your team and within your program. And the quicker it is resolved, the sooner you right the ship and continue moving forward. It might be a conflict between you and a player, between two players, between an assistant coach and a player, between two assistant coaches, between coach and parent, or between the offense and the defense. The number of potential conflicts lurking on the horizon is great and you and your athletes need to be trained and ready to confront these battles. Humanism and Rogerian theory provide a perfect battle plan.
According to humanism and Rogerian theory, the best way to resolve conflict is for both sides to sit down and communicate. Since people act in accordance with their phenomenological reality, this communication involves having each person really listen and attempt to understand the other person's private world of experiences. Because humanism emphasizes self-direction, self-determination, autonomy, and self-evaluation, it is expected that each person, with the coach acting as facilitator, will assume responsibility for resolving the conflict.
Personal Values
Personal values should be a part of your coaching philosophy and your coaching curriculum. You teach values whether you know it or not. If you are unaware of the values you teach, then they have become part of your hidden curriculum. As mentioned a number of times in this book, effective coaches are aware of everything they teach. Consequently, be conscious of the values you teach—or want to teach—and incorporate them into your coaching curriculum so that you teach positive values and eliminate negative values you might be inadvertently teaching your athletes.
Encourage your athletes to discover their own personal values. Simon, Howe, and Kirschenbaum (1972) suggest 79 strategies for helping students elaborate and clarify values. Personal values you might teach include acceptance of self and others, acceptance of personal faults and mistakes but still maintaining self-worth, and valuing effort and performance more than winning. One personal value worth teaching is personal responsibility. Historically, humanism has valued autonomy: the individual taking responsibility and control for his or her life.
Stress personal responsibility as a value. You can nurture personal responsibility in many ways. Having athletes set their own goals and select appropriate ways of reaching their goals gives them a sense of control and autonomy. Also, setting up athletes for success helps establish an internal locus of control. According to attribution theory, athletes with an internal locus of control see success as a result of personal effort and not an external factor such as luck. In other words, an athlete with an internal locus of control believes that he is in control of the outcome of events.
Stress personal problem solving as a value. Rather than solve a problem for an athlete, you can facilitate the athlete's effort to solve the problem. This concept is at the center of Roger's client-centered therapy, in which the client, not the counselor, solves the problem. Based on Rogerian theory, a nondirective model of teaching has been developed for fostering a sense of personal responsibility in athletes. The following section outlines the nondirective model.
Read more from Applying Educational Psychology in Coaching Athletes by Jeffery Huber.
Coaches can use behaviorism to increase athletes' motivation
According to the concept of psychological hedonism and the pain–pleasure principle, people are motivated to obtain pleasure and avoid pain.
Behaviorism and Motivation
According to the concept of psychological hedonism and the pain-pleasure principle, people are motivated to obtain pleasure and avoid pain. This simple explanation for human motivation, however, seems incongruous with the picture of the hard-working athlete training through extremely demanding and often painful (not pleasurable) conditions to achieve a long-range goal. How do you account for this type of athlete motivation? According to behaviorism, you would argue that somehow athlete motivation to train under such grueling circumstances is being reinforced. A reinforcer increases the probability that a response will reoccur. When a rat receives a food pellet (reinforcer) for feverishly pressing a lever in the Skinner box, the rat is more likely to press the lever again.
Reinforcement and Praise
When used according to the principles of operant conditioning, reinforcement can have a significant impact on motivation and human behavior. Consider the successful coach who always seems to have upbeat and motivated athletes willing to charge through a brick wall for their coach. Unfortunately, the example of the unsuccessful coach whose athletes always seem to be downcast, downtrodden, and unmotivated also exists. One factor that separates the successful coach from the unsuccessful coach is the use of positive reinforcers, in particular, praise. Although the use of praise is discussed in detail in chapter 10, several rules about the use of praise (pushing the praise button) are worth repeating here.
Praise provides information to athletes not only about performance but also about notion of self. In other words, it tells athletes about the quality of their motor performance, but it often also tells them about their self-worth and competence. For example, when you say, “Jerome, way to think. That's the way to make the correction the first time!” you are letting him know about his improved performance and also, and more important, about his intelligence, effort, and capacity for change. Contrast this coaching comment with the droll and uninspired “Okay. Go on to the next drill.” Often, just a few precisely put words make a significant and long-lasting difference in an athlete's notion of self and motivation.
Praise should be used judiciously. It is easy to use praise too often so that it becomes meaningless to athletes or too infrequently so that it is ineffective in influencing behavior. Young coaches in particular often use praise too frequently. Successful coaches find the right balance for dishing out praise so that when they do use praise, it has real punch and positively affects athlete motivation.
Praise should include specific, constructive encouragement to build self-esteem (Hitz & Driscoll, 1994). Encouraging comments should be clear and specific rather than vague and general. Athletes want to know not only the what but also the why. If they aren't doing something correctly, they want to know why it is wrong and why a different approach is better. At the same time, they also want to be encouraged for their effort and ability to succeed with future attempts. For example, the type of praise in the following statement increases self-esteem and motivation while it concomitantly provides constructive encouragement: “Maria, you took the race out too fast but I admire your determination, adventurousness, and fearlessness! Those are qualities you should be proud of and will serve you well in the future. However, you need to pace yourself and run your own race next time.”
Praise should be sincere. Sincere praise not only provides reinforcement, but it also sends an emotional message that says you genuinely care for your athletes and want to see them succeed. Athletes who perceive that their coaches care for them are motivated to give even greater effort in practice. Conversely, insincere praise, besides being ineffective, communicates to athletes that you have little regard for them and their performances. Sincere praise builds the athlete-coach relationship while insincere praise undermines it. Which type of praise do you give your athletes?
Praising effort is important, particularly for young athletes. Children who are praised for their efforts are more apt to develop a view of ability as something they can control and something that can change (Mueller & Dweck, 1998). Consequently, these athletes are more apt to be motivated to train hard and expect results based on personal effort. In contrast, people who are praised for their talent tend to view ability as fixed and unchanging. Consequently, when these athletes experience failure, they are less motivated to train hard.
External Feedback as Reinforcement
Like praise, external feedback can serve as a reinforcer for athlete behaviors. For example, in the game of hot and cold, people shout out “hotter” and “colder” to express how close the player is to reaching the goal. The hotter game players get (i.e., the closer they get to their achievement goal) the more motivated they become to keep going. In this regard, both knowledge of results (KR) and knowledge of performance (KP) act as reinforcers. Two specific external feedback properties that athletes find motivating are the aptly named motivating feedback and informational feedback.
Motivating feedback is defined as feedback about an individual's progress toward goal achievement that energizes and directs behavior. For example, consider a runner who is on the second to last lap and her coach tells her she is on pace for a personal best time. When athletes believe they are improving and moving toward their goals, they become increasingly motivated in their pursuit of goal achievement.
Informational feedback is defined as feedback that provides performers with error correction information, either descriptive (what happened) or prescriptive (what needs to happen). This type of feedback is motivating to all athletes, but it is particularly motivating for athletes engaged in deliberate practice (i.e., setting specific goals for everything they do in practice). For these athletes, informational feedback is like food to a hungry traveler; they devour it. They want to improve with each practice and informational feedback helps temporarily satisfy their craving for knowledge about their progress toward improved performance.
Extrinsic and Intrinsic Motivation
Some people engage in specific behaviors because they have extrinsic motivation: They engage in the behaviors because they anticipate certain external rewards. For example, some athletes try out for a team because they anticipate earning a varsity letter, a trophy, a college scholarship, and so on. Other people have intrinsic motivation: They engage in athletics because they respond well to internal sources of reinforcement such as personal satisfaction and sense of accomplishment. These athletes derive internal reinforcement from achievements such as throwing a perfect pass, performing a great gymnastics routine, swishing a 3-point shot, running a perfect race, and so on. The beauty of sport is that this list is virtually endless.
Research suggests that people who respond to intrinsic motives are more committed, enjoy their activities more, and are more persistent when they confront failure (Agbor-Baiyee, 1997). While this research examined student behavior, research examining athletes found similar results (Vallerand & Losier, 1999). Close to intrinsic motivation is a concept called interest (Wigfield, Eccles, & Rodriguez, 1998). People who engage in activities simply for the fact that they like doing it and expect no external reward can be said to have an interest in that activity. A primary objective for all coaches should be to encourage athletes to develop a genuine interest in their sport.
Keep in mind, however, that external rewards can be useful for facilitating interest and intrinsic motivation. For example, when I was learning to dive, our coach purchased gold (it was actually yellow, but it looked like gold to my teammates and me) diving suits like the one reigning Olympic champion Bernie Wrightson wore when he won the gold medal. We all aspired to become gold medalists like Bernie, but we could not buy the suit. We could only acquire the suit by earning it, by learning a full list of high-degree-of-difficulty dives on the 3-meter springboard. We wanted to earn that suit so badly that we would do almost anything, including learning scary and difficult new dives that no one our age was performing back then. The suit became a symbol of courage, effort, determination, and noteworthy accomplishment. We did not remain in the sport simply because of the suit, but it sure captured our interest and ignited our intrinsic motivation.
Conditioned Responses
Athletes who associate positive physiological responses, such as relaxation and appropriate arousal level, and enhancing emotions, such as joy and satisfaction, are more likely to love their sport and come to practice highly motivated to train. Therefore, to increase motivation, coaches need to condition their athletes to respond positively to not only their sport but the many aspects of their sport, such as training, stretching, conditioning, drill and skill work, and competing. For many athletes, especially young ones, a positive conditioned response is what brings them back each day, each week, each month, and each season. Because conditioning is so important to the motor learning process and athlete success, chapter 3 examines it in detail (see The Salivating Athlete).
Applying Behaviorism to Increase Athlete Motivation
Based on the theory of behaviorism, coaches can push a number of “behavioral buttons” to increase athletes' motivation.
Follow the guidelines for the effective use of praise. Although praise is an effective reinforcer, it can be misused. Know when, what, and how to use it. Successful coaches are masters at effectively using praise to motivate their athletes.
Use external feedback as you would other types of reinforcers. External feedback for all athletes, but particularly elite athletes, is highly reinforcing. The more accurate the external feedback, the more reinforcing it becomes for them. Years ago when I first began working with an elite athlete, who already was a NCAA champion and world champion, I learned two things rather quickly: Remember what correction you give him and give him accurate feedback about whether or not he made the correction on the subsequent attempt. If I forgot the correction or my feedback was inaccurate, he kindly let me know about it! Highly effective coaches provide accurate and timely external feedback.
Recognize individual differences. No two athletes are exactly alike. It is important to keep these differences in mind when using reinforcement to influence motivation. What is reinforcing for one athlete might not be reinforcing to another athlete. Knowing how to push their buttons in part means knowing what is reinforcing to them. For example, some athletes hate being pulled aside and lectured while other athletes take it as a compliment and a sign that you care about them and their goals.
Reinforce effort in order to encourage intrinsic motivation. In the long run, athletes train harder and longer and persevere in their sport when they are intrinsically motivated. For this reason, reinforce effort. Athletes who associate ability and achievement with effort are more likely to be motivated to train and maintain their motivation during difficult training cycles.
Condition athletes to have a positive physiological response to their sport. Athletes who have an interest and love for their sport (training and competition) will be engaged and motivated. You can facilitate a positive response by continually pairing positive conditioned stimuli with positive unconditioned stimuli. A significant way to create a positive response is to facilitate success and mastery during practice, make practice and competition fun, and focus on effort.
Use external reinforcers. Sometimes external reinforcers can be effective for kick starting or augmenting an athlete's internal motivation. In the case of the gold diving suit, it is interesting to note that every diver on the team did indeed earn a suit. Most went on to successful high school careers and a number of us went on to compete collegiately and nationally. One athlete even made the U.S. Olympic team, and one stayed around long enough to coach collegiate diving for over 37 years. Sometimes, a seemingly small external reward can go a long way toward intrinsically motivating athletes. It is funny how after all these years grown men still occasionally gather and talk about “the suit” and how they cherish it and have it stored away like a rare artifact, precious and immeasurably valuable, a tangible reminder of the intangible rewards they received from their memorable experience in sport. I am sure that athletes in all sports have similar stories and memories.
Read more from Applying Educational Psychology in Coaching Athletes by Jeffery Huber.