Communication & Feedback. Practical Sports Coaching

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Communication & Feedback

Practical Sports Coaching

SPT2822

22032037

This coursework will focus on how coaches communicate with their athletes using differing types of communication and feedback, both of these topics will be broken down into sections where they are explored in further detail by exploring benefits of each area of communication but also exploring the practical implications of these communication types.

Communication is a key part of coaching as a coach communicates not just with their athletes but with parents, administrators and other coaches. A coach needs to have good communication skills to be able to communicate with their players/athletes during many different situations, Communication is the act of expressing (or transmitting) ideas, information, knowledge, thoughts, and feelings, as well as understanding what is expressed by others. (Burton; Raedeke, 2008) The communication process involves both sending and receiving messages and can take many forms.

Non-verbal communication is defined as actions, facial expressions, body position, and gestures that a coach uses to communicate with their athletes (Weinberg; Gould, 2010), there are many types of non-verbal communication these are: posture, gestures, body position, touching, facial expressions and voice characteristics. Facial expressions is one of the most important types of non-verbal communication as the face is the most expressive part of the body, by engaging in eye contact with the player/athlete then the coach can determine that they are interested in what the coach is going to say using verbal communication, voice characteristics can either reinforce a verbal message or undermine the message, the different voice characteristics are pitch, tempo, volume, rhythm and articulation. Touching  is a an extremely powerful way of using non-verbal communication as it can be used in many different ways such as a pat on the back as a well done or a an arm around the shoulder to calm a player/athlete. Body position refers to the amount of space between the coach and the player/athlete’s body, an example of this is coaches sitting with the starting players in the team instead of the substitutes, this form of non-verbal communication can have both positive and negative effects on the athlete. Gestures are a form of conveying messages to others, for example a coach folding their arms during a training session suggests to the players that they are not interested in the practice (Martens, 2012)

Verbal communication is the substance of the message that the coach is attempting to deliver to the athlete, this could be explaining a particular technical drill or feedback on their performance in a training session/ competition. Martens (2012) refers to effective communication having six steps ranging from the coach having thoughts or ideas that they wish to convey to their player/athlete responding internally to their personal interpretation of the coaches message. During the six steps of communication the coach has to translate their thoughts into a message that is suitable to be conveyed to their player/athlete. This type of communication is mostly used by coaches compared to other types of communication; Stafford (2011) refers to verbal communication being an important channel that coaches use to send clear meaningful messages to participants.

Communication can also be ineffective, this can occur because of the athlete or coach or possibly both, ( Martens, 2012) describes six reasons why communication can be ineffective due to the content being communicated by the coach being incorrect for the situation, the coach lacks the verbal/ non-verbal communication skills to transmit the message effectively, the athlete doesn’t receive the message because they aren’t paying attention, the athlete fails to understand the message due to the athlete lacking listening/ non-verbal skills, the athlete misinterprets the intent of the message or the messages that the coach is attempting to send are inconsistent and therefore confuse the athlete as to the intent of the coach. (Crooks, 1991) identifies some different reasons why communication can be ineffective, the athlete may lack the knowledge needed to understand the message that the coach is attempting to communicate, emotions may interfere within the communication process.

 To avoid the possibility of communication being ineffective due to the coach lacking communication skills, (Martens, 2012) identifies six key areas of communication for coaches to develop: firstly  coaches need to communicate with a positive approach towards athletes, send effective messages that are high in information, communicate consistently towards athletes, non-verbal communication skills, learning to listen to your athletes effectively and develop credibility when communicating.

Feedback is described as an important task for coaches as it provides assistance for athletes to improve their performance during subsequent practice attempts (Williams & Hodges, 2005) Depending on the provision of the feedback efficient learning can take place and ensures the learners motivation to persist with practicing. Extrinsic feedback is given to participants by coaches as a direct result of the action the athlete has undertaken to achieve a particular result or the movement pattern that caused that particular result, for a coach to provide this feedback the coach must firstly have a strong overall knowledge of results and performance. Information provided to the athlete about the outcome of a particular action e.g. the exact distance that the ball has travelled, this type of extrinsic feedback is identified as knowledge of results (Williams & Hodges, 2005) Information that is provided to the athlete concerning how a particular movement occurred is identified as knowledge of performance. Intrinsic feedback is defined as a natural consequence of an athlete performing an action (Williams & Hodges, 2005).