WHY PLAYERS AND ATHLETES NEED A SPORTS PERFORMANCE COACH.
It is widely known that coaches play a critical role in the lives of young athletes and have the potential to influence, positively or negatively, their sporting experiences.
Most sport coaches are much more active on the pitch when it comes to drawing up diagrams, substituting of players, calling time out, walking up and down the touchline, yelling at the referees and giving quick remarks to motivate the players. Majorly, trying to build the players tactical and technical skills.
These are the major multiple roles that most sports coaches often assume forgetting that the players they manage are human first before players and have a lot of personal issue to deal with off the pitch. This calls for the help of a Sport Performance Coach in training the coaches and the players on how to deal with their personal issue and also staying focused in the mist of challenges.
Sports performance coaching therefore provides athletes with a competitive edge, can also create a pathway to long-term success for the youth athlete. For instance, at the high school level, athletes become mentally groomed and prepared for collegiate sports. They learn skills and techniques that benefit them in many positive and beneficial ways for the rest of their lives.
Off the pitch, with the help of the sport performance training, sport coaches will be able to sit down and interact with the athletes of their teams, at times engaging the players in a dialogue to understand the athletes’ view about their performance, to know what drives them, what is distracting them, why they lost focus during the game and how they can take responsibility for improving their own performance.
When the ability of the player/athlete to control their psychological state is in question due to a “slump”, injury or personal issues, there is a risk of a decrease in self-confidence, well-being and future sports performance. Some players may feel a sense of loss of social interaction with their teammates, while some player may have fears and anxieties associated with poor performance upon return or fear of re-injury most especially in adolescent players.
Sport performance training will help the sport coaches to be aware of they can influence the life of their players by either being a source of pressure, anxiety and stress or they can be a great source of joy and supportive influence for the injured players.
Sport Performance Coaches are key in helping players to understand that a return to performance is challenging. They may be able to put players into contact with teammates who had similar injuries in order to boost their morale which is one the ways to reduce anxiety and stress.
Some of the major benefits of sport performance coaching includes:
Providing tailor-made personal one to one coaching sessions for players and athletes in problem solving, coping strategies, strengthening their mindset or creating a new mindset to remove self-limiting beliefs and developing transferable skills which will help them on and off the pitch.
Providing athletes with the tools they need to improve concentration and focus. To avoid distractions, deal with constantly changing arousal levels. This in turn will increase the athlete’s confidence, attitude and improve team dynamics as well as intra-team cohesion.
Helps an athlete set and achieve their personal goals. It will help athletes free themselves from negative, self-limiting and self-defeating beliefs and thoughts that have been holding them back from reaching their peak performance.
Ideally, every player in the world of sport (football, cricket, basketball and so on) need to be coached by Sport performance Coaches over a period of time since change and adaptations happen fairly slowly. Their advice combined with your hard work can really help you to improve your performance.
For more details on how you can or your club can benefit from our expert Sport Performance Coaches contact via email: icamanchesteruk@gmail.com
Coach Kay Baig
Sports Consultant/
Sports Performance Coach
