While it often seems that coaches have an inflated sense of the effects of their training system on the physical aspects of the sport and gymnasts, there often seems to be total disregard for the effect of their negative comments on the success of their gymnast and their team.
Most Coaches Aren’t Positive – Most Coaches Aren’t Successful – What Does That Tell You?
It is a rare coach and gym in which we find predominantly positive coaching commentary and a positive psychological environment for gymnasts. For some reason, coaches don’t relate this to the approximately equal lack of serious success national and international success of their program.
Too Many Negative Coaching Role Models
Worse, too many coaches champion negative coaching pointing to the success of Eastern European and Asian coaches known for being negative to the point of yelling, screaming (Bela who?) and verbal abuse.
There Are Other Reasons for Their Success
They (and those coaches) fail to understand that sometimes gymnasts succeed in spite of coach’s methods instead of because of them. Or there were other factors in place that were the reason for whatever success those coaches had, like successful recruiting and a systematic training system. And if basically all of the high level programs are primarily negative coaching/psychological environments, who would know if the positive approach works or not.
How Many Burned Out Gymnasts Did It Cost To Find One Who Was Coach-Proof?
Similarly they fail to calculate what even greater level of success and how many more successful gymnasts would have been created in a positive coaching environment. There is certainly tremendous empirical data to suggest that many gymnasts are “burned out” by high level negative programs.
Who Says Positive Coaching is Best – Sports Scientists
So if the programs that have been successful internationally are the negative programs, who is to say that is not the method all coaches should adopt. Sports scientists are the ones to say. Science says clearly that a positive environment, especially for girls, is far more productive and even more than that positive coaching is critical to the production of successful, confident athletes.
Coaches’ Feedback in Practice, Not Meet Performance, Most Important
T. S. Horn’s 1985 study of coaches’ feedback and its effect on children’s perceptions of their physical competence concluded not only that athlete’s perceptions of their physical and cognitive abilities were related to coaches’ evaluative feedback at practice, but that positive competition success and feedback was not related.
Coaches’ Negative Response Become Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
Not only are a gymnast’s perceptions of their abilities and possibilities for success dependent on their coaches feedback in practice, but success in competition would not overcome negative coaching in practice. Perhaps this is not so outlandish a concept considering the amount of practice time in relation to the relatively small number of competitions.
Negativity and Punishment Deeply Affect the Gymnast
The study showed that athlete’s perceptions of competence and attained level of skill ability were directly related to their coaches’ practice evaluation and feedback. Similarly, punishment was negatively correlated with athlete’s self-perception.
A Coach’s Negative Mental Attitude Will Eventually Drive the Gymnast Out of the Sport
The implications are clear that an athlete will eventually come to believe what a coach says about his or her standard of performance at practice. If a coach does not respond positively, then the athlete’s self-perception of his/her competency in the sport will ultimately be degraded.
Coaches Must Take Deadly Serious Their Responsibility to Become Positive Forces in Their Gymnasts’ Careers
There is no avoiding the heavy responsibility this places on coaches to control their emotions and provide a positive coaching environment. Or they must take the credit for the gymnasts who they have psychologically programmed to fail and for the overall lack of success of their negative coaching for the majority of gymnasts.
Related posts:
- How to Be a Positive Coach and Create a Positive Gym Atmosphere
- Positive Gymnastics Coaching
- Coaching Girls’ Gymnastics
- Negative Coaching
- The Pyramid of Positive Gymnastics Psychology
I agree whole heartedly with your article on positive coaching. I believed from the very first time I entered a gym to assist, that their was no place for negativity in coaching. Now after more than twenty odd years of coaching and witnessing uncounted battles between gymnasts and coaches who believe that, “they need to be more afraid of me than the skill,” I am more convinced than ever. If a gymnast leaves my session feeling bad about themselves I consider that as a failure, regardless of any technical progress. In todays world of ever increasing obesity levels and the sedentary lifestyles encouraged by electonic games, tv etc. I believe it is important to get children into sporting activities, the longer we can keep them coming back the more likley they are to keep exercising in later life. This is especialy true for girls whose drop out rate from sporting activities in early teens is far greater than boys.
Thanks for the comment. Positive coaching is not only important from the point of view that I take – “I want gymnasts, who look back on their life, to realize that something I said to them was responsible for their success in life” – but even if coaches don’t have that as a personal goal, what they don’t realize is how much better and faster you can coach if you use positive coaching and use operant conditioning coaching techniques that build on the positive efforts of gymnasts. Those methods of coaching far outstrip the speed and success rates of negative coaching by up to a factor of 10. So thanks again for your interest and comment and keep an eye on the site. We have so much more coming, both in terms of the web site and revolutionary new product concepts, including in the area of positive coaching.