Text: Ryan Tehini
Having the right coach is an integral part of achieving athletic success; proper coaching ensures that the correct aspects of the sport are trained, and also instils confidence in the athlete – enhancing their overall performance. While the importance of coaching has never been in debate, it is an aspect of psychological research that has largely been overlooked – until recent years. Recent research has indicated that mental toughness in a coach directly impacts the success of their career and that of their athletes, and this is true for youth coaches as well as professional-level and adult coaches.
Mental toughness is a term commonly used in sports psychology settings but often wears different masks – in that it will look different in a football player to what it will look like in an equestrian coach. The main reason for this is that mental toughness can simply be defined as a psychological resource that helps athletes manage difficult circumstances. This means that the exact presentation of said ‘mental toughness’ would vary depending on the circumstance, and the circumstances in each sport are different. The question therefore remains, what does mental toughness look like in a coach, and what are the implications of this quality for the athlete? These are the questions that this article endeavours to answer using recent research.
Mentally tough coaches
The attributes of mentally tough coaches have been a field of interest recently within the field of sports psychology, and interestingly enough, while there are definable overlaps, a mentally tough coach looks different for youth athletes than for professional athletes. The presiding reason for this difference is that youth athletes require different things from a coach than professional athletes. For example, a youth athlete may need more encouragement and development outside of the athletic realm than would a professional athlete. To this end, a successful/mentally tough youth coach would also have the ability to adapt to the athlete and fulfil the role needed in order to succeed.
Coaches of professional/adult athletes
Coaching professional and adult athletes is often incorrectly thought to be entirely about skill development/refinement, and as such, the psychology of the coach has been deemed somewhat irrelevant. However, this could not be further from the truth, as the high level of competition demands that the coaches possess psychological attributes that are not necessarily common, only develop over time, and require a degree of balance. Recent research has identified three main characteristics that mentally tough professional/adult coaches have that assist in the success of their athletes. These include:
Emotional regulation and endurance
The most common attribute displayed amongst successful professional and adult coaches was the ability to control their emotions in difficult circumstances. This skill often requires years of experience, as the ability to exert control over your emotional state takes practice. However, it has been shown that coaches who can show restraint and not immediately react to the circumstances they find themselves in instil confidence in their athletes and reduce their overall stress and anxiety. Similarly, coaches who show emotional fortitude in the face of challenging circumstances breed athletes capable of the same and who thrive in stressful settings. This was one of the most prominent themes in identifying successful coaches across various sporting disciplines, as often the coach is looked upon by the athlete as the voice of reason and a calming presence in the face of adversity.
Embrace a particular philosophy/way of thinking
Research indicated that coaches who embrace a set of specific thinking patterns tended to have more success as a coach; these types of thinking included:
(1) Having consistency in what they expected of their athletes
(2) Setting high standards and chasing after them
(3) Showing a strong commitment to the development of their athletes
(4) Adopting a growth mindset, wherein they recognise that their athlete is improving and they aren’t treated like the athlete that the coach first met
(5) being genuine with the athlete, and demanding a high level of performance.
These attributes were a recurring theme in determining a coach’s success with an athlete. The more of these attributes a single coach displayed, the more likely they were to have a positive relationship with and impact on their athlete.
Coaches of youth athletes
The exact recipe of a successful youth coach is slightly different than the one presented above for a professional athlete, although almost all of the above ingredients feature in some way or another here as well. There were five main attributes identified by research that defined a mentally tough coach in the context of youth sport and these were:
(1) The continued ability to overcome adversity and calmly assist the athlete in doing the same
(2) The ability to control their emotions in all circumstances
(3) Maintaining high standards for themselves and the athletes they train
(4) Effective communication with their athletes in an unpatronising and collaborative manner
(5) The development of their athletes beyond the sport setting regardless of the pressure to perform.
In addition to mental toughness, coaches of youth athletes also need to display a level of emotional intelligence. In youth sports, setting an example of emotional intelligence is of the essence, as displaying empathy and setting a positive emotional tone around sport will shape not only the kind of athlete that the youth grows up to be but also the kind of person.
Take-home message
Now more than ever, the importance of an effective coach cannot be overstated. The advanced understanding of coaching now provided by research identifies the importance for the player to develop psychologically, as well as the coach. A mentally tough coach delivers unmatched value to their athletes on and off the field, and the wonderful thing about mental toughness (as with most psychological attributes) is that it can be trained. Just as the athletes strive to improve mentally for performance enhancement purposes, so should the coaches to improve the performance of their athletes.