Virtual Sport Psych

Fine-Tuning Athlete Performance: The Art of Feedback and Instructions

February 19, 2024

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Thank you for joining the Better Together Newsletter! This bi-weekly newsletter is dedicated to sharing insights into applied sport psychology and science-based tools that can aid us as sport psychology professionals in helping athletes, teams, and coaches enhance their performance and well-being. The goal is to deliver actionable insights in a concise and engaging format, making it easy for you to apply them in your work in sports.

As sport psychology professionals, we often assist athletes and coaches in learning new mental techniques to cope with various situations.

Sometimes, we also collaborate with coaches to support them in instructing their athletes in different ways, aiming to enhance the learning experience or alter the motivational climate coaches create through their instructional methods.

In other instances, we may also aid coaches in adjusting the way they give feedback to their athletes, ensuring athletes don’t feel offended and are receptive to implementing the shared information into their practice.

However, at times, it can be challenging for me to keep track of all the different methods available for giving instructions and feedback. Just take a moment to ask yourself: How many different forms of instructing and giving feedback can you spontaneously name?

Only recently, I came across some research on giving feedback and instructions to athletes that I find interesting and helpful. Therefore, I want to share it with you so that we can all get better together…

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

sport psychology community

IDEA OF THE WEEK

In sports, providing feedback and instructions is akin to fine-tuning the engine of a high-performance vehicle. Coaches play the role of mechanics, carefully calibrating the athlete’s skills and mindset to achieve peak performance. Feedback serves as the compass guiding athletes towards their goals, offering insights into areas of improvement and reinforcing successful strategies. Clear and concise instructions act as the roadmap, providing athletes with the necessary direction to navigate challenges and capitalize on opportunities. Effective feedback and instructions not only enhance technical proficiency but also cultivate mental resilience, fostering a culture of continuous growth and excellence in the dynamic arena of sports.

When observing coaches in sports, we experience many different ways of how they instruct and give feedback. Sometimes, it depends on the sport they are active in, their personalities, or their leadership style, the time in a season, or the athletes’ preferred behavior. A few years back, Otte and colleagues (2020) published a paper on ​When and How to Provide Feedback and Instructions to Athletes?​ In their paper, they developed a Skill Training Communication Model that can help coaches improve their abilities to use the most functional way of instructing and giving feedback in different coaching situations.

The Skill Training Communication Model suggests that coaches should adopt a systematic approach when designing effective training sessions. Initially, coaches must take into account the skill training stages of athletes, as these stages directly influence how constraints are managed and the overall structure of the session. This encompasses considerations such as the level of game representation and the complexity of tasks. For instance, athletes in the Coordination Training stage might participate in simplified activities aimed at encouraging the exploration of movement solutions, minimizing the need for extensive verbal feedback. Subsequently, coaches should customize their verbal communication strategies to align with the skill training stages of athletes. This ensures that athletes receive suitable feedback and guidance that complement the session design and facilitate their progress.

The Skill Training Communication Model outlines different verbal feedback and instruction approaches categorized by methodologies such as task-oriented communication and analogy learning. These methods are tailored based on the athlete’s skill training stage and the nature of the training activities. While verbal feedback is emphasized, coaches may integrate visual and haptic modalities, particularly in multisensory analogy learning. Integrating different communication methods is deemed effective in providing optimal learning conditions. The Skill Training Communication Model explores seven feedback and instruction methods in detail: instructive (direct) verbal communication, task-oriented communication, Q&A feedback, trial and error, (live) video feedback, model learning, and analogy learning. These methods are commonly used by sports coaches to enhance skill development in practice environments.

Below, you will find what I consider an interesting matrix that provides a comprehensive overview of the seven feedback and instruction methods. It includes brief descriptions of coach interventions when utilizing each approach and examples of how these methods could be implemented in training.

At the end of their paper, the authors also provide ​guidelines for coaches on how to give feedback and instructions​. I highly recommend reviewing these guidelines as they can be extremely beneficial for coaches in their interactions with athletes.

Reflecting on the various ways coaches instruct and give feedback can be valuable for sport psychology professionals in serving coaches better and helping them improve their methods. It has also helped myself to further reflect on the various ways that I can utilize to instruct and give feedback, not only to athletes and coaches but also in other settings. Maybe you can use the above matrix to reflect on the various ways your coaches are instructing and giving feedback, and then make an informed decision on maybe using also a different approach or method in other situations. Having a wider range of approaches and methods to giving feedback and instruct also increases the likelihood of developing functional motivational climates for individual athletes, as coaches are then able to satisfy their athletes’ needs in different ways.

CHUCK NORRIS JOKE OF THE WEEK

When Chuck Norris provides feedback, improvement becomes an inevitability, not an option.

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