Creating an Inclusive,
Positive Sporting
Environment
• Understand athletes’
characteristics
• Inclusion of all
• Athlete-centred approach
Athletes Characteristics
• Different physical
– Fitness
– Body build
– Senses
• Hearing, touch or pressure, balance, visual,
kinaesthetic
• Different personality
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Attitudes
Values
Attentional Style
Anxiety
Need to achieve
• Different backgrounds
• Different communication styles
Basic Fundamental
Emotional Needs
• The need to be accepted and to
belong
• The need to feel significant
• The need to feel capable or
competent
• The need to feel safe
Self-Esteem
• Belief in oneself, self-respect and
self-liking
• Sense of self worth
– Critical to learning
– Self-esteem enables people to believe
they are competent and worthwhile
and more willing to take on new
challenges
– Helps to become more compassionate,
responsible human beings
– Affect health, relationships,
competence, goals that are set and
achieved, performance and happiness
– Coach is a major contributor
Demonstrating that You
Care for and Accept Each
Individual Athlete
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Take athletes seriously
Listen carefully
Tell athletes you care for them
Touch respectively
Smile
Use simple hand gestures
Be sensitive to ethnic and racial
terminology
• Be sensitive to pronunciation of
names
• Provide sincere encounters
Encouragement
• Search for, identify and acknowledge
the athlete’s strengths
• Display faith and confidence in the
athlete’s abilities and judgements
• Give responsibility
• Avoid criticising mistakes, look for
logic behind mistakes instead
• Recognise effort and improvement
not just final achievements
Increasing Intrinsic
Motivation
• Provide for successful experiences
• Give rewards contingent on
performance
• Use verbal and nonverbal praise
• Vary content and sequence of
practice drills and activities
• Involve participants in decision
making
• Set realistic performance goals
Positive Reinforcement
• Choose effective reinforcers
• Ensure appropriate timing and
frequency
• Select behaviours to reward
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Successful approximations
Performance (not only outcome)
Effort
Emotional and social skills
• Provide knowledge of results
• Provide contingent, sincere
feedback
Principles of
Reinforcement
• Positive reinforcement
– “If doing something results in a good
consequence, people tend to try to
repeat the behaviour to receive
additional positive consequences”
(Weinberg & Gould, p. 138)
• Negative reinforcement
– “If doing something results in an
unpleasant consequence, people tend
to try not to repeat the behaviour to
avoid more negative consequences”
(Weinberg & Gould, p. 138)
Approaches Influencing
Behaviour
• Positive:
– Designed to strengthen desired
behaviours by motivating participants
to perform them and by rewarding
them when they occur
• Negative:
– Attempts to eliminate unwanted
behaviours through punishment and
criticism, thus primary motivation is
fear.
Punishment
• “A consequence that weakens or
suppresses a behaviour that
produces it “ (Williams, 1998, p.31)
• Punishment works by arousing fear,
if used excessively, punishment
promotes the development of a fear
of failure, (which equals a decrease
in performance)
• Side effects:
– unpleasant coaching situations that
hinder the learning of skills
– arouses resentment and hostility
– coaches need to look at their role
modelling for young people’s social
development
Guidelines for Using
Punishment
• Be consistent
• Punish the behaviour, not the
person
• Allow athletes’ input for making up
punishments
• Do not use physical activity as a
punishment
• Ensure punishment is not perceived
as a reward or getting attention
• Impose punishment impersonally
• Do not punish athletes for making
errors in performance
• Do not embarrass individuals
• Use punishment sparingly
Training Session
Management
• Refers to any
provisions
• Preventive:
that the coach
– The coach avoids
makes to
sources of
create an
disruption and
maintains
appropriate
appropriate
environment
athlete
for learning
behaviour
• Disciplinary:
– The coach
handles
inappropriate
behaviours as
they occur
Training Session
Management
• Preventive Management:
– The proactive rather than reactive
strategies coaches use to develop and
maintain a positive climate in which
minimal time is devoted to behaviours
• Managerial Task System
– Establishment of a structure to create
an appropriate learning environment.
It establishes the limits for behaviours
and expectations a coach has for
his/her athletes
Preventive Management
• Control initial activity
• Start sessions promptly and on time
• Establish and practise signals and
routines
• Coach proactively
• Use high levels of specific feedback
• Interact positively
• Avoid slow-downs and breaks
• Use management games
• Use brief and concise instructions
Skills for Preventive
Management
• Routines
• Prompts and hustles
• Positive reinforcement
• Games
Rules and Routines
• Routine:
– A procedure for performing specific
behaviours within a class setting,
behaviours that tend to recur
frequently and unless structured, can
potentially disrupt or delay the pace of
a session
• Rules
– defining acceptable or unacceptable
behaviour
Routines
• Entry
• Retrieve
• Warm-up
• Start
• Attention/quiet
• Boundaries
• Home base
• Finish
• Gain attention
• Leave
• Disperse
• Housekeeping
• Equipment
Guidelines for Rules
• Short and to the point
• Appropriate language
• 5-8 rules
• Stated positively
• Consistently applied
• Consistent consequences
• Willing to enforce
Non-Managerial Activities
• Content-related instructions
• Explanation of a game, activity
• Explanation or description of a skill
• Individual or group feedback
• Athletes are practising a skill or
activity or playing a game
Managerial Activities
• When the coach stops or interrupts
an activity and then resumes or
initiates a new activity
• Gathering for instruction
• Transition to new activities
• Telling personal stories, unrelated
to context
Barriers that Condemn
Athletes to Failure
• Having unrealistic athletic
expectations of the athletes
• Evaluating young athletes’ social
behaviour according to adult
standards or evaluating the athletes
on the basis of expectations that have
not yet been achieved
• Criticising or “dumping on” athletes
when they are already down.
• Talking too much and not allowing the
athletes to discover useful
explanations themselves
• Excessive directing
• Assuming the worst
• Maintaining standards that are too low
If you expect
perfection from
people, your whole
life is a series of
disappointments,
grumblings and
complaints