Sports coaching: what is it and what are its benefits

Coaching is a discipline that has become very fashionable in recent years. And although it receives some criticismIf the professional who applies it is well trained, it can provide excellent results for people's personal, professional, educational and sports development.

Today we will talk about sports coaching, a proposal that allows you to maximize the potential of an athlete or athlete.

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Different types of coaching

Coaches guide people through the process of change and help them achieve their full potential within a variety of areas and improve their well-being. They can work with individuals who want to achieve their life goals (Life Coaching: the secret to achieve your goals), with managers to better manage the deal with staff (Coaching for companies: what does it consist of and what are its benefits?) and even with professors and teachers (Educational Coaching: a tool to learn and teach better).

But the coach not only works with the coachees (client of the coach) individually, but can also do it with groups of people and work or sports teams. In this area, he allows the adoption of strategies to maximize

the learning and management potential of psychological resources useful to achieve a goal.

Coaching is a methodology that helps to overcome those limiting beliefs that prevent us, many times, from staying halfway between what we really want and what we can achieve.

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The origin of sports coaching

The relationship between coaching and sport is a reality already from the origins of this discipline. In fact, coaching as we know it today was born in the United States in the 70s, specifically in the field of sports. His main precursor was Timothy Gallwey, a tennis player that he later became a coach. He realized the importance of psychological aspects in achieving goals and in sports performance in general. In his book The Inner game of tennis, published in 1974, reveals his ideas about coaching, which would later be used in other fields, especially work.

Now, the origins of coaching go further in time, since, for example, the contributions of Socrates and his methodical dialogue known as maieutics, the concept of self-realization of humanistic psychology, whose maximum exponent is Abraham Maslow, or the well-known practice of Emotional intelligence initially proposed by Daniel Goleman, have shaped this discipline.

Benefits of sports coaching

Sports coaching brings many benefits for athletes. But what are these benefits?

1. Helps to get to know each other better

Sports coaching allows athletes to get to know each other better, because they develop Intelligence Emotional and learn to use tools to discover their own limits and impulses that stop all their potential. With sports coaching self-knowledge improves, which is key to personal and sports development.

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2. Helps to plan realistically

Self-knowledge also allows us to know which path we want to take, and helps to plan realistically. This is key because it helps keep your feet on the ground and prevents frustration.

3. Allows you to reach the maximum potential

With the help of coaches, athletes develop resources, competencies and skills that allow you to maximize your performance and potential. Coaching makes athletes go further by helping them remove mental barriers.

4. Helps overcome limiting beliefs

Limiting beliefs act as a barrier to reaching the potential that an athlete possesses, since the Mind can be our worst enemy if we are not aware of how these negative thoughts affect.

The sports coach offers the coachee techniques and resources that are aimed at enhancing talent at its best. In other words, sports coaching makes it possible to identify weaknesses, but also take responsibility for the change and take action to overcome any obstacles.

5. It favors the management of emotions

Emotions can help or hinder athletic performance. Thanks to coaching, athletes are able to know and regulate their own feelings, emotions, beliefs, judgments and coping strategies. Something that, without a doubt, allows to obtain better results.

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6. Increase motivation

Sports coaching is key to planning and setting realistic goals, but also to staying in the present moment and getting feedback on how we are behaving. Coaching is motivating because the person discovers their own motivations and achieves a greater capacity for challenge and ambition.

7. Increase concentration and higher performance

Staying in the present moment and acquiring a high level of awareness also promotes concentration and increases performance.

Furthermore, since coaching allows athletes to connect with themselves in the here and now, so that they reach the state where the level of difficulty of the task and the motivation required to carry it out are in near perfect balance. What is known as “flow status”.

8. Reduce frustration

Realistic goals and well-planned objectives help maintain high self-esteem, since people do not live by irrational expectations and are less frustrated. Coaching establishes medium and long-term action plans, so it is beneficial to go step by step and live in the here and now.

9. Empower leadership

Coaching empowers athletes, who feel responsible for their own actions thanks to this methodology. Athletes have greater capacity for learning, decision-making power and acquire a positive mindset in the face of change.

10. Improve group cohesion

Coaching can be done individually; however, and especially in the world of sports, group coaching sessions or team coaching can be carried out. When a group feels united and pursues a common goal, it is easy for them to perform at a high level. Coaching increases the feeling of belonging, discipline and improve relationships within the team.