The Importance of Coaching in Sports

Globally, the importance of sports at the institutional level and across communities cannot be overemphasized . On the other hand, coaching, which can be defined as the creation of an environment that enables an athlete to attain levels of performance that might not have been imaginable if left to his/her deeds plays a central role. Consequently, various sport-related terms have formed part of the day to day conversations. These have subsequently influenced various aspects of the culture. For instance, the existence of Halls of Fames for all kinds of sports and at different levels of the profession exemplifies the place of sports in the society. These developments also serve to preserve the past achievements in these sports , and as a result, significantly influence the youth. On the other hand, sports stars act as role models for the youth in the society. Moreover, sports are perceived key economic drivers in the communities and the cities ( Ghildiyal, 2015) . This is both at the college and professional levels. In the United States (U.S), sport is a multi-million dollar per year business. In basketball, for instance, any institution participating in the NCAA Basketball Tournament gets up to half a million dollar worth of sponsorship per game. 

Sport and educational facilities are inseparable. Unlike any other educational aspect, sports teams can greatly push the name of an institution, resulting in a national or even global recognition ( Ghildiyal, 2015) . Having this in mind, the most efficient and forward-looking principals and presidents maintain a close eye on their sports programs. Moreover, these heads of institutions are involved in the selection of coaches. Interestingly, most of the presidents and principal gained their administrative experiences from coaching. Against this backdrop, the role of sport in institutional and societal advancement cannot be overstated . This is both regarding nurturing talent, generating income but also influencing generations of young people ( Coakley, 2000) . 

Assignment 1 

The sport has multiple and multifaceted positive functions in the society. Firstly, it is useful in tension and pattern maintenance. In this regard, sport acts as a secondary institution that serves to strengthen such primary institutions as schools, families, and churches. This is because through sports people can learn about the general life and their role in the society. Due to this, they become responsible members of the community . Secondly, sport can be used to promote societal integration. This is because the sport has the power to bring people together and give them a sense of unity. In this case, through sports nations have become united and people from diverse backgrounds can sit together and enjoy the games. Consequently, sports have been used as tools of promoting peace and unity across nations. Thirdly, sports are vital in advancing goal attainment in the society. For instance, through sports , people can competitively work towards achieving a set of goals . There is a consensus that sports allow people to participate and perform better in the other areas of life and society. Thirdly, sport is an important tool for adaptation. Through sports, athletes are better adapted to the society and the environment around them. The body develops physical strength and endurance that helps with the performance of daily activities. From experience, a significant number of my players have experienced tangible improvements in both academic performance and better family relations because of their involvement in sports. Likewise, through sports, I have personally been able to improve my time management skills ultimately becoming an excellent time manager. 

Due to the growth of sports, the theory of ‘sport as an opiate of masses’ has emerged. This theory opposes the widespread belief about the different benefits of sports ( Coakley, 2000). Subsequently, it outlines several negative attributes associated with sports. First, it suggests that sport intensifies alienation of people. Secondly, it argues that often sport is used by governments as a tool for coercion and social control. Finally, it also cites that sport is used as a tool that encourages nationalism, militarism, and sexism. However, I differ with this notion of sport as an opiate of masses. This is because sport serves to integrate people, foster unity, and improve social interactions. Likewise, it aids individuals in adapting to their environment and helps them in goal attainment. 

Assignment 2 

A notable statement about sports is that ‘the general approach that participants have towards sports is likely to influence the extent to which they will give priority to competitive behavior in sports events.’ I agree with this statement from a number of fronts. First, the approach is directly related to drive and motivation of sports participants. For instance, a team may approach a sport from the viewpoint that it is an opportunity for the members to showcase their best talent and enhance their individual potential. If this happens, such a team is highly likely to be competitive and to be geared more towards winning. From experience, I installed a personal perspective to sporting whereby each player was meant to look at sporting as an opportunity to nurture and consistently build on individual potential. This way all players were motivated to become the best versions of themselves and consequently they were more competitive. 

Assignment 3 

Recently, the knowledge base in physical education, exercise science, and sports management has expanded. Consequently, this has resulted in various positive impacts on both school and non-school athletic programs. In a bid to comprehensively understand the effects of this development, I interviewed the sports director of the neighbouring school. The director helped me gain insights on the impact physical education, exercise science, sports management to athletic programs of his school. According to him, through physical education, students have become better physically, and their quality of life has been greatly enhanced . Likewise, physical education has created a positive experience and better social development of the school. For instance, there was a group of students that was initially demotivated and disengaged. However, through the sport they became more motivated both academically and socially. The students’ physical strength and endurance were enhanced, and their academic performance improved tremendously. Consequently, cases of tension in school were significantly reduced , and this he directly attributes to the physical education exercises that students participated in . Further, the atmosphere in the school became tranquil, and the communication between teachers and students improved. 

Assignment 4 

The role of coaches in the development of sports and full attainment of full player potential is dependent on the guidance and experience of a coach. Besides motivating players, coaches are expected to create the ideal and most efficient conditions for enhancing learning. Since players are mostly already motivated, the primary role of the coach is to ensure that the player remains consistently motivated. Likewise, a coach is charged with the responsibility of generating enthusiasm and excitement. As a result, a coach carries out physical, psychological as well as emotional roles. Some of the personal roles include advisory. In this regard, a coach is charged with giving his or her athletes advice on the kind of training to be done as well as the most appropriate equipment and kit. Secondly, a coach takes the role of an assessor. In this case, he or she assesses the performance of athletes both during competitions and trainings . Thirdly, a successful coach is also a counselor . This entails addressing emotional issues with the affected team members. This is based on the premise that sharing of anxieties is both reassuring and relieving. Fourthly, a coach should be a good demonstrator. This entails demonstrating essential skills to the players so that they can perform. Further, a coach ought to be a friend. This is because a personal relationship is inevitable on working with players for a long time. 

The professional roles of a coach, on the other hand, include organizing. This entails planning in advance about the training area and equipment. Secondly, a coach should build rapport with all his or her players and show interest in their lives. Thirdly, a coach is responsible for providing safety of all athletes and equipment. This is not only during training but also throughout a sporting season. Further, a coach should be able to issue appropriate instructions and explanations to players. Therefore, he or she must think through and plan about what to say and how to present to the players. Finally, a good coach should be in a position to give feedback so as to encourage the players at the same time giving specific simple advice. 

Coaching Burnout occurs when a coach cannot handle any more pressure, has developed a negative attitude towards athletes or feels less satisfied with their accomplishments. Some of the factors that lead to coach burnout include time demand and working under pressure. It must be understood that that teaching and coaching are different when it comes to the instructional requirement, participant's motivation and skill. It is this difference that should be emphasized to delineate the two roles so as to prevent burn out. To deal with coaching burnout , it is vital to invest more in leisure activities and better nutrition. Likewise, it is crucial to avoid drugs and cultivate friendship. 

Assignment 5 

Young athletes depend on parents and coaches as their most influential adults in their life. Therefore, parental involvement shapes the extent of an athletes' participation in a given sport. Therefore, there is a need for an efficient communication channel between parents and coaches. This is because a coach is involved in the wholesome growth of an athlete, which includes constant contact with various family members. Therefore, one of the strategies that a coach can use in dealing with parents is first and foremost to identify the most important and critical issues concerning the school, game, student, and parent. There are two types of parents. These include those who are under-involved in their children’s’ progress and involvement in sports. Secondly, there are those who are over-involved. The over-involved parents pose a significant challenge to the coaches. This is because they are the primary cause of conflict between the student, teacher, and school. A technique that can be employed to address this challenge includes organizing frequent meetings between students, parents, and the coaching team. These meetings help to create an environment that fosters efficient communication and network among all these parties. 

To deal with the parents of all the athletes, I have employed five elements in my strategy. These include enhancing my approachability. This entails ensuring that all parents know that I am approachable, and therefore I care about addressing all their concerns. This way, the parents can share their concerns. Secondly, I discuss the distribution of playing time with the parents. Therefore, irrespective of talent, the parents are assured that their child will be given an opportunity to play. Thirdly, I avoid talking to upset parents , until they are in a state that allows for a healthy conversation. Fourthly, to promote respect and ensure that all concerns are addressed , I insist on talking to only one parent at a time. Lastly, I ensure that I give an ear to all the parents. This ensures that each airs his or her grievances fully before I can share my take on the issues raised. 

Assignment 6 

The level of physical fitness of athletes is most often at different development levels. My role as a coach is to identify the needs of each player separately, and coming up with strategies for assisting to each carry out their exercises without overworking their bodies. The five important pointers of physical fitness include; body, agility, balance, power, and coordination . On the other hand, the health related tips are; body composition, aerobic power, flexibility and muscular endurance . However, power and muscular strength serve an irreplaceable role with regard to performance. This is because these components that determine how far an athlete can stretch himself or herself towards excellence. 

Assignment 7 

The fundamental principles of physical conditioning are as follows; 

Specificity : this entails what an individual exercises to be and which specific parts of the body are being worked out. 

Overload : this is the amount of work and stress that is imposed above the average point to which an individual is adapted. 

Intensity : the energy used in a unit of time increases the power so that a given individual is working at the highest percentage of maximum. 

Progression : during training, an athlete progresses from easy to hard, simple to complex and so forth. 

Duration : this is the length of the training time and varies depending on an individual’s specific workout. 

Regularity ; depending on the goals of the athlete, exercises need to be regular for better results. 

Recovery ; adequate recovery time is a necessity after each workout. During the recovery time, the body adapts to the stress placed upon it during training. 

The normal target zone of an individual is about 60% to 80 % of a person ’s maximal heart rate for 30 minutes. This intensity can be increased from 70% to 90%. However, care should be taken not to increase intensity and duration at the same time. Informed by the principle of progression, if weight remains the same, the accompanying cardiovascular workout should be increased by 10%, and if the cardiorespiratory exercise remains the same, then weight should be increased by 10%. 

Assignment 8 

My program will include children aged between 10 to 15 years. Against this backdrop, the 10 point goals of conditioning statement for my resistance training program, which will be distributed to both parents and athletes is as follows; 

Children should be psychologically and physiologically ready to participate in the resistance training program. 

The children should have realistic expectations of what they want to achieve 

The exercise area should be safe and free from any hazards 

The exercising equipment should be in good condition 

All training sessions should be supervised . 

Progression should be achieved by increasing weights. 

Every child should feel comfortable with the program. 

Clear instructions should be spelled out. 

The sessions should be balanced to exercise critical body parts 

Children should be encouraged to drink plenty of fluids before during and after the activities. 

Assignment 9 

Before a player joins a school's soccer team, her speed and agility need to be tested . Sheppard and Young define agility in their 2006 review as "a rapid whole-body movement with change of velocity or direction in response to a stimulus." The set of drills I will use to test the player's speed and agility include the following; 

Partner Ball Tag: This is a perfect drill for testing player’s agility. In this drill , players are required to scan the yard looking for taggers and the soccer ball. As they react to the movement of the taggers care has to be taken not to get tagged and eliminated. The player left without being tagged win the game. 

The Driving Test: In this drill, players are forced to react to commands from the coach. Therefore, they need to accelerate, decelerate and change their direction at a moment's notice. The commands that the coach calls out randomly include, go, stop, speed up, slow down, turn right and left turn. This is an excellent drill for measuring the speed of the player. 

The principle of progression demands that a player’s task be increased from simple to complex and from easy to hard. In the above drills, the coach can use this principle to test whether the players are progressing on well. 

Assignment 10 

The targeted athletes will be between 10 and 15 years old. However, each athlete needs to improve their personal fitness and psychological well-being , and control body weight to achieve optimal performance. Every athlete should be able to identify needs that are unique to them. This includes the abdominal muscle weakness, the fitness level, muscle strength. Further, the athletes need to improve their cardiorespiratory fitness. In this regard, the drills will include walking, running, swimming, cycling, rowing and endurance games activities. Ultimately, the focus will be on the intensity, duration, frequency and rate of progression. Secondly, the athletes will be needed to improve their muscular strength and endurance. Consequently, weight training exercises that replicate actual movement will be chosen . Specificity, intensity, progressive overload and frequency are the guidelines that should be followed so that each and every athlete achieves their goals while training. 

Assignment 11 

The drive theory articulates that an increase in drive results to an increase in the probability of good performance and is a linear or proportional relationship. An increase in the arousal leads to an increase in dominant response. On the other hand, lack of sufficient dominant response increases the probability of poor performance. The inverted U theory, on the contrary, states that at the initial stage when arousal increases so does the performance up to an optimal level. A further increase in arousal results in a decrease in performance. Further, exceptional skills require lower levels of arousal while gross skills require higher levels of arousal. 

Assignment 12 

In relation to optimal performance, arousal refers to how intense, nervous, charged up and emotionally activated an athlete looks before or during a performance. An increase in the level of arousal makes the complexity of the task easy. This is because the athlete is fired up and thus handles the job with so much ease. The relationship between arousal and skill level is linear. In this regard, an increase in the level of arousal puts the athlete in a position to use their skill better. Increased arousal may also increase the trait anxiety of the athletes up to a certain level. Finally, arousal is directly related to physical fitness and leads to an athlete going the extra mile to get their body in shape. 

Assignment 13 

Imagery as a standard arousal control technique in coaching works like programming control. In this regard, one creates an experience in their subconscious mind, and the mind acts on it. The mind finds difficulty in differentiating between what is real and what is imagined . Therefore, imagery can be used to help athletes relax, set goals, reduce anger and pain, increase self-confidence and improve self-awareness. Imagery perfectly works during basketball training where players can be asked to close their eyes and imagine they are dribbling a ball. This technique goes a long way in ensuring efficiency and time management. 

Assignment 14 

Building an athlete’s mental skills is a very crucial component of coaching. A coach needs to focus first on the foundation skills such as self-awareness, self-confidence, and productive thinking. Secondly, skills that lead to exceptional athletic performance should be looked into . These skills include attention focus and perceptual-cognitive skills. After building the performance skills, the focus should then be turned to personal development skills like energy management, identity achievement, and interpersonal competence. Finally, an athlete needs to have team skills like leadership, communication, team confidence and cohesion. All the above skills comprise the package that each coach should give to their teams for better mental performance. These pointers will be incorporated into my training program from one component to another. 

Assignment 15 

In my school and community, various situations could have put my school and club at risk. The different scenarios include; 

Case 1: This involved a player who was sick, and I felt he was not in a good state of health to play. The player later included his family who insisted that I should include his name in the team for the competitions, but I stood my ground and refused to do this. The following day the player was hospitalized for not taking adequate rest as advised by the doctor. 

Case 2: In this case, my team had not done enough preparations, yet the interschool tournament was around the corner. As a result, I held the players on the field during training for long hours and even asked them to come for more training on Sunday afternoons. After two weeks I could clearly see signs of fatigue and hence canceled the training to avoid overworking them. 

Case 3: One of my players got injured while training but he kept it to himself because he wanted to be part of the squad playing over at the weekend. To hide this, he strained and pretended that he was okay during training sessions. However, after a while I noticed this and after further inquiry took the student to a hospital where he received medical attention. 

Assignment 16 

The case 1 above requires a coach to know how to handle parents and students during training. The rules about playing and regulations governing who should play and who should not be availed for all parents to read and understand. Case 2 requires that coaching should be handled professionally and all the training sessions geared towards adequately helping the players to become better without causing any harm to them. Therefore my intervention was timely and therefore I was able to salvage the problem before its escalation. Case 3 requires that coaches should be very keen and observant with players. Subsequently, each coach should be able to guide and advise his or her players. Further, players ought to be told the risks of playing when not in good body condition. 

Assignment 17 

The bottom-line for coaches that should guide their daily dealings with athletes is always to use common sense and efficiently push players to be the best version of themselves. In this regard, coaches should attend relevant seminars so as to know how to ensure that they are current as regards techniques, safety, concerns and sensible approaches to sports. By increasing knowledge of their respective sport and keeping eyes open, the coaches are in a position to achieve excellent results in their sport both inside the field and outside. 

References  

Coakley, J. J. (2000). Sport in society : An inspiration or an opiate. Sports in Contemporary Society: An Anthology. New York: Macmillan , 20-37. 

Ghildiyal, R. (2015). Role of Sports in the Development of an Individual and Role of Psychology in Sports. Mens sana monographs , 13 (1), 165.