Coach Athletes Relationship

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Task B: The Coach Athlete Relationship: The Role of Communication on Athlete Performance: Swimming competitively is all about swimming the set distance as quick as possible in the least amount of time, and at the elite level, every procedure which could ‘shave’ even a few hundredths of a second off of an athlete’s time, is carried out to ensure the athletes’ reach their maximum potential! Although many factors can impact athletes’ intrinsic and self-determined extrinsic motivation, top sports psychologists and behaviour analysts such as Ryan et al. (1984); Dwyer (1995); Beauchamp et al., (1996); Vallerand and Losier (1999), argue that it is the coach–athlete relationship which poses as the most important influences on athletes’ motivation …show more content…

This is perhaps the base upon which any coach athlete relationship is built, therefore it can be the ‘make-or-break’ element of skill acquisition for athletes and, thus, play a big part in increasing the likelihood of continuity and opportunity for personal achievement. Because of the variance in age, the swimmers were split into appropriate groups accordingly. This must have been communicated at the start of the season, as, before the start of each session, the athletes would line up in their respective groups and prepare for the session by completing a predetermined routine of stretching and various dry-side exercises, led by the most senior member of each group. This is an indication of the coach’s style of coaching as he enforces a cognitive approach, Piaget (1971) and Vygotsky (1983), to learning by encouraging the athletes to take ownership and lead part of the …show more content…

Because he has been there for over four years now with more or less the same group of swimmers, he has built up a solid relationship with each swimmer whereby they have a good rapport between each other however, the athletes know what is expected of them and what he wants. This is a key feature that demonstrates the strength of the bond between athlete and coach (Jowett, 2007). Upon his arrival in Cambridge, the coach had to go in, effectively ‘guns blazing’ as the previous head coach was very slack with the team and they were not very disciplined. This lead to a massive squad overhaul as some athletes failed to adapt to the new standard and high bar the coach had set. Although his methods were criticised at the start, there can be no doubts that he is efficient as the squad’s dramatic improvement in performance in the pool is reflected in their results and significantly higher national

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