Sports Psychology
Anshel, Mark H.

Give a full explanation of exactly what it is that a sports psychologist does.

It wasn't until the mid-1960s that sports psychology made great strides to become the scientific discipline that it is today. The current professional sports psychology organizations provide scholars and practitioners with a national and international identity as a scientific discipline. This allow members to exchange ideas, communicate research experiences, hear and interact with others in their area, debate and perhaps make decisions about controversial issues and bring these ideas into practice in their own departments.

A sports psychologist engages in a multi-disciplinary area of study and practice. As a field of psychology, it includes most of the traditional psychology areas of group behavior and environmental factors affecting a person's emotions and actions, developmental changes in cognition and behavior, the cognitive links between thoughts, emotions and performance, educational learning and remembering, clinical examination of personal issues requiring professional guidance. In particular, exercise psychology links with health psychology for maintaining the physical body in tip-top shape.

The clinical services help athletes experiencing emotional problems of depression, anorexia, panic, etc. While laws vary from state to state, only professionals licensed to practice should provide treatment.

Teaching sports psychology typically involves a university campus or community seminars, or consulting with teams and individual athletes. Techniques of relaxation, concentration, imagery and coping strategies for stress management exemplify these cognitive skills.

Sports psychologists provide treatments for athletic performances. This can lead to conflicting claims of effectiveness. Problems can easily arise from linking mental skills and performance outcomes. Widespread criticisms can result from scientific evidence not supporting verbal arguments of consistent improvements in measurements of psychological programs. Be aware that superlative claims can and will be viewed skeptically. This can impact the consulting role when working with coaches or athletes.

Discuss the general basic behavioral characteristics of an athlete.

Highly successful athlete take risks. A risk, in sports, can be associated with physical injury during competitive events. Risks narrow the margin of safety both physically and psychologically in terms of the changes of failure. The athlete's perception of danger creates excitement and a desire to master the environment.

Along with risks, stimulus-seeking ranks high with athletes. They enjoy the challenge in competitive sports. These stimuli are generally kinesthetic in nature. Some athletes push to a chronic level of activation. Some sports obviously qualify as high-risk taking: hang gliding, bungee-cord jumping, while others, such as bowling, are considered sedate.

All athletes want to win, they thrive on competition. Three dimensions of competitiveness have been suggested: competitiveness (strive for success in competition), win orientation (focus on winning and avoid losing), and goal orientation (focus on personal goals).

Self-confidence scores as the highest mental state for success in sports competition. The athlete believes in their own ability to be successful in performing the desired skill. Positive emotions always accompany self-confidence: improved concentration, increased effort, lower susceptibility to mental distractions, reduced muscular tension, improved ability to remember and use game strategies and more rapid and accurate decision making.

The attentional style orients the athlete towards the environment. This may be internal, external, narrow, or broad. The specific task at the moment determines the style. Elite athletes can shift attention when and where necessary.

Athletes expect success. Expectations of success too high can result in upsets in sports as the athletes are expected to win easily do not perceive their opponents as threatening to their continued success. However, low expectations of success becomes self-fulfilling. Competitors optimal motivation seems to be about a 50 percent chance of winning.

Stress regulation keeps athletes cool under tight situations. Stress signs a true champion as they take risks when they are uptight, anxious or too aroused. The idea lies not in stress elimination, but in coping with proper techniques. The ability to cope with failure represents another aspect of stress.

Elite athletes put less effort and intensity into practice than they do in the competitive event. They seem to produce a level of energy and skill during serious competition that exceeds their achievements during practice. When it comes to physical training, they go all-out to get into and maintain tip-top shape all season.

Athletes feel increasingly confident with detailed competition plans and have contingency plans if things do not go as expected. They feel capable of coping and adapting to unusual situation that arise during a contest. And before the contest, they prefer to remain alone and tend to use relaxation techniques while reviewing individual and team strategies, image successful performances and verbalize self-statements to promote self-confidence.

They don't worry about other competitors before a contest. While they acknowledge the other contestants strengths, this doesn't consume their energies. They can certainly be nervous and tense. This translates into high levels of controlled arousal as a desirable state. When troubled, stressed or too excited they can regain their composure. Their concentration on the upcoming event can be total.

Skilled athlete accurately assess how well they will do in the upcoming competition as they are keenly aware of their own mental and physical status. Unfamiliar environments do not affect their performance.

When fatigued, they concentrate more on technique and effort rather than outcome. This concentration distracts them from fatigue and reduces the possibility of injuries and helps in maintaining proper form and performance quality. They fight pain and fatigue without succumbing. They even continue when injured and don't give-up.

Poor calls by officials may be annoying, but they can definitely be withstood.

Each contest brings the elite athlete closer toward some inner goal. Coaches, teammates and even spectators provide feedback for this process as they continue to hone their strategies.

Describe the coach's role in preparing players for a game.

Coaches must appreciate each player as an individual. Coaches cannot, therefore, get into the heart and mind of each player and force a certain feeling. Each player reacts differently and thus processes internal experiences differently than anyone else. This illustrates the heart of the "T-E-A-M" approach so widely supported. In this strategy, everyone on the team goes through the same mental and physical preparation before a contest. While this can be effective for some players, others, particularly at the advanced level, prepare for contest in their own way: by being alone, by being in company, while being with other friends.

Sometimes players need to "psyche-down" from pre-contest emotions. Stress results from the body's fight-or-flight reaction to emotional states. It is, of course, not possible to release this emotion until the contest begins. Some athlete respond to brisk movement. A high arousal sport such as football may require brisker movements than a low arousal sport such as golf. The traditional warm-up exercises help tremendously. There have been, however, warnings about overuse of this activity.

A coach must consider the player as an individual: skill level, age, psychological needs, position and task. Younger players generally require less psyching up than older players. Less skillful players need to focus on form, concentration and planned maneuvers. The ability to control both positive and negative emotions improves with age. In particular, younger players are more susceptible to the deleterious effects of disapproval and negative feedback from significant others than are older athletes.

Timing can be an important factor. Despite convention to the contrary, getting the team excited about a game the night before is probably not a good idea as it disturbs sleep and concentration. Some coaches play visual aids of previous contests. This has merit in reminding the team of potential progress and refreshes them on the opponents. Another approach would be to play the team's best previous performances to instill a sense of self-confidence and to remind athletes of their past successes.

For psychological arousal to produce effective heart rate, respiration rate, muscular tension, and brain wave activity it must be used for optimal levels, not maximal levels. Techniques would include increasing voice intensity, using bright indoor lighting, generating loud noises such as clapping, foot stomping, or fast-paced music, physical contact with the athlete, using players' first names, setting immediate performance goals, and introducing players to the crowd before the contest.

What are the eight attributions used to motivate athletes, and how do they work?

1. Knowing when to use the internal and external attributions. Usually coaches should not promote the use the use of external attributions of task difficulty or luck to explain the lack of goal achievement or not meeting expectations. A better approach would involve indicating that future effort must be increased for success rather than blaming the official, bad luck, skill difficulty or a superior opponent. Using these external attributions for failure might promote the feeling that the player can do little to change present or future outcomes. The incentive for improvement vanishes. In such circumstances, statements that degrade a player's self-esteem cannot be helpful at all.

2. Know when to use task difficultly attributions. Attributing failure to a difficult task is common among good athletes. While difficulties can be useful in attribution, they also prevent low self-confidence, poor self-esteem, and low ability attributes. If the athlete's expectations were high, then feelings of low ability or helplessness may still occur.

3. Teach skills. Nothing is more important than learning skills and performing them proficiently. Skill development improves performance and reduces feelings of helplessness for athletes of all ages. Poor skills promote continued failure. Quality education provides quality feedback for performance improvement.

4. Create sports situations that foster success. Match opponents based on age, skill and physical maturity. A gross mismatch does not provide adequate skill practice and presents a psychological maladjustment.

5. Avoid comparing athletes. "Why can't you be like Harry?" Such comparative statements reduce feelings of self-confidence. Talking about the superior skills of an older, more experienced team member will not hurt if proper objective criteria based on standards and reasonable expectations frame the discussion. "Darlene is playing ahead of you because she is aggressive in getting rebounds," demonstrates a skill based criteria that helps the less-skill player understand why the current positioning was made. Also, the player kept back can view the game with a special interest in improving skills from the bench. A general subjective statement such as "Darlene is a better player than you," will not elicit such a response. Be sensory specific.

6. Offer supportive verbal and nonverbal messages. This is most important. Athletes must feel accepted. Support such as "Good job," "Nice try," "Great dribbling," and nonverbals such as a thumbs up communicate a sense of acceptance, recognition and approval. Guilt inducers such as "You bums, you can't hit your way out of a wet paper bag," or nonverbals such as looking the other way when the athlete passes cannot help.

7. Be positive when evaluating external factors. Difficulties already abound and a coach downplaying an athlete's success will not help. Attributing success to luck or an inferior opponent only insults the players. An effective luck attribute could be, "We played well today, but the other team had a few good breaks and won. Keep up the good work."

8. Reflect reality in attribution. Be honest and treat people with respect. Athletes are people too and know what is happening. This means if a player has misjudged a ball that should have been caught, internal attribution of effort and ability is appropriate.

9. Avoid effort attributes for failure when the outcome is based on physiological parameters. Thus if a distance runner is not successful (the coach's definition of success), then saying "You didn't try enough" may be inaccurate. Athletes whose performance is based on physiological measures of strength, speed, or cardiovascular endurance can then avoid effort attributions for failure because there is no doubt about the effort they expended.

Explain the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Give an original example of each.

Cognition and motivation theory provide insight into the connections between a person's thoughts and how these thoughts influence actions. The cognition approach to motivation uses goal-directed behavior as a basis. Deci has postulated two primary drives or innate needs that compel a person toward goal-directed behavior. A person must feel competent and be self-determining in coping and interacting with the environment. A person who experiences success tends to attribute it to high ability. The activity causes an internal sense of enjoyment and participation continues. A person who participates in activity for its enjoyment and without an external reward possesses an intrinsic motivation. In sports, this ability creates a person's ability to participate and continue to improve. Actions continue to voluntarily assert themselves and they remain a pleasure inducing activity.

Typical research on internal motivation includes the measure of a person's baseline of motivation for performing a task. Comparisons can be made between an intervention provided to one group and not another with an associated followup in an attempt to assess each person's intrinsic motivation to the task. Another approach involves recording the extent to which a person persists in practicing a task that involves no external demand or reward. For example, studies have been made of intrinsic motivation using "successful imagery" while learning a putting task. The length of time practicing the task served as the primary measure of intrinsic motivation. The group that used imagery performed golf putting significantly longer than control subjects that did not use imagery. The researchers reasoned that mental rehearsal provided an expectation of success and self-confidence, both of which have been associated with intrinsic motivation.

An interesting intrinsic motivation I assisted involved pistol shooting in lieu of a lunch hour. The woman used mental imagery to "blow away" the various people who annoyed her in the working environment. She projected their image onto the targets and became quite proficient at releasing stress in this manner. I assisted her with pistol training exercises I read involving Milton Erickson working with the Olympic pistol team. Her shooting score increased to such as extent that she consistently out-shot the person that was teaching her to shoot. She attributed this dramatic increase to consistent practice along with her internal images of "stress busting." To my knowledge, she had no great interest in extrinsic motivations such as trophies, prizes or other oscial adaptations.

Extrinsic motivation uses external factors such as money or trophies as anticipatory goals. As expected, intrinsically motivated behaviors yield more enjoyment and the person's self-image become more enhanced as compared to extrinsically motivated actions. Albert Einstein has stated that his studies alone are reward enough, that the "lust" for fame or money does not exist. However, an intrinsically motivated person also offered extrinsic rewards can begin to care about the score and winning and losing.

I briefly attempted to assist an individual wanting to satisfy his father with a golf trophy. While he admitted that he has little interest in golf, he explained that his father always wanted him to be a golf "pro." Since my client had no deep abiding interest in golf, he simply wanted me to "hypnotize" him into being good enough to win a local prize of two. When I began to work on his own internal state by eliciting meta programs and values and then start ranking them, he began to realize that he was the person in charge. In the short time we worked, I was not able to access that part of him that had this conflict. I felt that the important work would lie within and that once he became congruent within, his golf game, should he continue with this "interest," would improve significantly on its own. He was not able to accept this and only wanted a quick fix to his problem. He left because I was not able to provide the quick fix he wanted. His extrinsic motivation could be be fulfilled.

Compare and contrast the fustration-aggression hypothesis with the social and learning theory.

The frustration-aggression hypothesis derives from a skilled competitor not meeting goals and not satisfying personal needs and the resulting anger. The authors of this hypothesis, Dollard and colleagues at Yale University, propose that aggressive behavior follows as a logical consequence to frustration. Examples of direct aggression that tend to support this abound.

What happens without a possibility of direct retaliation? Behavior called displaced aggression replaces the direct destruction of the source of frustration. Teammates could experience heightened aggression in frustrated attempts to score a goal. More than mere frustration can trigger an aggressive response. Other aspects of the response include strength and intensity of the frustration, frequency of occurrence, and the degree of interference. An example that can happen in normal circumstances would be a player attempting, unsuccessfully, to overpower an opponent. The player could try many times and then resort to aggressive behavior instead of accepting "defeat."

This hypothesis does not elicit acceptance from everyone. Certainly not all frustration leads to aggression. Certainly people with low self-esteem or low ability tend to withdraw from the activity or reduce their efforts. Another limitation comes from the assumption that if aggression is the response to frustration, then the release of this frustration, through competition or watching a violent movie, should have a cathartic effect. Studies have shown, however, that this link does not exist. To the contrary, aggression often increases after players observe others engaging in aggressive activity.

Explain the various roles that a coach is required to play.

Managing the various individuals on a team while attempting to coordinate their external behaviors into a cohesive group action involves the application of many skills. Each player requires a different approach to training and coaching. Effective coaches realize their own strengths and weaknesses.

The most external role of a coach would be as the leader of the team. Examples of this effective leadership would include taking credit for the failure of the team; giving direction during practice; devising and implementing strategies; and conveying expectations to each player.

The flip side of a leader would be a follower. Good coaches must be followers as well. They know when not to lead, when to respect and be sensitive to the needs and decisions of others and when to respond sincerely and honestly to the input of others. A true group leader does not have to constantly display dominance over the team. An effective coach empowers assistant coaches with their own areas of responsibility and allows them many freedoms in implementation.

An effective coach educates players and assistant coaches. Players make progress by developing skills and thus become more creative, self-assured and successful. Coaches need to permit athletes to think independently of the coach's directions and to respond creatively to unanticipated actions. As a result of this ongoing learning strategy, an effective coach responds to feedback and continues to improve his own skills by attending workshops, seminars, and reading.

As a role model, a coach has the opportunity to influence more than just the immediate players. Coaches must be aware of this function and behave congruently in demonstrating the same rules and expectations expected of the players. Maintaining a double standard invites distrust and cannot provide a credible, long lasting model of excellence.

Reasonable and realistic expectations must be required of players. Irrational or erratic demands on players cannot succeed. Sometimes coaches must restrict certain behaviors in preparation for certain goals and plays must understand and accept the reasoning behind these restrictions. These "rules" also provide players with a face-saving manner of refusing certain illicit substances, such as drugs, in party settings, "If my coach finds out, I'll be dismissed from the team."

An effective coach is an approachable coach. Coaches that wall themselves off cannot communicate with the team and thus lose important feedback mechanisms. Players must be able to risk communicating possibly negative or disturbing thoughts to the team leader. Without rapport counseling cannot succeed.

Should a coach ever be a player's friend? Do they belong to the same peer group even though they have the same interests and share many of the same friends? The simple answer is no. Players want someone to admire and respect. Someone that cannot let them down in times of need. The older, more experienced coach is viewed in a very different light than a teammate or friend. Expectations of friends and coaches are very different. However, elements of friendship exist in a coach-player relationship. Coaches should have meaningful interactions available to communicate to players in any environment. Coaches get players out of trouble, lend them money, pat them on the back, laugh, cry and protect them. This results, to a greater extent, in a parent substitute role rather than a friend role. Many of the coaches goals mesh with the parent's goals.

What are the "ten commandments of effective communication" in sport. Explain what is meant by each one.

The ten commandments are considered so important in the process of affecting athletes' attitudes, feelings and behaviors that these guidelines have been provided a biblical name to hallow them into the minds of coaches everywhere.

1. Thou shall be honest. An effective coach has credibility. If a coach cannot be believed, how can they do their job? Sometimes dishonest may be used as a counseling device, "Don't worry, that error couldn't be avoided." Other times simple mistakes occur and a coach may forget or a coach cannot enforce a promise. Honesty can be taken too far. Coaches should not think that they need to tell players what they really think all the time. Being brutally honest with a player could lead to very destructive impressions. Coaches are people too, and sometimes they view things pessimistically. Conveying an honest assessment while in this state will benefit neither the coach nor the player.

2. Thou shall not be defensive. Other ways of saying this would be "Be a good listener," or "Be receptive to the opinions of others." Be open to new ideas and receptive to feedback relating to your own coaching performance. This includes players and assistant coaches. As an active listener, a coach displays concern about the content, the intent and the feelings of the message. Coaches also rely on their assistant coaches. By relying on others, others feel part of the winning strategy and become more motivated to properly perform their own part in the team.

3. Thou shall be consistent. A coach that fosters communications one day and deliberately breaks rapport the next will not be viewed in a favorable light. Suspicious feelings will build a barrier to further rapport attempts. As guidelines, begin by passing kind and encouraging words whenever possible. Go so far as to acknowledge the performance of an opponent (but not during a game) as a broader indication of athletic rapport. Recognize the feelings of others and greet people with a smile. An open door policy, should you choose to have one, should be sincere. Discipline should be consistent, the punishment should fit with the circumstances or credibility will be lost. Any discipline should be wary with "favorites" because an effective coach has no favorites.

4. Thou shall be empathic. Various phrases indicate a desirability of second position: "How would you feel...?" "How do you think about being lied/ignored/rejected/praised/accepted/... ?" While the answers may be obvious, many people in roles of power commonly ignore the feelings of others. The ability of a coach to enter into second position works wonders in establishing rapport.

5. Thou shall not be sarcastic. Coaches or parents with an acid tongue do not win. Sarcastic remarks erect a sound barrier and destroys self-confidence and self-esteem. Sarcasm only reinforces the traits attacked. Respect floats away on the sound of that sarcastic sound bite. How can an athlete be expected to feel competent, motivated and loyal to the coach after receiving messages whose contents serve to deflate a status of athlete, person or teammate? The author has concluded that the biggest mistakes a coach can make is an actual insult followed by sarcastic remarks. These sins are almost unforgivable in the eyes of an athlete and certainly won't be forgotten.

The intent of a remark may be gallows humor. Whether or not laughter follow remains irrelevant as the laughter is never genuine. And what of the other players listening to these remarks? What is the impact on them? Sincerity says, "I care about you," and is inherent in effective communications. Sarcasm says, "I don't respect you," and attacks the individual's personality.

6. Thou shall praise and criticize behavior, not personality. Some have asserted that praising and criticizing character or personality is never constructive. The reason would be that character and personality are such nominalizations that no information is conveyed. Learning to praise takes practice. Common mistakes of praising character would be, "What a nice person you can be. What a great ball player you are. What incredible athletic ability you demonstrate." Instead, offer "I liked the way you hit that ball. Nice blocking. Great footwork in that skirmish."

Two types of praise should be avoided, personally-based and judgemental praise. Telling an athlete they are the "best", played a great game, are better than someone else, or did a "super" job might sound good at the moment, but such statements do nothing to reinforce the behavior that led to the desired outcome. The judgemental praise should be avoided because it create anxiety and evokes defensiveness. Applauding the athlete's efforts with superlative such as "great" and "the best" brings on feelings of discomfort, especially for younger players.

Cardinal rules for praise are: Describe without evaluating. Report, do not judge. Let athletes evaluate themselves.

The sandwich approach delivers effective criticism. An athlete knows when an error occurs and they typically anticipate a negative remark. They bring up their filter to delete such a negative remark from the coach. With the sandwich approach, deliver a positive statement, then a future oriented, positive feedback statement, then a behavior based compliment. An example could be, "That was a tough play, Rob. Next time, remember to do `x' in that situation. I'm seeing good improvement, Rob. Stay with it."

Constructive criticism is not some black art. Criticism has a bad name because most of us who criticize others do so for sinister reasons - usually to hurt the other person. The problem lies not with criticism, but its content. The main function of constructive criticism is to indicate what must be done in the situation. Helpful criticism never addresses itself to the player's personality. Remarks are aimed toward the condition in the environment, what has to be done, while not attacking the person. A three step approach has been offer: 1) Describe the situation in sensory based terms, 2) explain how it affects the team and 3) tell the other person what behaviors should be done. A description in sensory based term removes emotions from the situation. A description of "Only a stupid player would do that" cannot arise because judgemental terms do not fit the model. Instead offer, "I noticed you were not looking the right way. Your hands and body movements were not directed toward your opponent." A description stripped of emotional content. This sensory based descriptions should be used throughout the criticism. This method takes practice.

7. Thou shalt respect the integrity of others. Emotions usually deemed inherent in coaching include anger, frustration, and disappointment. Effective coaches learn to express these feelings without losing respect for the athlete.

Anger exists. Anger rarely feels good. Anger supposedly releases strong emotions and permits the person to "relax." Our response to anger usually expresses itself as guilt, shame, an upset stomach or a headache. Does the technique using anger to arouse, motivate or condemn work as some coaches suggest? Can there be a right way and a wrong way to express anger? The typical anger response emotes irrational statements and behaviors. Anger can have its time and place. As a matter of fact, failure to express anger during practice or a game can convey to the athlete an indifference. Don't shun anger altogether. In particular, a coach can use anger during a halftime to express his genuine objection to the team not using the hours of practice in preparation of the sporting event. The anger should be expressed in behavioral terms, and not on personal attacks. Examples would include observations that what the coach observed as plays during the first half were contrary to what was practiced, the team must have been disregarding his advice based on the plays he saw, the team did not counter the opponents offense but reacted instead with plays that had been contrary to the practice sessions. Hollering and name-calling for effect results in guilt and shame feelings. This guilt and shame approach works only in the short term.

A second effective strategy to usefully express anger would be to relate today's events to something in the past: "I know you can do it because I saw you do it beautifully this week." This communicates to the players that they can, in fact, do it.

In general, use no name calling, sarcasm or personal attacks. First identify the emotional feeling by name. Sometimes the mere statement of the feeling changes behavior. Now give reasons for the anger by stating the behavior that precipitated the anger. Make eye contact with the person. Stop what you are doing and give anger your full attention. Be open and honest with your feelings. Let the other person have their say.

8. Thou shall use positive nonverbal cues. Coaches with relatively poor verbal skill have been known to still be great coaches and an inspiration to their teams. By using proper nonverbal communications techniques, athletes can be motivated in various ways. The head, hands and feet in proper context can tell another person a great deal of what's going on in your mind. A shift of an eyebrow at the proper time can convey a lot of information. Coaches should look the part. A physical fitness coach cannot be overweight. Sometimes patting an athlete on the shoulder can be an emotional uplift. Be careful of cultural taboos and personal beliefs with touching. Gender differences can create problems with touching.

Voice intonation can yield great impact with words. How do our pets understand us? Voice tones convey a great deal about our inner feelings. Our physical stance and physical geography can influence our attitudes. If we stand too close, people may want to back away. If we stand too far away or above, we may be perceived as domineering or aloof.

Eye contact makes a direct impact. Imagine the shades of difference between a glare, a stare, a gleen, a gaze, ... all different messages.

9. Thou shalt teach skills. Many coaches want to become better teachers. Teaching sports skills to advanced athletes can be quite different than teaching to novices. One issue that many coaches need to reconsider would be their assessment of an athlete's long-term skill as viewed by the coach. All athletes learn and improve their skills, no matter what level they begin. Judging an athlete for the long-term yields invalid, scientifically unreliable results and must certainly be unfair to the athlete.

10. Thou shalt interact consistently with all team members. Gothe once said, "Treat people as though they were what they ought to be, and you help them to become what they are capable of being." People perform their best when they believe a coach has their best interest at heart. Coaches should interact consistently with an ongoing, predictable pattern. Coaches should be aware of the strong and weak points of each athlete, point out the ways in which the athlete has shown performance, acknowledge specific skill that have been demonstrated efficiently, remind individuals of skills that need improvement, and offer compliments to performers based on some aspect of their play from the recent past or the same day.

Athletes feel a greater loyalty to coaches that show a personal interest in their life. They resent "being used" by a coach to attain the coach's own objectives.

Describe the five counseling skills needed by coaches.

The "untrained" coach-counselor can offer abilities to listen, to show concern, to be supportive, to be honest, and keep conversations private and confidential.

Listening involves maintaining constant consistent eye contact, facing the speaker squarely with a slight forward trunk lean, using encouraging gestures such as a slight smile, avoiding distracting movements such as fiddling with a key chain, avoiding cutting off the speaker in mid-sentence or mid-thought, and they must certainly remain nonjudgemental in response to the player's comments.

A serious regard for the player's feelings must be expressed. No matter what the coach thinks of the situation, the coach must approach a player's serious situation as his own serious situation. Minimizing a situation such as "You don't mean that," or "What a dumb thing to think," do not support rapport. Belittling remarks do not foster loyalty and disloyal team members do not contribute to the team effort.

Support responds to concern. While it may not be possible for a coach to maintain a different perception, permitting a player to feel inadequate will certainly not help either. Support means, "I understand. Let's try to work something out that so we can go onward." Support can also mean helping athlete to "face facts." Many coaches have much more life experience than their players and they can offer many parables and metaphors to help their athletes.

Honesty pays. A dishonest coach will be unveiled no matter how well he attempts to hide his incongruity. The coach himself should examine the reality of the situation and place the player in that frame of reality.

Conversations between coaches and athletes should often be held in private. The results should always be confidential. The feelings of an athlete must remain personal. coaches must be available fo rthe conversations. Should the player start asking "Where's the coach?" the coach will soon start asking "Where's the athlete?"

Discuss the four evolutionary steps in team building for the following: Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing.

Forming refers to group members familiarizing themselves with each other. As a type of social comparison, they note each others strengths and weaknesses and the probability of playing. A primary issue would be group identification, "Do I belong here?" Coaches must attempt to limit the turnover within a team to prevent isolation and introversion among its members. Various social engagements may be used, picnics, noncompetitive events, outings. The idea would be to develop team awareness, communications, and interdependence so that when a fellow player feels the stress of competitiveness, he can obtain psychological consolidation from his team-members.

Storming refers to the polarization, conflict and rebellion also known as infighting.While issues generally arise from social conflicts over who makes the team, physical contact happens, especially in aggressive sports. Athletes vie for control, status and the coach's attention. They position themselves for recognition and approval. Infighting often relates to the coach's ability to assess the strengths and weaknesses of each team member. Although storming almost inevitably a part of group formation, coaches should communicate their displeasure with excessive, continuing intra-team rivalry.

Norming permits the group to "get organized" as a team as resistance minimizes itself, and cooperation among group members improves. Teammates want to work together for success and improve satisfaction among team members. This quiet period follows the storm period. The group's respect for each member's unique contribution to the team begins to function. Instead of competing against teammates, players become more concerned with economy of effort and teak effectiveness. Without a healthy norming stage, the team becomes satisfied with mere adequate performance instead of striving for excellence. Furthermore, players will dwell with concerns of personal growth and needs rather than what is best for the team.

Performing allows the team to direct its energies toward its goals. A major characteristic would be a close rapport amongst its members. Roles of team members have been identified, and each person's contribution is distinct. Teammates sincerely want one another to succeed. Group relationships are sincere. Players interact informally with no artificial interpersonal behaviors and a willingness to help a teammate exists.

What are the typical traits of an effective team?

While a large number of traits could be identified, the author has listed a series of traits he considers most critical to reaching goals consistently while maintaining high member satisfaction and loyalty.

The leadership style of the coach helps athletes perform to their capability on a consistent basis. A definite sign of a secure, effective leader is knowing when not to lead. This means the coach occasionally shares the leadership role with assistant coaches, head captains, etc.

The membership of the team consists of members who are proud of their affiliation and believe that their role will contribute in some worthwhile manner to the success of the team. Coaches need to be aware of specific strategies that facilitate the athlete's feelings of belonging on the team.

Commitment means that each athlete makes the effort to learn skills and to support other team members. Players feel a sense of belonging to the group and are proud to represent the team outside of the sports arena.

The team has a concern to achievement. It has a total agreement of its objectives and "buys in" totally with the objectives. The definition of team standards permits realistic performance levels and expectations to be both achievable and challenging. The team goals take precedence over personal goals.

Effective work methods means problems can be solved jointly between coaches and athletes. This establishes a sense of personal commitment in each team member. One way to do this would be to broaden the base for making decisions that affect team members and thus incorporate team members into decision making.

Procedures should be well-defined for communications patterns and administrative purposes. While the coach might make the final decision, players get consulted. The procedures should not be inflexible, but rather adaptable in nature.

The effective team consists of secure members. This means being receptive to feedback for improved performance. Team and individual errors and weaknesses can bear objective examination without attacking any person's character or personality. The correct policy would be to learn from past mistakes in order to improve future performance.

The creative strength of the team derives from the capacity and motivation to create new ideas through interaction with its members. Innovative risk taking is placed, accepted and rewarded. Athletes show they are capable of thinking quickly and creatively during game situations.

The positive intergroup relationships permits team members to help one another. This permits peer teaching in a relaxed environment.

A relaxed atmosphere provides a constructive climate of nonthreatening communications with coaches and teammates. They can feel secure in taking logical risks in their performance.

Explain the factors that determine when a child is ready to become active in sports.

Competition can promote mental health and growth when the child has the capacity to understand the player's role in relation to the role of others in the same situation. Starting at about 8 to 10, these include empathy and understanding of the role in the sports environment.

Premature participation in sport does not foster team harmony due to the child's developmental inability to place the team's interests ahead of his or her own. The "me first" mentality reflects immature cognitive development that some people never seem to learn. Altruistic behavior does not reach full maturity until age 10 to 12 years.

A conclusion of a definite age for children entering sports cannot be made easily. Children of age 7 or 8 do not posses cognitive and motor skills that produce the enjoyment and benefits derived from participation in sports.

A method that parents can use would be to encourage children to experience a variety of skills. Children who start early in one sport and rarely engage in others, tend to burn out by the time they are adolescents. This can be attributed to boredom or excessive pressure to be successful in the activity. Also, growth and maturation may dictate that the child is better for a sport other than the one that was the experience in earlier years. And most of all, children should be allowed to participate in sports they enjoy. If a child does not like a sport, the activity will not continue.

Perhaps the more important factor in whether a child is ready to participate in sports would be competence. How well can the child perform the fundamental skills of the sport? Can they throw or catch well? Can they exhibit the primary skills necessary to enjoy competing instead of merely enjoying playing at the sport?

Explain why some young children drop out of sports.

The main reason children drop out of sports is "it's not fun." This intrinsic motivation factor causes desire and motivate to move toward some goal. People do things because they enjoy it. Sadly, parents and coaches often, unknowingly, contribute to this predicament. While adult leaders claim that reward such as trophies are necessary to sustain interest, research has shown this not to be the case. These trophies turn play into work. Adults should ask, "What can I do to maintain or increase intrinsic motivation in child athletes and reduce or prevent the onset of extrinsic motivation?" "Does the use of all rewards undermine intrinsic motivation?" "Do kids want and enjoy receiving rewards?"

Most kids would rather play on the side of the losing team than sit on the bench of the winning team. Playing is valued much more than winning. Kids that do not get to play will not continue on the team.

Negative reinforcement in terms of negative feedback and ridicule because of a child's difficulties leave children vulnerable. Children cannot put the game into perspective and view a "poor" player as an inadequate person. If insults don't stop, self-esteem plummets and kids drop out. Coaches should keep errors in perspective. The coaches reaction to an error has a direct relationship to the amount of learning gained from it.

When kids are mismatched in size and skills, the smaller one has difficulties being successful or motivated. Kids the same age may differ by as much as five years anatomically. Kids should be matched for practice sessions.

The competitive process should be challenging but also rewarding and fun. Kids should not have to feel anxious before the games. Coaches should thus avoid telling the kids the importance of winning or reminding them who's watching them. High anxiety leads to high dropout rates.

The perception of failure kills any sense of satisfaction and fun. Anxiety can generate lower feelings of self-worth. These perceptions arise only when coaches and parents send messages indicating such. An error in play can be reframed into many things, including a useful learning experience.

Some studies suggest that kids receive more exercise in unsupervised, unstructured sports in the neighborhood than in structured programs. Nonstarters in particular do not get enough exercise. Even practices become too regimented and lacks opportunities for physical exertion. Depending on a child's meta programs, the practice may or may not be appropriate. Some children enjoy the same drills over and over while others yearn for different drills.

What are the personality characteristics of elite female athletes?

Before puberty, females are similar to and in many instances superior to boys both anatomically and physiologically. Thus, at or before this time, coaches, teachers and parents should feel comfortable in coaching girls and boys in a similar manner and in encouraging cooed sports competition in which boys and girls can engage jointly, with the exclusion of contact sports, in which no child should engage before puberty.

Although female athletes have psyiological attributes similar to male performers, clear differences emerge at puberty. Some of these differences lead directly to superior male performance in many competitive sports. Thus, even mature female athletes have physiological limitations.

For the female, an array of personal dispositions, thoughts and emotions markedly influence involvement in sports and physical activity. The female's locus of control guides her perception of her abilities, her personal values, her perceptions about the proper roles for men and women in society, and her incentive to demonstrate competence and achieve goals as primary personal factors that predict participation in sports.

It has also been reported in literature reviews that women in sports may be inhibited by an above-normal fear of success. This might be due to a learned tendency resulting from social rejection and loss of femininity when successful behavior involves aggression or competition against males. Other reports offer the results that sports females are becoming more comfortable with setting high goals and work hard to achieve them, and do so with less guilt.

Sports models at the elite amateur and professional levels help young women feel more comfortable with participating, winning and deriving all the potential benefits accrued from being a participant. The role conflicts of toughness, aggressiveness and even success conflicting with societal images of females as submissive and passive is more fiction than fact.

Thus, a female must continue to battle sex-role stereotypes that channel her into competing in certain sport activities and not in others. Young female players have the personal attributes to handle themselves in situations that nurture the desire to play competitive sport.

Describe the biomechanical comparisons between males and females.

During the first ten years of life, girls grow and develop muscular strength and speed faster than boys. Girls are 12 to 18 months ahead of boys of the same age in the maturation of bone tissue. Between 10.5 and 13 years, girls begin their adolescent growth spurt. It terminates at the onset of menstruation, at which time skeletal growth virtually stops. Not significant difference in size between boys and girls are apparent until testosterone is produced in significant amounts in males at about 12 to 13 years. Males experience their growth spurt at about 12.5 to 15 years. These extra years of growth account for the greater size of males as they end up about 10 percent taller and far heavier than females at the end of this growth cycle.

The percentage of fat in the female is an important consideration in coaching, teaching and implementing conditioning programs. Relatively more fat means less muscle per unit volume. Thus, the work capacity, endurance and athletic performance of women and girls should have different standards and expectations of performance.

Females' growth in strength begins at 12.5 years and is optimal the year before menarche. The strength spurt in the female is related to maturation factors in height, sex maturation and bone age rather than chronological age. By age 17, men are two to four times stronger than women due to males' greater muscle mass. Strength differences are obvious in the upper body.

Until the age of menarche, boys and girls perform similarly. From this time on, females do not improve and may even slightly decline in their ability to perform motor skills. They also decline in maximum endurance starting from age 14 and have a slower response to physical training. Women seem to require more time and work to increase strength.

What are the three characteristics that members of a team expect of their coach? Do you agree, or can you add to this list?

The author has made it clear that team members expect more than three characteristics of their coaches. The author has many lists and points to be made on the desires of team members and the resulting non-comunications with their coaches. When the author was interviewing players, an overwhelming response was, "Coach, don't be afraid to ask us what we think. What we have to say can make a difference." This describes a characteristic of respect and trust desired by players. The plays have said this in so many ways.

Players understand anger. If the team did not play well, they even feel it can be justified. The anger itself does not upset athletes, it's the purpose and content of it that does so much damage. The personal criticism creates problems, "Bill, you blew it. Why didn't you do as you were told? Your error cost us the game." Insults breed contempt and hostility. "Coach," the players say, "don't do that."

Players want their coach to react in the same respectful, constructive manner after winning as after losing a game. They do not respond well to a "Jeckyll and Hyde" personality who expresses warmth and sensitivity after winning, but snarls and rages after losing.

Placing the blame has no place in a coach's skill set. Athletes ask their coach to use proper attributions: Was it their ability, effort, opponent or luck that was the primary cause for the game's outcome? The accurate and sensitive use of attributions will help players to learn from the game.

It's clear that most coaches have not investigated even elementary psychological techniques to help their team. They don't know what's important in an athlete's training program. They don't know if an athlete motivates himself through a positive toward goal or if the training response involves negative goals. Coaches need to know when they've done a good job for their athlete in a training program. How does the athlete measure success in a training program? Does the athlete reference success in an internal reference that lies inside the athlete, or something that lies outside? Understanding how an athlete measures success can help in understanding a motivational profile.

Why does an athlete choose to even participate in a sport? To the athlete this is an important piece of information. How can a coach ignore such fundamental information? For some athletes, the answer indicates an interest in following proven ways that provide clearly defined procedures. Others want to explore new ways and possibilities. For the procedures oriented, the same practice day after day suffices. For the options athlete, this boring routine can take the fun out of sports, they want to try new things.

Provided a coach can determine an athlete's profile from actually talking to them, they can tailor a training program to the athlete's motivational makeup and influence the schedule. The coach can use this motivation as a start to honest communications to all athletes on the team. This is something that obviously is sorely needed by almost all teams.

From your own experiences at sports participation, what do you believe makes an athlete successful at what they do?

In school I never participated in organized sports. In college I played tennis well enough to know several tennis players on our college team, and they liked to play with me because I was a strong left-handed player and gave them a decent enough game. From these players I learned that pointed perfectionism can form an isolation barrier that drives some players. These players were not popular, but they became a necessary part of the college team. They strove for consistency and became angry at themselves and others when things did not go their way. These traits could easily be attributed to immaturity.

In later years I have known several "weekend warriors" that drove themselves into differing aspects of outdoor activities. These usually took the attitude of personal striving to excel in some area: bicycling, skiing, hang-gliding, parachuting, etc. The additional years of maturity and personal approach to a sport integrated well with their personality. I knew a snow skier who insisted on the most difficult slopes and would go plummeting over the edge of a cliff if there were snow below. His business style was similar. He strove to control people at any cost and could not be trusted with personal information - he was known to twist personal data for his own use.

Just as a person has a unique personality makeup, so does each person have a unique motivational makeup and no two athletes blend these traits the same way. My skier-manipulator athlete would be an extremely motivated, self-centered person. Another friend interested in mountain biking was also extremely motivated, but enjoyed working with others in the office environment and was a positive influence on others. He said he used his mountain biking to "get it out of his system." The lady I knew who spent time at the pistol range used her skills for a more therapeutic release as she blew away images of people who bothered her.

All these people expressed the "doing" of things as something important to them. Not necessarily "knowing" or "having" things, but just "doing." They wanted to take action and they honed their chosen actions