RECOMMENDATIONS FOR AUTONOMY SUPPORTIVE COACH INVOLVEMENT

A review of ‘autonomy supportive’ behaviours has been conceptualised by Mageau and Vallerand,[21] who stipulate a series of recommendations to implement necessary structure and appropriate coach involvement:

1. ‘Provide a rationale for task and limits’
Studies show that, in order to support athletes’ autonomy, coaches need to contribute a rationale for requested tasks.[4,13] Such a rationale facilitates the internalisation of underpinning reasons for activity engagement. Moreover, when an activity seems purposeful, its underlying values are more easily integrated and accepted.

To enhance perceptions of choice, numerous optional strategies may be presented within evidence-based limits. After consulting with technical and support staff, a coach can share and present a comprehensive, 360-degree, needs analysis of the sport and athlete based on views from all stakeholders with a compelling vision of how training may look like in practice for feedback and options. Of course, providing rationales for tasks can exist in real time within sessions (in order to introduce an exercise/modality/intervention), or within the week, month, or year. Crucially the coach’s rationale should also attempt to acknowledge the original ‘why’ and be in tune with how this may have evolved.

The S&C coach can offer advantages and disadvantages for all appropriate options at the micro or macro level relative to the athlete’s development where a mutually agreed direction can give context for agreed limits and rules to ensure progress.

2. ‘Provide choice with specific rules and limits’
Autonomy of choice can increase intrinsic motivation. However, for an athlete to feel competent, they need structure in the form of clear guidelines and rules.[24] Therefore, it is important not to confuse an autonomy supportive approach with a permissive, laissez-faire style. Research has further prompted that, when establishing limits and rules, offering a rationale for these regulations protects people’s motivation by facilitating their endorsement of these rules.[15] As sport involves much training and discipline that is not always enjoyable, athletes cannot rely solely on intrinsic motivation and therefore must turn to extrinsic forms of motivation at times to follow their programmes. It is therefore important for athletes to endorse the value and importance of their training and understand why such rules and limits are in place for appropriate physical development.

A rationale for limits may be set for athletes within an amateur setting to abide to a ‘code of conduct’ outlining the non-negotiables, including supervised/ unsupervised adherence parameters to achieve at least minimal progress. Higher limits for more optimal adaptations are presented where engagement of this is entirely based on choice (training load monitoring methods can be suggested as guides). This is important in many university/amateur/developmental/sport institutions/teams, where logistics only allow for limited group and/or 1-2-1 coaching and a sizeable portion of quality training may be done independently.

3. ‘Acknowledge the other person’s feelings and perspectives’
This point can be closely compared to one of Covey’s seven habits of highly effective people: ‘seek first to understand, then to be understood’.[5] To feel relatedness, athletes need to feel that coaches, other athletes and back-room staff in their social environment are involved and supportive and value their feelings and perspectives. The coach must encourage freely expressed views to achieve collective understanding, where greater perspective can offer context or guide appropriate solutions within agreed limits. Seeking perspective shows that athletes are perceived by their coach as individuals with specific needs and feelings, not mere pawns that should be directed.[24]

4. ‘Provide athletes with opportunities for initiative-taking and independent work’
Autonomy-supportive coaches can promote a choice of tasks that are appropriate for progress and sensitive to the athlete’s motives. One motive may be to feel more robust, fresh, and ready for competition. Therefore, a coach can promote a diary log system which encourages the athlete to record metrics to monitor acute and chronic RPE ratios for all training, in addition to collecting other subjective confounding variables to performance such as wellness scores. In turn, the coach can critically monitor objective data collection from external measures of performance (eg, squat jump, RSI etc) with a greater contextual view (and a conversation) to how athletes are responding to stressors. This can inform more bespoke programming through application of training principles, produce more reliable outcomes, and allow for recovery strategies to reduce injury incidence, fatigue, and enhance readiness.

5. ‘Provide non-controlling competence feedback’
Coaching pedagogy is often viewed as an art that invites a degree of poetic licence – when in fact it is very much science-driven.[44] Despite best intentions, it is tempting (or perceived to be dutiful) for coaches to provide support when it is not needed or impose controlling instructions that are not necessary. This should be considered ‘controlling support’ and is consistent with non-self-determined extrinsic forms which undermine the athlete’s perceived feelings of competence (to do the skill), autonomy (problem-solve) and relatedness (coach/ athlete relationship). By doing this, a coach compromises his or her athlete’s motivation to take the initiative and problem-solve to acquire skill. This ‘coach-centred’ style can run the risk of drilling movements and exercises that do not challenge the athlete, thus producing sub-optimal adaptation and increased risk of amotivation.

In terms of interventions to enhance intrinsic motivation in training, the topic of when and how to provide feedback can be multi-factorial.[27] Many argue that direct verbal feedback is the constraint for effective skill acquisition.[2,7,10,29,43] Compelling evidence leans toward understanding of ‘attentional focus’ and models involving constraints- led progression, where coaches can support optimal athlete psychological functioning as well as enhanced skill acquisition.[2,33,44]

This method of skill acquisition allows the athlete time to explore ‘feel’ implicitly for an able exercise, to problem-solve and to adapt for more effective movement solutions. Coaches can use a variety of feedback methods such as task-focused questioning, instructive, trial and error, video replay, model learning and analogy learning to guide athletes’ thoughts.[27] As instructive feedback is arguably the most used tool, coaches must be selective with effective external cues to help nudge the athlete when necessary.[44]

6. ‘Avoid controlling behaviours’
In extension from the point above, this includes avoiding overt control, criticism and controlling statements, and tangible[6] rewards for interesting tasks. High pressure to perform can often lead to overt controlling behaviours to achieve results from well- meaning coaching staff who, in turn, run the risk of compromising the very motivation they look to increase.[6] Although coaches may argue a compelling case that there can be an occasional need for this to induce arousal or focus, it is important to note that perceived failures by an athlete not to have behaved in a certain way can present a significant threat to the coach-athlete relationship as well as the athlete’s self-esteem.[24] In addition, methods to problem-solve when performing become extrinsically reliant (ie, on the coach), rather than intrinsically instinctive, which has been associated with greater skill expression. The coach can offer informed questions to help an athlete find their own answers but ultimately it is the athlete who chooses the approach – for better or constructively ‘worse’. This can be reflected upon critically with the coach in context of the plan and outcomes post training to progress to more self-determined forms on the continuum.[24]

7. ‘Prevent ego involvement in athletes’
Achievement Goal Theory characterises athletes as task- or ego-focused.[20] A task- centred sports person self-determines their competence based on their own progress; conversely an ego-centred one will match their competence to fellow competitors.[20] The former athlete would garner a sense of accomplishment attaining a personal best (self-determined), while the latter would feel equally satisfied beating their teammates in a gym environment (non-self-determined). As SDT would consider the ego-centred athlete to be sub-optimal, Ntoumanis and Biddle[25] stress that ego-centred athletes may still progress on the continuum to more self-determined forms of motivation, provided an autonomy-supportive climate enables a high task environment. However, it is important to educate athletes away from popular media or brand-driven agendas that steer perceptions of elitism characterised by the need to constantly train maximally. The necessity to facilitate (rather than ‘drive’) athletes to conform to more self-determined forms is important for those that have high aspirations within their sport as athletes who had an increased level of self-referenced motivation in comparison with non-self-referenced athletes performed at a higher level.[1]

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