Healthy vs. Unhealthy Coaching Behaviors (2024)

Humans are social individuals, and we are all, to a certain extent, influenced by others. Parents, teachers, coaches, and friends often play the greatest role in a young athlete’s life. For those who participate in sports (no matter the level) there’s often a coach who becomes our favorite. Perhaps it was the coach who made the sport (and working hard) fun. Maybe this coach managed to teach valuable lessons that may still impact who we are today. At the same time, we may think back to less positive experiences with a coach, perhaps even leading us to quit the sport entirely. These early interactions, whether positive or negative, can often leave lasting impressions, especially for youth athletes.

Group athletic activity can provide a positive environment for youth to challenge themselves individually and as part of a community. A primary goal for NICA coaches is to foster and promote this safe environment so our young athletes can have FUN! Purposefully or inadvertently causing an athlete to leave a sport they love due to harmful coaching practices is not the goal of any coach. Burning out, weeding out, favoritism, perpetuating gender biases, or just failing to provide necessary support can lead to lasting and unnecessary consequences for young athletes. So what actions cause poor outcomes? How can we strive to provide the “legendary coach” experience for our athletes that positively impacts their lives?

Healthy vs. Unhealthy

What we are really talking about is what sports psychology calls “coaching behaviors”. Individuals and our wide range of behaviors often fall on a spectrum. Just as coaches work to meet young athletes where they are, we can approach our own behaviors the same way. There is a plethora of research on the topic of coaching behaviors, but for now, we’ll focus on some essentials you can carry into any coaching work, regardless of sport.

Let’s start by exploring what makes certain coaching practices and behaviors unhealthy:

• Behavior: You view your purpose and mission as a coach as winning athletic events.
  • Issue: Athletes and coaches working toward performance goals is not itself unhealthy behavior, however, there are some specific details to be aware of. First, “winning” is anextrinsicgoal the rider has very little control over. For example, a rider can expertly prepare for a mountain bike race, start as the best in the field and still get a DNF or finish poorly due to a broken chain or an unexpected crash. Second, focusing solely (or even primarily) on winning places all other aspects of coaching, especially with youth, as contingent on winning. This means that the focus can quickly shift from developing skills (mental, physical, etc.), positive behaviors and practices, to chasing whatever it takes to win, even if it’s unhealthy or unsustainable for the individual. This is often frustrating and disheartening for the athlete and contributes to loss of self-efficacy and self-esteem, etc. resulting in additional loss of performance and resilience. The cycle continues to perpetuate itself, eventually leading to burnout or abandonment of the activity.
• Behavior: Confusing constructive criticism with general criticism and relying on it as the primary or only feedback type provided to athletes.
  • Issue: Recent research has shown some coaches believe that providing up to 90% negative feedback (criticism) is ideal1. Fortunately, this approach is not supported in the sports psychology literature. On the opposite end of the spectrum, we should not confuse this statement as supporting providing only positive feedback for anything and everything which causes additional issues for the athlete. When coaches rely heavily on criticism, especially if it is overwhelmingly destructive, it can and will negatively impact athlete self-esteem and self-efficacy. As belief in their ability to perform a task (self-efficacy) decreases the athlete is likely to experience a cycle of decreased performance leading to further criticism. The impact on the athlete’s confidence in their abilities and worth (self-esteem) outside of the sport or activity can have even larger impacts.
• Behavior: Giving athletes negative and destructive criticism in front of their peers.
  • Issue: In addition to the issues outlined for the prior behavior, calling negative attention to an athlete in front of their peer group adds a personal embarrassment factor. This approach sets an unhealthy example that it’s appropriate to treat certain members of the team negatively. This can lead to bullying and a whole host of other issues within the team.
• Behavior: Allowing hazing and other demeaning behaviors such as scapegoating.
  • Issue: Similar to the previous issue, this destructive behavior occurs between athletes. While our goal as coaches is to build a safe and supportive community of athletes, this type of behavior creates an unsafe team environment leading to issues such as severe psychological trauma for athletes.
• Behavior: Working outside of your area and scope of knowledge.
  • Issue: Pop quiz! Who’s familiar withthe Dunning-Kruger effect? If you haven’t heard of this before, it refers to a known phenomenon where the less we know about a subject the more confident we are in the limited knowledge we have. Scary, right?! Simply put, you don’t know what you don’t know, and when we step outside our scope of practice and knowledge we can inadvertently put our athletes at risk, as well as increase our legal liability. This can get us in all sorts of trouble. Using trial and error to establish a training program or dietary plan for an athlete might seem like a cheap and easy way to help them work toward improving their performance. Be aware that completing either of these tasks (and many more) in a safe and effective manner requires specific and advanced academic knowledge of a range of topics. For example, creating a daily dietary plan (what to eat for each meal, etc.) for an athlete requires knowledge of not only human nutrition but also anatomy and physiology, exercise physiology, chemistry, and biochemistry, just to name a few! Did you know that this task is actually restricted to being performed only by Registered Dietitians under the laws of many states? In addition to a whole host of underlying physiological considerations, youth athletes are an incredibly vulnerable population. These developing individuals can experience increased susceptibility to a range of mental and physical health issues including malnutrition, disordered eating, and eating disorders.
• Behavior: Not “walking the talk”.
  • Issue: From youth athletes to Olympians, coaches act as role models to the athletes they work with. If we, as coaches, are not modeling the behaviors we expect from our athletes then it’s unlikely they will follow our instructions, regardless of how important the information is. Consider the message we’re sending if we set firm hydration and food requirements for our athletes to follow each ride, and then the coaches leading the ride violate these requirements without consequence. It’s easy for riders to assume fluids and nutrition during the ride must not be too important if the coaches don’t even follow the requirements…

Of course, this list of unhealthy behaviors is not exhaustive but illustrates behaviors to be aware of. Now that we know what to look for, let’s switch gears and explore ways we can improve our “coach approach”. Here are some healthy coaching behaviors that anyone can institute with their athletes:

• Behavior: Educate on what intrinsic goals are and help establish them with your athletes and team.
  • Approach: An intrinsic goal is something we have complete control over. For example, “I want to improve my cornering skills by being proficient in OTB-201 style cornering by the fifth week of practice” is something that the athlete controls. Choosing to practice the skill, or asking for additional feedback and coaching for self-improvement are all completely under the control of the athlete. Having this control is important because it removes the component of luck (or random chance) from the equation. This means that even if the goal isn’t met the athlete can apply the information they gain to keep improving, enhancing their self-efficacy and self-esteem. Unfortunately, it’s common for many athletes to have a strong focus on extrinsic, performance-oriented goals (such as winning) resulting from previous coaching experiences, culture, or other factors. Even if this is the case, we can acknowledge the desire for the initial goal as we guide them to redefine it. Minor modifications of an extrinsic goal can easily establish the intrinsic goals necessary for athletes to reach their desired outcome. For example, what skills do you need to improve to win the state championship? What do you feel are your weaknesses? By asking questions like these we can refocus their efforts on aspects of their performance fully under their control. This helps ensure that even if the extrinsic goal does not come to pass they can still look back and see all of the improvements and successes they’re made with their intrinsic goals.
• Behavior: Balance constructive feedback/criticism, with (genuine) positive feedback.
  • Approach: Providing a mixture of positive feedback and constructive criticism creates an environment where athletes can improve their self-efficacy and self-esteem. This support and respect create the space for them to accomplish important goals and improvements while still being pushed to continue to improve themselves. There is a delicate balance to this approach that will shift as the athlete transitions from being a beginner to an advanced athlete. Here are some recommendations to start with: Focus on using positive feedback when the athlete accomplishes a specific goal or achievement that marks an important advancement rather than for every minor action. Work to identify these improvements regularly and make criticism constructive by telling and showing them what you want them to do. Work to help athletes develop the skills to assess their own performance and abilities independent from explicit coach input. This may seem counterproductive to your coaching role, but athletes who have been taught how to assess their own performance and abilities may only need a quick question from a coach to prompt them. This allows them to identify an issue and arrive at the solution independently without needing an entire discussion on it. This builds their self-efficacy and development and allows you the space to focus on more targeted work with riders who require more hands-on coaching.
• Behavior: Create a positive atmosphere that supports all athletes equally.
  • Approach: Work to ensure you aren’t perpetuating favoritism, or playing head games with athletes or the team as a whole. When we create an equitable environment for athletes it provides a supportive and safe environment for them to try new things and build their confidence, and enhances their growth as individuals and members of the community.
• Behavior: Engage in coaching education, especially academic-focused education.
  • Approach: There are many unhelpful coaching behaviors and actions that are perpetuated despite being repeatedly shown to be ineffective or dangerous in scientific research. For example, the idea that drinking water during practice shows weakness is a harmful bias that isstill prevalent today in some collegiate-level sports. While informal discussions between coaches can provide a first-hand perspective, it can also lead coaches astray. It’s important to balance our informal knowledge and understanding with more formalized, academic-style education. Look for science-backed educational options free from biases, created by field experts who have the advanced knowledge, and pedagogical skills to teach their area of expertise effectively.
• Behavior: Incorporate a little philosophy into your coaching work
  • Approach: This behavior is one that catches many people off-guard. We may view philosophy as a study now irrelevant to our modern lives where ancient philosophers pondered the “great questions of life”. The reality is that philosophy is a growing field with concepts you use every day without even realizing it. We can employ the philosophical concept of ethics to help our athletes better understand and improve their actions and thinking, making them more resilient humans. My favorite ethical viewpoint to utilize with youth athletes is calledvirtue ethicswhich proposes that we should all aspire to be more virtuous as human beings. It argues that we should take actions that enhance desirable virtues such as honor, courage, compassion, generosity, and fairness. Using this philosophy we can ask athletes to consider the individuals they look up to and what virtues their heroes display. This opens the door to exploring whether their actions are in line with the virtues that they want to enhance and show. This requires them, many for the first time, to consider the reasons for their actions and the subsequent consequences, whether positive or negative. Through this lens, we can also teach them other lessons such as the idea of mesotes (middle) from virtue ethics aka “the golden mean”. This concept states that the right action is typically the one in the middle of the two extremes. As an example, in relation to training for racing, one extreme is failing or refusing to train, relying on blind luck, and the other is focused 100% on training to the detriment of all other aspects of life. Clearly, each extreme has considerable consequences. Instead, the right path is balanced between the two extremes in the middle, where we spend sufficient time in formalized training but not at the expense of sacrificing social life, education, or the love of the sport. Philosophy can provide a powerful tool for athletes, especially youth athletes, to learn more about themselves and grow as individuals.

The reality is that there are many antiquated concepts in coaching that simply do not create a healthy and effective coaching environment for athletes to thrive. It can be easy to spot these behaviors and practices once you know what to look for, and making minor adjustments can provide meaningful benefits to your approach to coaching. A great place to start is to reflect on how you’ve coached in the past while working to identify actions or behaviors that may benefit from modifications and how we can implement them. Focus on making small improvements and you could become the inspirational “legendary coach” or “hero” your athletes are inspired by and remember fondly.

To learn more about the concepts covered in this article while earningNICA CEUs, check out our recommended courses below!

If you enjoyed this free resource, consider supporting Coeus in our mission to continue producing high-quality resources, accessible to all NICA coaches. Your donation helps ensure NICA coaches like yourself have access to a growing library of educational content and resources relevant to their work with today’s youth athletes. We appreciate your support!