How can coaches support athletes during emotionally challenging phases of development?

I want to take some time and spotlight an extremely important and well reported issue; the mental health of our athletes. This topic been in heavy focus over the past few weeks, especially as part of the build up to and conclusion of the Olympics and within AUS team sports charging towards season finales. This was highlighted by the sudden death of track cyclist Olivia Podmore which raised urgent questions about the culture of elite sport. The tragedy has prompted past and current athletes, parents and the public to call for changes across a system that is seen by many to prioritise performance over the health and well-being of athletes. Days before Podmore’s death, the Rio Olympic cyclist outlined the pressures of high-performance sport in a social media post. Her concerns echoed decades of sociological and psychological research detailing the extreme pressures on athletes and the lack of meaningful action to reform those destructive cultures, including recent research by High Performance Sport New Zealand (HPSNZ) which showed that more that one in five athletes experience mental health challenges during their time as elite performers.

Mental health in elite sport has been an issue for a long time but the pressure on modern athletes is arguably more intense than ever, with increased salaries, social media visibility & access to public with heightened scrutiny. This year alone, tennis champion Naomi Osaka and multi-medal-winning gymnast Simone Biles have both been forced to make difficult decisions to prioritise their own well-being in sporting environments that value them as athletes rather than human beings. Reflecting on Bile’s decision, one of the greatest ever Olympians, Michael Phelps discussed the importance of awareness around these issues:

“The Olympics is overwhelming….The easiest way for me to say this is athletes, and Olympic athletes in general — we need someone who we can trust, somebody that can let us be ourselves and listen. Allow us to become vulnerable. Somebody who’s not going to try to fix us. We carry a lot of weight on our shoulders, and it’s challenging.

I hope this is an opportunity for us to jump on board, and to even blow this mental health thing even more wide open. It is so much bigger than we can ever imagine”

Closer to home, AUS Rugby League star Sydney Roosters’ Luke Keary discussed this matter during his current injury setback. Keary recently became a father for the second time and a season-ending knee injury has allowed him to spend more time with his family at a moment when the world is in chaos.

We are injured, not permanently, and we come to do rehab and talk. Mental health doesn’t discriminate. I think every single person goes through something at some stage of their life. Every single person has their own challenges and obstacles they have to get through in life. They feel certain ways through that time. I am definitely no different.

I have been through incredible highs and some lows. They don’t compare to other people, but you go through your own emotions and challenges. It doesn’t matter whether you live in the western suburbs or eastern Sydney, whether you earn $1 million or $10,000. It is normal to feel these emotions and feelings during challenging time in life.

As highlighted by athletes such as Biles, Osaka and Keary over the past few months, prioritising their mental well being over measures of success or performance based outcomes takes a lot of support from their support network, both within and outside their sport. However, asking the difficult questions amongst coaches reading this; how can we identify and support athletes going through these tough periods? What factors or coaching methodologies can assist positive developmental experiences? How can our coaching connection and communication engage and interact to understand and support any difficult or overwhelming experiences? Let’s start by understanding some of the areas which we could negatively effect and work backwards; some of the above examples discussed issues around psychologically unsafe environments and athlete burnout on the build up to Toyoko Olympics.

Psychological safety is about removing fear from human interaction and replacing it with respectful and accepting behaviours. Psychologically safe environments in sport and all walks of life, have been identified as group environments where there is a shared belief that team members are safe to take interpersonal risk without fear of being ridiculed, punished or rejected. Research by Prof Sophia Jowett and others recently investigated and found that coaches whom attended athletes concerns and needs, empowering and inspiring athletes to achieve more and encouraged to work towards their identified goals created psychologically safe environments, aided and supported by connected, stable and cooperative relationships. Negatively, the lack of these quality relationships can weaken interpersonal relationships and even augment exploitation, intimidation and humiliation in interactions which can effect the involved athlete’s wellbeing.

Research conducted by Prof Katrien Fransen looked at athlete burnout and the relatedness to coach’s interactions with involved athletes. We all understand the physical implications of physical exhaustion to burnout yet this is a small piece of the puzzle; researchers such as Maslach and Fransen propose the burnout syndrome consists of three central characteristics: emotional exhaustion, reduced accomplishment and depersonalization (Maslach, 1982). Athlete devaluation to sport, regarded as “perhaps most cognitive of burnout dimensions” (Lemyre, 2006), has strong links to lack of autonomy (such as feelings of choice and self-directedness in sport development) and competence (perceptions of effectiveness in sport or team). In research conducted in 2020, Fransen found that ideas such as shared leadership, allowing people feel, think and behave as members of the same team, supporting each other building team confidence, cohesion, performance outcomes and team learning reduced burnout symptoms of involved athletes.

Where do coaches fit into the research and what can we do to help prevent examples like Biles, Keary or Podmore in future? Looking at understanding or creating psychologically safe environments first, there could be a seemingly obvious juggle between balancing performance markers and being a caring and considerate coach. However, when investigating social and task cohesion between sporting team members, Jowett (2003) found a stronger relationship between social cohesion (which is the degree to which team members like each other) to performance markers than task cohesion (cooperation to common goals). This research strengthens the importance of creating a psychologically safe environment in HP sport, to both allow and encourage interpersonal risk taking for athlete well being and subsequently creating an environment to encourage and enhance performance improvements. These points tied together with the fact that understanding, cooperative and collaborative coach-athlete relationships can help reduce athlete burnout symptoms shows the importance of these relationships for athlete wellbeing. The best predictor of athlete’s positive developmental experiences are transformational behaviours as a coach; these ideas include individual consideration, articulating a vision and individualised support, similar to Phelps’ comments. To gain these ideas, I believe it is achieved and built on by understanding your athletes, understanding the players and the person standing in front of you.

I understand these ideas can be complex; recognising and understanding the different stages of psychosocial or personality development can be heavy lifting for many sports coaches….but the benefits can be great also. Take the transition athletes as I call them, players or athletes leaving school and entering senior organised sport usually aged between 17-19 years of age. Athletes of this age are acting as motivated agents, trying to use their traits and make choices to meet tasks set and make decisions around the social ecology of their lives. Up to 20 years of age, they are also juggling the battle of identify vs role confusion, wanting to test and understand where they fit in the world outside their family and judging what is of importance and what’s not. Past research by Mageau and Vallerand regards the “actions of coaches as (possibly) the most critical motivational influences within sport setting”; therefore, understanding, not ignoring, the importance of a coach’s role in the wellbeing of their athletes as people as well as players is crucially important to create positive developmental experiences. This shall assist the personal development of their athletes, eliminating many of the negative areas mentioned above such as reduced sense of accomplishment and devaluation of the sport.

As previously written, I feel asking the right questions can both build relationships and close the gap through understanding athlete’s motivations, areas of importance for their development and how can the environment be structured to suit their needs, ticking many boxes highlighted by Phelps. I believe sports coaches of athletes of all ages should adopt comprehensive and holistic roles in the moral development of their athletes through their adopted and shared practices, languages and beliefs. If coaches are to develop wholesome, knowledgeable athletes who are willing and able to make decisions, capable of performing learned tasks when under pressure and not under direct instructions, I believe this shall require collaborative transfer of knowledge or greater ownership by athletes of their development, with support from the coaches as “more capable other” in an involved yet scaffolding style approach to their athlete’s development. Research by Kidman (2001) addressed ideas such as coaches developing player’s complex skills and tactical knowledge through encouraging abstract thought processes by asking high order questions, which require athletes to apply, analyse and synthesize information. This transformational style of leadership has the coach steering as opposed to controlling decisions and actions, encouraging player discovery through evolutionary planning and organising of tasks whilst keeping sight of overall objectives and showing empathy to get the best from the athletes. This may require some transparency from coaches to offer rationale for processes. It may also require negotiation of processes with players to meet individual and collective performance measures of those being coached whilst matching evolving circumstances for learning and development against attempting keeping sight of overall objectives but shall eradicate many of the areas of athlete burnout and develop strong interpersonal relationships for development.

Asking questions using the linked document as a start, understanding the answers and whom they’re coming from will give you a snapshot for your athelets’s needs today yet this needs to be continually addressed and worked on, understanding people, personalities and environments shall change. The art of coaching is knowing how and when to communicate, and how this varies for each individual. Work on empathetic relationships and having a better understanding of your athletes or players as this will allow you to modify your environment or approaches for greater impact and understanding. Know your players, know their story, know their context and then put it into practice to understand and enhance player wellbeing for more engaged people and players in future.