Strong Research is Today's Need in Sports Coaching

Sport coaching is as difficult and as demanding as any other aspect of sport. Good coaching and poor coaching often have impacts on the individual athlete or a team and can become magnified out of proportion to the coaching direction itself. The complete and well-trained sports coach is seemingly a multidimensional personality, possessing a wide range of technical, communication, and interpersonal skills.

There is no one source from which strong sports coaches are produced. Many successful coaches were sports players with average physical talents; others developed coaching skills through formal academic or sports institute education. All sports coaches must possess certain attributes, some in greater measures than others, to provide effective direction to their athletes or teams. An important attribute is a technical knowledge of the sport. A passion for the sport is a coaching asset on its own, but a love of the game standing in isolation is not a sufficient grounding for coaching effectiveness. While it may not be essential that the coach possess tactical genius (although the further one moves to elite competition, the more important tactics will be to a primary coaching consideration), the coach must have a thorough grounding in the fundamentals of the sport, or the coach will not be able to provide the necessary direction to the athletes in either training programs or competitive events.

Technical sports knowledge permits the coach to plan how the athletes will best develop their skills for competition. A critical part of coaching is the establishment of realistic overall performance goals. To achieve such goals, the thorough coach develops training programs that build on the concept of the periodization of training. Through periodization, the coach will plan a training year that is divided into the general periods of preseason, competitive season, and off season, with each of these periods divided into sub-periods to take into account such events as a special competition or injury rehabilitation. 

A coach must have a solid understanding of performance and the function of the body in every respect, as the coach must appreciate the limits of human capabilities if training is to be maximized without exceeding athletic capabilities.

Mental and psychological training for the athletes is critical. The coach is the prime motivational support for both individual athletes and teams. It is the coach who sets the tone for the quality of training sessions. Coaches also lead the effort to motivate and to maintain the athlete's emotional control during competition.

To conclude I can say that Sports Coaching needs tremendous research and only strong knowledgeable coaches can create athletes of caliber who can represent National & International level.