THE IMPACT OF COACHES ON THEIR ATHLETES' CONFIDENCE
“I shouldn’t be here.”, “The other climbers are all better than me”, “It was just luck that I qualified for finals.”, “I’m going to embarrass myself and my coach. They already look as nervous as me, because they know it, too.”, “What if I’m going to fail?”
From experience, thoughts like this or similar are probably familiar to a lot of competitive climbers, particularly when they’re younger. This little voice inside their head telling them that they are just not good enough, that they don’t deserve to be where they are at right now.
Thoughts like these arise when we lack self-confidence. It can be a consequence of a constant comparison of ourselves with others. But in climbing, as in most other sports, confidence plays an important role in performing well. We need to believe in our abilities, to be able to recall them when expected. We need to believe in ourselves in order to not choke under pressure or when we fail sending a route or a boulder problem. We need to believe in our skills when approaching a coordinative, dynamic move that requires risk taking, giving up control and potentially failing.
One huge and often underestimated influential factors for competition climbers are their coaches. Coaches see their athletes climb several times a week, they know their strengths and weaknesses, and (in most cases) have their best interest in mind. Coaches can help building up their athletes’ confidence but yet, there is also a lot of room for mistakes.
What should a good coach do, to ensure peak performance and still keep their athletes passionate about climbing?
Before we can talk about how climbing coaches can help their athletes to gain more confidence and why this is so important, we need to define self-confidence. In psychology, we differentiate between self-confidence, self-esteem, and self-efficacy. While the latter is not commonly used, self-confidence and self-esteem are often used as synonyms, even though they have slightly different definitions. What we want to talk about in this blog post is self-confidence: the trust in one’s abilities, capacities, and judgement. It’s a positive attitude and a belief that we can meet the demands of a task (APA dictionary).
Looking at this definition, we can see why self-confidence plays an important role in being successful. As climbers, we literally constantly face new “problems” and have to think solution-orientated and outside the box to achieve our goals. It is just as mentally challenging to climb as it is physically. Being aware of our own skills and abilities helps us to feel more confident and trust in ourselves, which leads to less stress and makes it easier for us to think rationally, even when we have to face problems. Knowing all this, it is equally important for a good coach to prepare their athletes in terms of confidence as well as in terms of their physical skills to ensure peak performance.
What could you as a coach do to help your climbers to be more confident?
Of course every athlete is individual and some have more confidence by nature than others do (for example men usually are more confident than women – see our blogpost The confidence gap between men and women – and children are more confident than teenagers). A study from 2018 shows, however, that there are a few behaviours coaches can show that lead to more confidence in their athletes (Forlenza, et al., 2018).
Nurturing Positive Environment
Athletes indicated that using a positive coaching approach matters for building confidence. Encouraging your athletes, being supportive and positive as well as providing positive reinforcement and avoiding negative comments helps your climbers to feel safe in the coaching session and might help them to get out of their comfort zone more easily – and that is where learning takes place.
Responding to athletes
The way you respond to your athletes is also vital for your athletes’ confidence levels. Athletes expect their coaches to recognize and reward good performance by praising and complimenting their strengths and note their successes. But also, constructive feedback is welcomed when something did not go as planned, so your athletes know what they can work on to get better. It’s important that you show your athletes that the problem can be fixed and provide reassurance when they feel down because of a failed attempt for example.
Setting goals
Having a well-set mutual goal in mind as well as an idea of how to achieve it helps many athletes to feel more confident. Athletes want their coaches to help them by discussing useful goals that can be achieved in both the short and the long-run. If you have a really high set goal, it might be useful to split it into smaller goals, e.g. in order to make a podium in a EYS, an athlete has to make top 10 first and improve skills XYZ to do so. This means (breaking it into smaller goals) working on weaknesses XYZ, being determined and consistent in training and give a 100% in every training (This is how breaking bigger goals down into smaller, every-day goals could potentially look like). Even though the goal should be achievable of course, athletes prefer their coaches to set rather higher goals, because it increases their motivation.
Building a coach-athlete relationship
Athletes usually spend a lot of time with their coaches, so building a positive relationship is key when it comes to confidence. Athletes need to trust their coaches and vice versa. It is important for athletes that their coach has confidence in them and also shows this in training sessions.
Intrapersonal Qualities of a Coach
Coaches need to know what they are talking about – they need to be effective teachers. As climbers we want to hear from our coach what and how we can improve. We want to get real feedback on what was good and what not so much. A good coach also conveys the use of each exercise. For a coach, it might be crystal clear why breathing exercises are an important part in climbing, for a newbie-climber it might be not so obvious. A coach that can give reasons for his/her way of coaching and is confident in their own style will lead to more confidence in their climbers.
It’s pretty obvious that being a good coach goes far beyond teaching techniques and the required physical skills to become a great climber. Having this knowledge on how to improve confidence and further performance in your athletes can make the difference.
This blog post was written by Daniela Schallner, who currently does her Master's degree in psychology at the University of Graz and completed her internship with Climbing Psychology in cooperation with the Vorarlberg Olympic Center.