Graduate Research Papers

Availability

Open Access Graduate Research Paper

Abstract

Coaches must instruct and motivate each individual athlete to fit within their team construct and philosophy. Athletes are expected to learn and develop through the feedback that their coaches give them, then execute and perform in practice and game situations. To execute and perform successfully, athletes must be able to take the feedback from coaches and make their own decisions. This sense of autonomy will enable individual athletes to become more clever, which is defined in the Merriam-Webster dictionary (2011) as, "Skillful or adroit in using hands and body or mentally quick and resourceful" (p. 231 ). Cleverness in athletes is assumed to be the ability to get things done. Clever athletes are good at matching the most efficient and effective means to achieve a desired goal. When athletes have all the appropriate resources, they can then make quick and deliberate decisions to execute effectively. To develop this cleverness, athletes can use self-talk. Hardy (2006) proposed that self-talk be defined as: "(a) verbalizations or statements addressed to the self; (b) multidimensional in nature; ( c) having interpretive elements association with the content of statements employed; ( d) is somewhat dynamic; and ( e) serving at least two functions; instructional and motivational, for the athlete" (p. 84). This definition has been used recently to help quantify self-talk, so athletes can be taught the benefits of self-talk. In this paper, I will first define self-talk and examine the different types of self-talk. I will examine instructional and motivational self-talk studies and how they affect performance. Then, I will introduce techniques to help coaches teach self-talk to athletes during practice. Finally, I will conclude with how a coach can teach effective, productive self-talk to athletes to assist them in becoming more clever athletes.

Year of Submission

2013

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Department

Division of Physical Education

First Advisor

Jennifer Waldron

Comments

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Date Original

2013

Object Description

1 PDF file (37 pages)

Language

en

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