Feedback, perspective and self learning

As coaches, the feedback we give is one of the most important things we can give or not give our athletes and students. On Friday in the practical class I was selected coach of my team which put in the position to start thinking about what and I'm going to say (feed forward/back).

Feedback and advise is needed to some extent from the coach if the coach is going to provide some help and motivation to the athlete but too much feedback has been shown to produce athletes with a need of extrinsic motivation and dependent on the coach (Schmidt & Wulf, 1996).

I think the key is to give a decent amount of knowledge of results and performance at the beginning levels and then slowly reduce the feedback and have the athlete question their own performance as they progress. At the beginning level of a sport or activity, people need help with knowledge, motivation and an understanding but to be a successful athlete, you need to be able think, motivate and improve by yourself.

When I was coaching my team on Friday I, a basketball player and coach had a lot of things I thought I could say to my players. I had to hold my self back with a lot of things as I didn't want to overwhelm them with information and for them to feel I needed to tell them to do something they knew how to do. I did yell a lot though as the players weren't experienced with basketball and I thought I could motivate and guide them. Saying this I probably still said too much as these were all experienced athletes who understood the fundamentals of invasion games and team sports and could motivate and think for themselves.
If I were to continue to coach this team I would reduce the feedback overtime and provide means for them to being questioning their performance with no feedback from me.  

I don't think a lot of the yelling (feedback/forward) from coaches you see at professional levels is necessary. If you watch most sports the coach will constant be yelling at his team. From what we've just said, this might do more harm then good. These players have been playing the sport their whole lives and probably know exactly what happen and what went right or wrong and why. I think some of this act is because they're in the spot light and people expect them to do it because everyone else does it and it looks like they're not trying if they don't.

"Saying nothing... sometimes says the most" - Emily Dickinson

My favourite coach, and the coach with the most NBA championships (10) Phil Jackson had a zen like approach to his coaching and did sometimes get mad, but for the most part seemed calm, controlled and quite on the bench.

"Believe in your players..... this can be shown in hard times by putting them out there and letting them survive".