Unit 5: Sports Coaching What Makes a Successful Coach – Task 2
Learning aim and Objective: Know the techniques that are used by coaches to improve the
performance of different athletes.
Goal setting
Every athlete, an elite athlete will have some sort of thing that they want to achieve
whether they want to lose weight gain weight or recover from injury. The way that they will
achieve this thing, is by goal setting. For example, using (S.M.A.R.T) goal setting could be
applied to anything whether you were injured, recovering from injury want to win
something or create or even improve on something.
However, if people just set a goal or want to achieve something they tend to give up after a
couple of weeks, why? Because they haven't done it properly Which gets them demotivated
as they don’t have the track of their progress and what they achieve which leads them to
get lost as they can’t progress and overload because they may not remember from where
they started from and they don't have the track of what they are doing and get lost! Which
prevents them from being consistent and they lose and give up and stop doing things.
For example, if you are an elite boxer you have injured you're self 5 weeks ago and the
doctor allows you to take part in the sport again as your bone healed up fully in your right
hand. Some Coach's get them back in the ring to fight which, this would increase the chance
of injuring and a possibility of breaking the bone again as the fighter would be not fully
recovered and his performance would be poor as it would limit to what he could do.
However, some coaches, for example, Ricky Hatton, Freddie roach, Tony Burnes, would
apply goal setting to make sure that the athlete's health and fitness are at the top level.
Also, make sure that the fighters come first and are the best interest instead of money so
that when the athlete is performing he or her will be the best when in competing as the
level of fitness and health is at the highest quality. A coach would apply smart goals for the
athlete to improve all-around (fitness, techniques, skills) and help the right hand.
So, he would make the training (S) specific to improve the fitness level as he's been out of
boxing for 5 weeks and he would make sure that the exercise is also specific to improve the
strength of the right hand so that it can function to its fullest and improve the fitness levels
so he would be ready fit boxing by doing boxing specific exercise example skipping rope,
speedball etc.
(M) Measurable the coach would need extra time to make sure the athlete is at the highest
performance, so he would take five weeks and not take up any competitions and
concentrate on fitness so he could improve the level of fitness and most importantly get the
right hand working again to its fullest and only then would set up a fight. Which means the
athlete will be ahead as his fitness will be high and recovered fully and to top it up he will
have another couple of months to prepare for the fight. Which is a really smart move as this
