Effective Coaching Practices from an Athlete’s Perspective

It’s amazing what a coach can learn from our athletes’ feedback!

Joan Hung was recently invited to share what effective coaching practices look like from an athlete’s perspective, at the recent Youth Coaching Conference (YCC) 2022.

I have been coaching Joan since 2015 and am proud to share her candid and light-hearted stories about her Goalball journey, and my coaching practices. There are many lessons here on resilience that can be generalized to any sport and anyone.

Joan and I are also grateful to the National Youth Sport Institute (NYSI) for providing us with an opportunity to share about disability sports, and to Brenda for helping Joan put the presentation deck of slides together.

“I did not choose to be blind but I can choose how to live with it…”
Joan Hung, National Goalball Player and recipient of Goh Chok Tong Enable Awards 2021

Check out the presentation below!

What these two men can teach us about Coaching

Ivan Pavlov and Frederic Skinner are the leading forefathers to classical and operant conditioning respectively. Although both classical and operant conditioning result in learning, the processes are quite different.

So, in what ways do these theories related to conditioning help us to coach better?

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Unhelpful Thinking Styles

Cognitive distortions or unhelpful thinking styles refer to the way our minds convince us of something when it is most likely to be false or inaccurate. These false perceptions frequently perpetuate negative thinking habits, and they may cause serious damage to our confidence and ability to succeed.

Everyone experiences cognitive distortions to some degree, especially during times of stress. For example, an athlete under competitive pressure might be constantly distracted by thoughts related to how everyone will look down on him if he loses. A sales executive may conclude that she is a failure for not being able to meet the quarterly sales target.

There are different (but related) cognitive distortions, and these include:

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