Construction of a Mental Model of Coaching of Expert High School Soccer Coaches in Japan: How Do Expert Coaches Enhance Athletes' and Team Performance?

摘要

One of the important roles of a coach is to increase athletes' attention on daily practice and to minimize the physical and psychological constraints that impede their skill development (Salmela, 1996). The purpose of this study was to construct a mental model of expert Japanese high school soccer coaches' perceptions of a variety of coaching concepts. Eight expert high school soccer coaches served as participants in this study. In-depth, open-ended, semi-structured interviews were conducted. The data were inductively analyzed, using qualitative procedures outlined by Cote et al. (1993). The results revealed that the coaching mental model was comprised of three categories: the cultivation of the athletes' and team's potential, making the athletes more psychologically aware, and providing them with supportive resources. The strong relationships between cultivating the athletes' potential, making them psychologically more aware, and the provision of supportive resources indicated significant agreement between the coaches' perceptions of the concepts of how they evaluated their coaching activities in relation to a holistic human development model of athletes and their performance enhancement.