Athlete Assessments
Instruction is Important, but Effective Communication only make things Better
“Sometimes it’s like talking to a wall, I don’t know if they get what I’m saying to them or not.” – Coaches, Trainers
Welcome to Athletes Mental Trainer, I’m passionate about helping athletes, their families, and coaches enrich their lives through sport by learning life skills, achieving high levels of performance, and enjoying their sport participation.
Coaches – are you on the same page as your athletes, your team, your staff?
As an athlete, coach or trainer you understand the importance of first establishing a baseline for performance, where am I starting, where do I want to go, where am I in the process. Assessments can provide useful information about an athlete’s mental skills, communication style, sport learning preferences, competitive nature, personal motivators, leadership characteristics, personality, and level of confidence. They can be administered to individuals or teams and a scheduled feedback session can be done to review/interpret your results.
Coaching – The practice of helping others make decisions, commit to actions, and produce results
As a Coach – one of the starting points for evaluating the effectiveness of your coaching can be to evaluate what learning styles you cater for in your team’s development. Learning styles refer to the most effective and efficient way in which an individual athlete receives and understands information.
In order to fully promote ones potential for peak performance, it’s important to understand that athletes have preferences for the way in which they internalize and process
information.
Today’s modern day athlete is reliant on the advice and support from a variety of professional resources. From coaches, parents, training staff, and health professionals all playing a role in supporting athletes by providing advice on skills training, injury prevention, rehabilitation, mental skills, and nutrition education. While the majority of work is focused on building the knowledge base of athletes, very little has been done on how they advise athletes.
Assessments can provide useful information about an athlete’s mental skills, communication style, sport learning preferences, competitive nature, personal motivators, leadership characteristics, personality, and level of confidence. They can be administered to individuals or teams and a scheduled feedback session can be done to review/interpret your results.
Research has shown athletes have preferences for the ways in which they receive information.
One of the assessment types we offer as a service is the VARK – The visual (V), auditory (A), reading/writing (R), kinesthetic (K)/(VARK) questionnaire for athletes identifies their preferred mode(s) of presentation of information which governs how athletes interpret, process, and understand information.
VARK is used worldwide in a range of sporting contexts. Many professional sporting bodies, national and state sports organizations, academies and institutes use VARK in their training programs.
Understanding how to incorporate all four learning modalities into training programs is imperative to ensure that your athlete(s) feel that their training has been personalized for them. An optimal learning experience means better, faster, more comprehensive learning that can adjust to an athlete’s preference.
The advantages of being aware of how you coach, when applied to learning a style, is that you have the opportunity to make better use of your time. This is a very powerful thought as one of the constant issues we hear when we speak with coaches, especially those on tight deadlines or on a short turnaround is that they do not have enough time.
What we’ve found over the years – Your coaching conversations contribute to the level of interference in the minds of your players.
Performance comes from the inside.
– What’s happening on the inside of your player.
– What’s getting in their way.
– “INTERFERENCE” – Mental interference that blocks performance
By focusing on learning styles you will see that sometimes the simplest things are the best.
Contact us to learn more and take advantage of onsite team workshops.