Introduction to Course

This free badged course, Exploring sport coaching and psychology, lasts 24 hours, with 8 ‘sessions’. You can work through the course at your own pace, so if you have more time one week there is no problem with pushing on to complete a further study session. The eight sessions are linked to ensure a logical flow through the course. They are:

1. Exploring sporting success
2. Coaching children: enhancing fun and friendships
3. Guiding teenagers towards success and life
4. Comparing international level coaches
5. Mindset and attitudes towards sport and learning
6. Psychological skills for life and sport
7. A fresh look at coaching
8. The future of coaching: technological influences

This course will develop your confidence and skills for online study, whether this is to explore sport topics or part of your preparation for other study. 

You’ll start by thinking about your own beliefs about success in sport or fitness and develop your understanding of how coaching and psychology contribute to that success. You’ll identify some key coaching decisions that are made with children, leading on towards exploring some principles useful in guiding teenagers and then some of the practices of adult coaches working with international teams. These coaching insights are then combined with exploring the main psychological aspects of sport which often apply to life in general (e.g. handling pressure). You’ll conclude by thinking about what the future might hold in coaching and exercise. All these aspects will be explained, so don’t worry if they seem unfamiliar at the moment. There are vivid video and audio case study examples to help with this and you’ll get plenty of opportunities to demonstrate your new understanding and practise your study skills.

Part of this practice will be the interactive quizzes, of which Sessions 4 and 8 will provide you with an opportunity to earn a badge to demonstrate your new skills. You can read more on how to study the course and about badges in the next sections.

After completing this course, you will be able to:

• outline the influences of, and links between, sport coaching and psychology for those developing their abilities in sport
• describe different aspects of effective coaching and the way in which a coach may influence young people and adults
• compare the psychological characteristics used in sporting careers to those you might need to shape your own future
• reflect on your own sport or fitness behaviours, beliefs and practices and identify useful next steps for further development
• understand and be confident in your ability to study online.

Moving around the course

In the ‘Summary’ at the end of each session, you will find a link to the next session. If at any time you want to return to the start of the course, click on ‘Full course description’. From here you can navigate to any part of the course. 

It’s also good practice, if you access a link from within a course page (including links to the quizzes), to open it in a new window or tab. That way you can easily return to where you’ve come from without having to use the back button on your browser.

Acknowledgements

This free course was written by Ben Oakley.

The course was critically read by Richard Bailey, writer in residence at the International Council of Sport Science and Physical Education (ICSSPE).

Except for third party materials and otherwise stated this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence .