Coaching Effectiveness: The Coach-Athlete Relationship at its Heart

Sophia Jowett, School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences, Loughborough University
Academic Research

Sophia Jowett, School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences, Loughborough University

Coaching has been often viewed as a context within which coaches operate to largely bring about changes in athlete’s performance and wellbeing. One key factor to successful outcomes in coaching is the quality of the relationship between coaches and athletes.

In this article, Sophia proposes that the coach-athlete relationship is at the heart of coaching. Moreover, the aim is to describe and explain how the quality of the relationship coaches and athletes develop and maintain over the course of their sporting partnership alongside coaches and athletes’ knowledge and outcomes, form a system that is capable of defining coaching effectiveness and success.