Participant one was a female international javelin thrower who had been competing
nationally for six years and internationally for the previous one year. I began the consultancy
by introducing the athlete to the concept of sport confidence and explaining to her that we
were going to spend the session profiling her confidence in sport. Using the questions adopted
in study one to identify sources and types of sport confidence in World Class sport
performers, I first asked the athlete to identify the constructs which she believed a confident
athlete possessed, before asking her to generate her own types of confidence, and the sources
from which they were derived. This athlete seemed to find this process relatively
straightforward. However, I felt that asking the athlete to recall her most confident
competition experience was imperative to this process. Whilst the athlete admitted that she
had not thought about her sport confidence in any depth before, she found it relatively easy to
elicit her confidence types when she could consider her confidence in context. As highlighted
in Figure 5.2, this participant identified 12 types of sport confidence which were derived from
training performance, competition performance (both pre-competition and during
competition), competition experience and positive coach feedback. With the exception of
‘ability to achieve performance outcome’, ‘ability to remain self-focused’ and ‘competition
preparation’, all types of sport confidence identified by this athlete could be classified as
technical or physical and were derived from only three areas; training and competition
Sources of Sport Confidence Types of Sport Confidence Pre-Competition Practice Training Training Coach Feedback Training Partners Coach Feedback Training Partners Training Pre-Competition Practice Pre-Competition Practice Pre-Competition Practice Coach Feedback Training Weight Training Coach Feedback Training Coach Feedback Coach Feedback Coach Feedback Training Pre-Competition Practice Body Positioning
Movement Execution (hips before arm)
Strength Rhythm
Keeping Point of Javelin
Power
Physical Ability (being injury free)
Sources of Sport Confidence Types of Sport Confidence Training Training Coach Feedback Training Partners Competition Experience Coach Feedback Pre-Competition Practice Training Training Partners Pre-Competition Practice Pre-Competition Practice Flexibility
Ability to Throw/Hit it Hard
Ability to Achieve Performance Outcome i.e. Distance o f 50m
Ability to Remain Self-Focused
Competition Preparation
reflect upon her least confident career experiences also proved to be incredibly informative.
Whilst listening to the athlete talk o f her experiences I made a note o f the factors she
identified as debilitative to her sport confidence, offering reflections and questions where
appropriate. By the time the athlete had finished telling her story, it was clear to me that the
factors responsible for debilitating her sport confidence were directly linked to the sources
from which she derived her confidence, or rather, a lack thereof. For example, she was not
preparing mentally for competition and was experiencing difficulty remaining self-focused in
the competition environment, often finding herself distracted by other competitors. This is o f
particular relevance given that the athlete identified loss o f self-focus as the primary factor
responsible for debilitating her sport confidence. The remaining sport confidence debilitators
highlighted by this athlete included; ‘lack o f coach presence for a time period o f several
months’, ‘inability to handle nerves’, ‘injury niggles prior to competing’, ‘family issues’,
‘reducing training time due to college exams’, and ‘lack o f motivation’ caused by her training
partners leaving the training group. Finally, this athlete identified that her levels o f sport
confidence would often fluctuate during a meet depending upon her performance. For
example, she identified that achieving a good throw would often cause her to question how
she had managed to achieve the recorded distance, resulting in reduced feelings o f sport
confidence.
Prompting this athlete about her least confident career moments and confidence
debilitators elicited a wealth o f information that I believe would have gone undetected if I had
simply asked her to identify her confidence sources and types. For example, in recalling her
least confident career moment, it became clear that an over-reliance on training as a source of
confidence had caused her to over-train during the period prior to competition, and
subsequent injury niggles had then reduced her confidence on competition day. Indeed, this
Whilst participant one felt confident about her physical and technical capabilities,
reflected by her high ratings in these areas, the confidence profiling process demonstrated that
this athlete was not preparing mentally for competition which was detrimental to her levels o f
sport confidence in the competitive environment. Reflecting in-action, the implementation of
scaling rulers enabled this athlete to not only assess her current sport confidence levels, but
also begin to generate her own strategies to help enhance her sport confidence. This enabled
me to really develop an understanding o f the athlete’s current situation and begin to think
around the potential solutions she offered and how these could be implemented into an
effective client-centred intervention strategy. For example, this athlete identified that a first
step to improve her sport confidence would be to develop pre-competition routines and a
method of controlling the negative thoughts she sometimes experienced during competition. I
began thinking about how an intervention programme with this athlete might look, and
reasoned that since she seemed confident about her physical and technical capabilities,
intervention work with this athlete would likely involve developing a more holistic approach
to competition, encouraging the development of additional sources and types o f sport
confidence, particularly related to psychological attributes.
On conclusion of this first consultancy I felt that not only had I developed an in-depth
understanding o f the athlete’s confidence needs, but that she too had developed a greater
awareness o f herself as an athlete. Furthermore, I didn’t feel at this stage as though the
process needed to be refined prior to meeting with the second participant.