Podium’s Podcast of the Week:   An interview with Andrea Becker, PhD, CC-AASP in Louisville, Kentucky – October 26, 2007

by Dr. Stephen Walker, CC-AASP

Dr. Andrea Becker is a sport psychology consultant and faculty at California State University – Fullerton.  She is one of the better known specialists in qualitative research in coaching education and has focused on the athlete’s experience in both NCAA Division I athletics and in Elite level competition.  She has long studied coaching behaviors that bring out the best in their athletes and applies these lessons in her consulting work.  We’re pleased to have her with us today, and look forward to some upcoming research for a future Podium Podcast.

Her study focused on how athletes’ experience great coaching and the components they appreciated most. She found 6 major themes that included methods of coaching, teaching skills, the ways they communicated, and the actions they took in the process of coaching them……

……Her sample included elite level athletes, both professional and Olympic and how their performances were enhanced through various experiences, methods and communications with their coaches that empowered them to do their best. Some personality factors are discussed, as well. Dr. Becker carried on several in depth interviews with over 18 elite athletes conducted in a qualitative research effort. Athletes in football, baseball, and basketball, both male and female, were interviewed over several months in a number of sessions so as to provide a rich review and adequately illustrated depiction of “great coaching” from their point of view.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click Here for Podium’s Podcast of the Week: aasp07-a-becker-athlete-experiences-of-great-coaching

Jeffrey Bond, former head of the Sport Psychology Department at the Australian Institute of Sport in Canberra, has coined a term for the reckless behavior by many professional athletes: pedestal syndrome. In an issue of The Sporting Mind, Bond describes pedestal syndrome in detail. His article starts on page 6 of this PDF.

In an article in Stuff.co.nz, he says elite male athletes by nature tend to be aggressive, egotistical, impulsive, risk-taking and anti-authority.

“I think that football clubs not only want to recruit those people but they want to develop those attributes because they’re the sort of people that win you games,” he said.

“I think it’s just the nature of male contact team sports – you’re always going to recruit or inadvertently help develop people who will behave in poor ways,” he said.