This month our coaching section is going to deal directly in the way that coaches and athletes interact as a team. Knowing the styles coaches use to influence game play and practice times will help to provide the best outcomes for different athletes.

What kind of players, coaches, and teams are we dealing with? In this section we'll deal with this topic and more.

	Team Cohesion
	Social Loafing
	Positive and Negative Reinforcement
	Excitement Levels of Athletes
	And what to do as Cold Weather sets in.

Coaching is not an easy job. It takes time, patience, tenacity, and often a hard look at our own beliefs on how best to handle players. It is important to know yourself, as well as your team, in order to provide the best experience for them on and off the playing field/court.

That's why this month's coaching section is devoted to identifying our own coaching styles, as well as how athletes interact within the team environment. As a coach, you'll probably recall the different styles, temperaments, and attitudes of your athlete years.

A good example of identifying styles is by observing. Many of us are familiar with Bob Knight, who hurled a chair across the court in the Purdue game. Here is a coach that is known to use fear as a coaching technique. These kinds of 'fear tactics' from a coach are directly related to the psychology of his coaching style, and his interaction with the team. Learning to understand what works best for your particular group of athletes will ultimately lead to a better season and increased productivity of practices.

While I'd like to give a good example of a coach who used mostly positive reinforcements, it's the big displays of anger on the field that gets the media's attention. I am sure you can think of times in your life, or coaches you know, where positives were used to influence teams towards greatness. Often it's a combination of positive and negative; it’s up to you as a coach to consider and determine your own regimen.

Andrea Vermef
pelinks4u editorial assistant

Positive and negative reinforcement can best be summed up in an altered version of Newton's 3rd Law, "For every action, there is a reaction." In other words, consequences beget behaviors. Depending on the consequence that follow your form of reinforcement, athletes will either produce favorable reaction or abstain from what it was you wanted them to stop doing.

There are several websites that give very good information on this subject, and a book that I’ve found to be very useful in most areas of Exercise Science and coaching is Foundations of Sport and Exercise Psychology, by Robert S. Weinberg and Daniel Gould.

The following are new features of this third edition:

	Extensive material on motivation, social loafing, and group development.
	Expanded coverage of leaders in sport, including information on expectations, values, beliefs, and behavioral guidelines for coaches.
	Research on anxiety and team-energizing strategies.
	Comprehensive data on hypnosis phases, techniques, and their effects.
	Details on the use of imagery in sport.
	An entire section on goal mapping.
	Updated information on eating disorders in sport.
	A comprehensive section on exercise addiction.
	Material on sport aggression, moral development, cooperation, and gender differences in competition.

Scroll down the page and read the whole description.

There are three basic principles of this theory. These are the Rules of Consequences. The three rules describe the logical outcomes which typically occur after consequences.

	Consequences which give rewards increase a behavior.
	Consequences which give punishments decrease a behavior.
	Consequences which give neither rewards nor punishments extinguish a behavior.

These rules provide an excellent blueprint for influence. If you want to increase a behavior (make it more frequent, more intense, more likely), then when the behavior is shown, provide a Consequence of Reward. If you want to decrease a behavior (make it less frequent, less intense, less likely), then when the behavior is shown, provide a Consequence of Punishment. Finally, if you want a behavior to extinguish (disappear, fall out of the behavioral repertoire), then when the behavior is shown, then provide no Consequence (ignore the behavior). Now, the big question becomes, "What is a reward?" or "What is a punishment?"

To find out these answers, and to learn more on this in-depth subject, please visit REINFORCEMENT THEORY.

GROUP DEVELOPMENT

The development of a group normally goes through the following stages.

	Forming - the group gets together and a level of formality is common.
	Storming - heightened tension associated with competition for status and influence.
	Norming - what has the group deemed as acceptable behaviors within their niche.
	Performing - The point where the group understands each other enough to work together as a team.

For better understanding on these stages, read the discussion at Wikipedia on this topic.

COHESION

The stability of the team can be measured by their attitude to accomplish alike. Cohesion is not absolutely necessary for good performance, but it can be crucial depending on the athletes themselves. How they feel in the group can make a huge difference.

Factors that influence Cohesion are:

	Stability - The more time a group or team spends together, the more likely they will have a greater affinity for their teammates.
	Similarity - The more a group has in common with it's counterparts, the easier it is to achieve cohesion. These include age, sex, skills and attitudes.
	Size - Cohesion develops more quickly in small groups.
	Support - Cohesion is effected by coaches, family, and friends. A tight support group who encourages them will lead to a tighter knit group.
	Satisfaction - Going back to group development, the better the team feels about those in it, and their performance, the better the group will become.

Some interesting topics areas that may be of interest to you, that relate to this are:

	What is a Group?
	Group Goals?
	Group Dynamics?
	Group Leadership?
	Social Influence?
	Management Theory?

LOADING

Social loafing is what happens when a person makes less of an effort to achieve a goal when they work in a group than when they work alone. This is one of the main reasons that groups sometimes perform less than the combined performance of their members working as individuals.

Why athletes do this:

	They may make the excuse that because other people don't seem to be working as hard, why should they continue to put forth their best effort?
	Often, if an athlete believes they cannot play as well as other members, they feel their own effort will have little effect on the outcome.
	Some athletes just don't feel like working hard, or they are lazy and feel that it won't be noticed by others.

For more reading and information, see this great resource.

Ringelmann Effect
Social Loafing leads to what we describe as the Ringelmann. "The Ringelmann effect refers to a combination of social loafing and coordination losses. Coordination loss refers to the lack of simultaneity of effort in groups, which interfere with efficiently combining individual inputs."

Learn more about the Ringelmann effect.

COACHING GUIDES: When used appropriately reinforcement is one of the primary communication tools of a successful coach. Reinforcement is used to praise an athlete when he/she does well or to get an athlete to stop undesirable behavior. Reinforcement is relative and not absolute. For reinforcement to work, a coach must be consistent and systematic in its use. If you are not consistent, your athletes will behave erratically, like the coach. If you are not systematic, you will send confusing messages to your athletes. Find out more.