An athlete’s journey to become a positive development-focused coach through professional football: moving between theory and practice

ABSTRACT

Coaches may provide a positive development (PD) approach in which they focus on helping athletes develop personal and social skills needed in sport and other life domains. However, it is unclear how athletes perceive PD influences their development and their prospective entry into coaching after they have completed their athletic careers. The purpose of this study is to explore the transition of a high-performance athlete to a prospective PD-focused coach based on the influence of the athletes’ PD sport experiences. The participant was a 30-year-old male high-performance football athlete. An interpretative phenomenological analysis was used to develop a description of the athlete’s experiences. Findings highlighted that life skills throughout his career were considered key for the athlete’s development. These life skills provided an unique outlook for his interest in becoming a PD-focused coach. This study adds insight on how PD may influence coaches’ learning processes.

KEYWORDS:

• Life skills
• transfer
• learning
• positive development

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.