Coach Education Related to the Delivery of Imagery: Two Interventions

Abstract

Two studies explored coach education imagery interventions. In Study 1, 29 performance coaches were randomly assigned to either an imagery workshop group (n = 13) or an imagery-reading comparison control group (n = 16). Pre and post intervention, coaches completed the CEAIUQ (Jedlic, Hall, Munroe-Chandler, & Hall, 2007) and a confidence questionnaire designed for the study. Further, coaches’ athletes completed the CIAIUQ (Jedlic et al., 2007) at pre and post intervention. Due to a poor response rate (n = 9), an exploratory case study approach was employed to present the data. Results revealed that, while all coaches found the workshop to be interesting and useful, with certain coaches, encouragement of specific aspects of imagery decreased as did confidence to deliver imagery. To overcome the limitations of Study 1, Study 2 employed a needs based approach. Five elite coaches completed a performance profile related to imagery and the CEAIUQ. Four individualized sessions were then conducted. Inspection of post intervention data indicated that the intervention increased encouragement of imagery use, imagery constructs identified as important by the individual coaches, and, when identified, confidence to deliver imagery. The results are discussed in terms of the importance of coach education from both an applied and research perspective.