Search

This study analyzed soccer players’ retention of coaches’ feedback during training sessions. We intended to determine if the retention of information was influenced by the athletes’ personal characteristic (age, gender and the sports level), the quantity of information included in coach’s feedback (the number of ideas and redundancy), athletes’ perception of the relevance of the feedback information and athletes’ motivation as well as the attention level. The study that was conducted over the course of 18 sessions of soccer practice, involved 12 coaches (8 males, 4 females) and 342 athletes (246 males, 96 females), aged between 10 and 18 years old. All coach and athlete interventions were transposed to a written protocol and submitted to content analysis. Descriptive statistics and multiple linear regression were calculated. The results showed that a substantial part of the information was not retained by the athletes; in 65.5% of cases, athletes experienced difficulty in completely reproducing the ideas of the coaches and, on average, the value of feedback retention was 57.0%. Six variables with a statistically significant value were found: gender, the athletes’ sports level, redundancy, the number of transmitted ideas, athletes’ perception of the relevance of the feedback information and the athletes’ motivation level.

Athletes' retention of information conveyed in coaches' feedback during training was examined, considering the nature of the information transmitted by each coach (extensions, total number of ideas transmitted, and total number of repeated ideas), athletes' characteristics, (ages, genders, school levels, and practice levels), and athletes' perceptions (relevance and acceptance of coaches' information, task motivational levels, and athletes' attention levels). Participants were 193 athletes (79 boys, 114 girls; 9 to 13 years of age) and 6 coaches. Feedback was both audio and video recorded and all athletes were interviewed. All coaches' feedback and athletes' recollections were subjected to content analysis. Information was completely retained in 31.60% of feedback episodes. Athletes' mean per-episode information retention was 63.0%. Three variables appeared to be predictive of athletes' retention: athletes' practice levels (β = –.25), attention to coaches' provision of feedback (β = .17), and the number of different ideas transmitted by each coach (β = −.90).

This study analyze the coach’s instruction during practice sessions on the task presentation and feedback, studying the coherency between coach information and the athlete retention in relation to the athletes’ school level. The participants were forty-two gymnastics’ athletes from different academic levels (elementary, middle and high school). The results showed that the coherency between coach information and athlete retention is similar in both instructional events and a substantive part, almost 40%, is not retained by athletes. In the feedback, we didn’t verify differences in the information retained according to academic levels. In task presentation the athletes belonging to elementary schools showed the lowest values of retention, demonstrating a significant difference between middle and high school athletes. These results suggest that athletes retention tends to be more difficult when the information is longer, less contextualized and doesn’t refer specifically to any specific motor task.