Question

What difficulties might a coach for a high performance team encounter when predicting which future athlete are most likely to succeed at the elite level? How do the skills and abilities of a novice differ from a highly skilled performer?

Answer 1

An elite young athlete is the one who has the superior talent when compared to others of same age and with same amount of training. This elite athlete undergoes special training with expert coaching and is exposed to many competitions both national and international sporting events under various categories. This athlete would be chosen from the age group as young starting from 9 and are trained to participate in the competitions, which is very much necessary for identifying the future talents.

A coach profession is ever changing from one sport to the other to be successful. He should acquire the working knowledge of all the areas associated to performance enhancement namely discipline, administration, strength of each player and their health condition, and should know about the sports medicine in general. Apart from that, sports psychology helps the coaches to train the athlete both mentally and physically while training them.

Major difficulties a coach might encounter with a high performance team while predicting future athletes to success in the elite level are: The young elite athlete may be more exposed to injury due to growth-related factors such as adolescence, vulnerability to injury, age and maturity differences among themselves, longer recovery of an injury, difference in physiological response when compared to adults due to age factor. They might be at risk due to immaturity in coordination, perception, and skills.

For a girl athlete, concern should be more regarding their hormone issues, menstrual cycle, muscle strength, flexibility, and neuromuscular characteristics. The more frequent and intensive coaching and competitions make the elite athlete to be productive in every manner. Risk of injury is high in young athlete. Female athletes suffer from social and cultural pressure where some of them are lean and thin and that is very much common in sports. Proper nutrition cannot be maintained in female athletes. So, deficiency in energy in long term leads to the female athlete get tired, which may happen because of low energy availability, missed or irregular menstrual periods, bone problems and stress related issues, changes in hormone levels, and also with eating disorders.

Here, the skilled performers are independent performers, and have a definite motivation of the sport. Some of the characteristics of a skilled performer is that anticipation, consistency, with good techniques of the sport, and have a wonderful kinaesthetic sense, which is nothing but the knowhow of the positions of the body and movements of their skeletal joints.

Here, the skilled performers show more controlled response and good anticipation in the early stages. Novice athletes show more cognitive control with less anticipation. Skilled is better able to correct them, whereas a novice cannot. Say for an example, a skilled performer can perform well even in a crowd noise, whereas novices get distracted by irrelevant indications or cues around them.

A novice performer takes a long time to learn a new motor skill and possess less attention. Novice experiences anxiety during unfamiliar circumstances. Emotionally they are weak, whereas a skilled performer is able to grasp things in a quicker way and are able to perform well. Skilled performers show consistency wherever they perform. Novice gets tensed if he misses out anyone of it.

So, we can say that even though there are differences between novice and skilled performer; novice needs some more time to learn a new skill than a skilled performer. With the proper training and coaching, a novice can also perform well.