Youth Sport Coaches’ Well-Being Across the Season: The Psychological Costs and Benefits of Giving Empowering and Disempowering Sports Coaching to Athletes

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the associations between giving empowering and disempowering sports coaching to young athletes and coaches’ well-being across the season. The sample comprised 169 Norwegian youth football (i.e., European soccer) coaches with a mean age of 41.99 (SD = 6.32). Moreover, we were interested in examining heterogeneous groups of coaches showing variability in their self-reporting of empowering and disempowering behaviors towards their athletes. Thus, a person-centered approach was used. The latent profile analysis revealed three distinct profiles and the association between these profiles and coaches’ well-being was in line with the outlined hypotheses. Specifically, coaches who gave higher levels of empowering and lower levels of disempowering sports coaching to their athletes at the beginning of the season also reported higher levels of well-being at the end of the season. The results indicate that there exists an intrinsic value as to why coaches should give empowering sports coaching, as opposed to disempowering sports coaching, to their athletes; namely, these actions may be advantageous in terms of improving their own well-being. In practical terms, future coach education may take advantage of these findings by providing coaches another reason for coaching in an empowering manner.