The coaches' perceptions and experience implementing a long-term athletic development model in competitive swimming

article

Costa, Mário
Santos, Catarina
Quinta-Nova, L.C.
Costa, Aldo
Silva, António
Barbosa, Tiago

COSTA, M. [et al.] (2021) -The coaches' perceptions and experience implementing a long-term athletic development model in competitive swimming. Front. Psychol. DOI 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.685584.

1664-1078

10.3389/fpsyg.2021.685584

The coaches' perceptions and experience implementing a long-term athletic development model in competitive swimming

LTAD
Swimming

National Funds through the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), I.P (UIDB04045/2020)

2021-10-11T23:24:31Z
2021-10-11T23:24:31Z
2021

The aim of this study was to analyze the association between coaches’ experience and their perceptions on the implementation of a long-term athletic development (LTAD) model created in 2016 by the Portuguese Swimming Federation. Eighty-six swimming coaches were assembled in groups according to their experience level: “novice” (n = 24), “intermediate” (n = 26), and “experienced” (n = 36), and they answered a questionnaire with the following items: (i) awareness of the existing model (ii) acceptance (iii) usefulness for practice, and (iv) implementation of this model by their peers. Regardless of experience, ~67% of the coaches were aware of the model. Among those, a large number showed acceptance (~95%) and confidence in its usefulness (~83%) for their daily practice. Most coaches (92%) showed concerns about the fact that their peers do not respect the model frameworks, declaring the search for their swimmers’ immediate success (~58%) as the main cause for such behavior. The results also showed an association between experience and knowledge about the model’s existence [χ2 (2) = 10.223, p < 0.01, V = 0.345], and experienced coaches exhibited better knowledge than their intermediate [χ2 (2) = 9.555, p < 0.01, V = 0.393] or novice [χ2 (2) = 5.926, p = 0.02, V = 0.314] counterparts. While there was an association between the coaches’ experience and knowledge about the LTAD model’s existence, this situation does not seem to influence the way coaches accept and understand the usefulness of the model for their daily practice.
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

openAccess

eng