Types of Coaching Styles

My coaches, the authoritarian, nice guy and intense one on the left and the easy-going, and intense one on the right. love having a mix of styles.

Hey everyone, Arely here to talk about the amazing people who run the training room, and who take us to success. I want to share with you guys the different types of coaches there are and some of their characteristic triads. A coach is someone who trains you and guides you to the best of their ability in your athletic career to be the best of the best. Coaches usually have a big impact on their athletes, I know mines do, whether it negative or positive. Having a good relationship with your coach is important to have a successful athletic career because a coach is an athlete’s game master.

A coach has many responsibilities and roles to guide a successful team. Like remembering to keep it positive, help their athletes have good self-esteem, encourage everyone to participate, not to burnout their athletes, and to have a good relationship with the parents. These skills are essential for a coach to have because they’ll be reflected in their athletes. Keeping a positive attitude is hard sometimes but a coach is the leader of the room, its who the athletes will follow so if they’re in a bad mood, athletes will feed off that energy.

There are two types of coaching strategies the autocratic type and the democratic type. An autocratic coach is someone who gives instructions to athletes without the request of their input. They like to have absolute power, they instruct athletes but then later encourages them feedback and questions. A democratic coach is someone who likes to make suggestions then take the feedback from the athletes. They give athletes the freedom to brainstorm and implement their suggestions. I would say I have a combination of both so my training room is balanced out.

There are many different types of coaching styles, and today I want to share with you guys 4 of them. There’s the authoritarian style which is someone who enforces strict obedience. These coaches like to be obeyed and like to have control of the athletes. There’s the “nice guy/gal,” who is someone nice all the time. They’re not as strict, they’re jolly people, and they’re people who enjoy being nice there’s no other way to describe these coaches. Then we have the intense coach, the one who always has the athletes working hard, if it were for them they wouldn’t take breaks but they know we need them. They will have drills for days, they just always have the athletes grinding because they want them to be great. Lastly, we have the “easy-going” coach, this is someone who is the complete opposite of the intense coach. They like to keep in mind the athlete’s feelings, thoughts, and opinions. These are just a few types of styles there are, one singular coaching style very rarely is successful so its important to mix and match. It’s good to have your athletes obey you but you don’t want them to be scared of you, you want to be nice but not too nice that they forget who is in charge, and it’s good to be easy-going but not all the time, you have to be intense at times too.

These are just a few of the many kinds of coaches there are out there. Coaching styles also change according to the sport. I think I have trained with coaches of all types, I’ve worked with the nice ones, the strict ones, the way too easy-going ones, and the intense ones. Having these experiences with coaches was great because now I know what kind of caching styles work with me, and how I focus more. To all the coaches out there, if you see that you’re too much of just one of the styles, try leaning to another style to balance out your personality, but if your athletes are succeeding with that one style then just keep grinding coach!