The third arm of coaching is dealing with the mental side, getting the athlete into the right frame of mind. Most coaches have good psychological skills and as in the field of physiology, there have been significant advances in sports psychology. There are many good books available to help the coach but a word of warning. The technical, physical and mental readiness of the athlete, are of equal importance for maximum performance. Neglect any one of the three or overstate any one with respect to the others, then you will fail.

One of the most useful psychological tools available to the coach is goal setting. How this works is to sit down with your athletes and decide what you want to achieve. This could range from winning a local regatta to Olympic gold. This is usually quite straightforward and is known as the outcome goal. What is a little more difficult is when you ask the athlete how they intend to reach their outcome goal or by which process.

To establish the process you need two reference points and one you already have, which is the outcome goal. The second reference point is where you are at the moment with respect to your outcome goal. Depending on the gap between the two points you will need to set a number of short, medium and long term goals known as the process goals.

Each of the process goals has to be realistic and achievable to reinforce the attainability of the outcome goal. Along the road you may need to reassess either the outcome goal or the process goals depending on whether the athlete is finding them too hard or too easy to achieve.

Another tool useful to the coach is stress management. Mention the word stress and most people will associate it with a negative connotation. However devoid of any stress we would not need to do anything starting by getting up in the morning. We have to go to work to earn money in order to eat and provide a roof over our head. The need to provide these basic human requirements is a stressor, which is a reason to do something. As we go about our tasks to meet these basic human needs we come across obstacles, which increase the level of stress. Because we overcome these obstacles we can associate an increased level of performance with an increased level of stress. This is true up to a point where a further increase in stress has the opposite effect and performance declines.

Stress Performance Graph

The optimum stress level will vary amongst athletes; some will need to be wound up while others need to be calmed down. This can cause problems in a team event where it is usual for the coach to give a team talk just before a race. In this case the talk should be general and deal more with tactics than motivation. Emphasis should be placed on positive results from training and that they are ready to perform.

Motivational talks should be done on an individual basis and should be an ongoing aspect of your coaching. If there is a real need to wind up the whole crew just before they race you should really be asking them "do you really want to do this?"

Motivation is getting someone to do something and this can be something they want to do or something you want them to do but they are not too keen. Depending on which will depend on what motivational technique you decide to use. You have three options and the first is authority. As the coach you have the responsibility to organise the training, crew selection and to organise the regatta programme. Along with this responsibility you must have some authority. You can use this authority to tell your charges what you have decided and what you expect them to do.

The second method is reason. With the reason method you lay out your strategy and the logic of it persuades the athletes to support the programme.

The third option is to appeal to the child in everyone. Here you get the athlete to do what you want but for their reasons, which can be quite different from yours.

A coaching friend of mine gave me the following example of these three types of motivation.

A young man is sitting watching his favourite TV programme when his mother comes in and asks him to empty the waste bin. This is his mother and so the initial request is based on authority but this is his favourite programme and so he says he will do it in a moment.

After a little while his mother comes in again and said the bin is overflowing and really stinks can you empty it now please. This is a reasonable request, no one wants a stinky bin in the house but still the authority and the reason approach are not a strong enough motivation to get him to leave his TV programme.

But as he sits there he thinks about the stinking rubbish and the neighbour who kept his football when it went over the garden fence. He thinks I'll take that stinky rubbish and dump it on his doorstep and this motivates him to leave his programme and empty the bin.

Different people will respond to different methods of motivation all you have to do is to find out which method is appropriate and use it. However, what you must not loose sight of is that motivation is an empowering exercise. Its purpose is to get the athletes to believe in themselves and they "can do". The process is ongoing, along with the physical improvement that results from the training programme, must be a belief that come competition time they can win.

So what happens when the training has gone well, the crew are psyched up and go into the race believing they can win but they loose. This is hard but has to be dealt with and the way to address it is go through the process, identify what worked. Try to identify any weak areas where improvement can be made and go back and try again. Don't be afraid to hold your hand up and accept that on the day you met a better opponent and that is nothing to be ashamed of. All you can do is your best and as long as you know that you have done this then you can find honour in defeat.