摘要:
As a helping profession, sport psychology consulting services are offered to any who wish to enhance their performance, holistic well-being, and social functioning (AASP, n.d.). Though the current literature on experiences of use are heavily rooted in athlete experiences, there is an increasing recognition of the coach as a performer in their own right as well (Thewell, Weston, Greenlees, & Hutchings, 2008). Much like their athletes, coaches face organizational, competitive, and personal stressors in the sporting environment (Olusoga, Maynard, Butt, & Hays, 2010), especially in the high performance context. Therefore, this study examined the experiences of eight high performance coaches from a range of sports who have utilized sport psychology services for their own performance enhancement as a coach. This study was conducted using a hermeneutic phenomenological methodology and each participant engaged in two semi-structured interviews. Thematic analysis of the data elicited a number of themes related to the research questions. Impetus themes included buy-in, opportunity , and environmental stressors. Benefits coaches felt they received were under two broad dimensions—intrapersonal and interpersonal. Intrapersonal had two higher-order themes—facilitating introspection and performance enhancement. The interpersonal dimension had three higher-order themes, these were navigate media interactions, enhance communication with athletes, and friendship development. Barriers themes included lack of resources, stigma, SPC characteristics, and coach characteristics . This research gives the field of applied sport psychology insight into how SPCs and high performance coaches work together in support of the coach’s performance and professional development. Future research should extend this line of research by examining high performance coaches in more diverse countries and cultures to determine if and how sport psychology services may be useful within different contexts. Additi