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Life skills transfer in sport involves the application of skills learned on the playing field, such as teamwork, communication or honesty, to situations at home, school or work. This process is essential to helping youth athletes thrive within and beyond sport. Learn more in the newest SIRC blog.

This is the third and final blog in a series on positive youth development in sport. If this is your first visit to this series, considering taking a few minutes to read the other two posts: Tips on How to Deliver a Quality Youth Sport Program and Teaching Life Skills Through Sport.

Life skills transfer is defined as an ongoing process where an individual applies a skill learned in one context to another context (Pierce, Camiré, & Gould, 2017). Within sport, this could involve the application of skills such as teamwork, communication or honesty learned on the playing field to situations at home, school or work. Life skills transfer is essential in helping youth athletes thrive within and beyond sport.

Similar to life skills development, athletes can experience transfer implicitly (i.e., without support from coaches) or explicitly (i.e., deliberate actions by coaches to support transfer; Turnnidge, Côté, & Hancock, 2014). However, the evidence supports an intentional approach to life skills transfer to help enhance athletes’ awareness and understanding of the transfer process (e.g., Bean, Kramers, Forneris, & Camiré, 2018).

Below are four strategies that coaches can intentionally use to support athletes in transferring life skills beyond sport, based on the growing literature on this topic (e.g., Allen, Rhind, & Koshy, 2015; Bean et al., 2018; Chinkov & Holt, 2016; Jørgenson, Lemyre, & Holt, 2019; Kendellen, Camiré, Bean, Forneris, & Thompson, 2017; Pierce et al., 2017; Pierce, Kendellen, Camiré, & Gould, 2018). An example of each strategy is provided below using the skill of relaxation, related to emotional regulation.

  1. Support athletes’ own transfer process
    • Foster the mastery of life skills amongst athletes by providing a safe and supportive environment.
    • Discuss life skills transfer with athletes to enhance their awareness and understanding of potential opportunities to apply skills within and beyond sport.
    • Recognize that transfer is a process that will look different for individual athletes – some athletes may take longer or shorter to internalize certain skills, or may require support to address specific needs.  
    • Example – Ask athletes to describe what they need in order to feel relaxed, such as listening to music during a sport competition and while they are preparing for a test.
  2. Encourage athlete reflection on transfer experiences
    • Implement structured opportunities for athletes to consider how transfer can or did occur through debriefing and reflection exercises during practices and competition. Encourage weekly journaling on specific transfer experiences to help athletes understand circumstances that prevented transfer from occurring
    • Be aware that athletes’ abilities to engage in reflection may change over time and with cognitive maturity.
    • Example – Ask athletes to share examples with their teammates of times they were successful and unsuccessful at relaxing prior to an important event (e.g., shooting a penalty shot, public speaking), and encourage reflection on the process and/or the performance based on these experiences.
  3. Create opportunities for athletes to apply life skills beyond sport
    • Organize activities and events that provide athletes with opportunities to apply their learned skills outside of sport within a supportive environment, such as team fundraisers.
    • Be aware of and make connections between the contexts athletes will engage in, such as being a team player in sport and during group projects at school. Congruence between learning contexts is important for life skills development and transfer.
    • Example – At the end-of-season team party, ask athletes to prepare a short speech to thank their parents/guardians for their ongoing support throughout the season. Encourage athletes to use the skills they learned in sport related to relaxation to help prepare for speaking in front of a group.
  4. Develop partnerships in the community
    • Build links with parents/guardians, teachers, and community members to develop a shared understanding of how athletes can transfer life skills, including supporting these processes and providing opportunities for athletes to apply skills.
    • Create structured opportunities for team involvement in the community, such as volunteering at a soup kitchen or community event. Athletes can practice their learned life skills, such as leadership or communication skills, within the community among supportive adults.
    • Invite former athletes, professional athletes, and/or recognized community members to share their own transfer experiences with athletes on your team.
    • Example – Connect with your athletes’ parents/guardians and/or teachers to share the relaxation strategies practiced in sport to support their transfer to other contexts, such as when completing homework or prior to a test.

Research reported in the International Journal of Sport Coaching explored athletes’ perceptions of what coaches can do to build athlete confidence. Through surveys with collegiate student-athletes, five key categories were identified: creating a positive environment; responding to athletes productively; developing effective practices for training; developing interpersonal relationships with athletes; and coach possession of effective intrapersonal qualities.

Unstructured play contributes to the mental health of children and youth by promoting positive feelings through experiences of joy, thrill and competence; building children’s resilience through challenging or risky play; and improving healthy relationship by building problem-solving and emotional intelligence. Download an infographic summarizing five key findings relating to unstructured play and mental health.

The Government of Canada recently announced investments to expand the use of sport and physical activity programming as a means to improve social development in Indigenous communities. The application process for projects designed to improve health, improve education, reduce at-risk behaviour, and improve employability, is now open. The deadline for applications is July 19, 2019.

This blog was adapted from a SIRCuit article written by Dr. Vicki Harber. For the full article, click here.

Within Canada, there is some concern that an ethos of “winning at all costs” has infiltrated youth sport, degrading the quality of the sport experience resulting in reduced participation (Brenner, 2016) and increased injury (Jayanthi et al., 2013). Building psychological, cognitive, social and emotional skills are largely ignored, yet these are essential ingredients for successful high performance athletes, particularly for our developing athletes (Bailey, 2012).

Many members of the Canadian sport system are engaged in dialogue about the ways we develop our younger athletes, particularly in the first three stages of Canada’s Long-Term Athlete Development Pathway (Active Start, FUNdamentals and Learn to Train). It is during these stages that sport can play a role in developing athletes’ executive functions and social and emotional learning skills – the foundations for “human development.”

What are Executive Functions?

Success in school and in one’s career requires “creativity, flexibility, self-control and discipline” (Diamond 2016). Underlying these attributes are executive functions (EFs) – a family of mental processes that enable us to plan, focus attention, remember instructions or rules, see things from a different perspective, respond to novel or unpredictable circumstances, and juggle multiple tasks successfully (Diamond 2013).

The parts of the brain that develop these EFs are often compared to an air traffic control system. Busy airports have a duty to safely manage arrivals and departures for many airplanes using many runways, all at the same time. Similarly, our brain needs to operate like an air traffic control tower, seeing and managing distractions, establishing priorities for tasks, setting and achieving goals, while controlling impulsive words and actions (Centre on the Developing Child, Harvard University).

These functions are highly interrelated, and the successful application of EFs in real world situations requires them to properly orchestrate their operations with each other. It is generally agreed that there are 3 core functions:

Developing Executive Functions through Sport

Diamond (2015) reviews the effects of physical exercise on EFs and identifies preferred types of activity that promote positive impact. These include cognitively-engaging exercise, activities requiring bimanual coordination and eye-hand coordination (e.g. social circus), and activities that require frequently crossing the midline and/or rhythmic movement, such as dance or drumming, particularly when moving with others. Our knowledge about the mechanisms that underlie improved executive functions is growing and includes both structural and functional changes to specific regions of the brain (Cotman et al 2007). While our understanding advances, Diamond (2015) further postulates that executive functions are improved by activities promoting physical fitness, but also those that “(a) train and challenge diverse motor and EF skills, (b) bring joy, pride, and self-confidence, and (c) provide a sense of social belonging (e.g., group or team membership).”

What is social and emotional learning?

Establishing a foundation of EFs permits the subsequent development of social and emotional learning skills (Diamond 2013). These include self-awareness, self-management, responsible decision-making, relationship skills, and social awareness.

“Social and emotional learning is the process through which children and adults acquire and effectively apply the knowledge, attitudes, and skills necessary to understand and manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make responsible decisions.”

Developing SEL through Sport

While much of the work on EFs and SEL has been led by the education sector, we could easily substitute “athlete” for “student” and “coach” for “teacher” and explore the possibilities for community recreation program and sport clubs.

Most coaches would agree that self-management, self-respect, respect of others, an emphasis on effort, and strong decision-making and goal setting skills would be favourable attributes from a competitive sport perspective. Programs that cultivate these values would find their athletes enjoying sport and maintaining their participation over time. Effective implementation of this approach requires “prioritizing the athlete over wins and losses, emphasizing relationships, taking a holistic approach to developing athletes, and understanding that the model is a ‘way of being’, and not just a set of techniques to be followed” (Balague & Fink, 2016).

There are many different ways that this approach can be integrated into the sport environment; one recommended process is described below:

  1. A pre-season discussion with athletes about the kind of culture the team wishes to create. Some questions to help guide this discussion include “What are the things that define us?” or “How do we want to be seen by others?” This can also include season goals for individuals as well as the entire team.
  2. Allow the team to create their own means by which they gather and decide on consequences for players that do not meet the agreed upon standards.
  3. An awareness talk begins each training session to identify the personal and group goals that target the SEL components. For example, the focus might be on Relationship Skills – during the awareness talk, ask the athletes to describe what this looks like in both sport and non-sport situations. This helps to establish ownership and accountability for the practice session.
  4. At the end of each training session, there is a rapid check-in with players to reflect on their contributions and how this might look in other parts of their life. Using the Relationship Skills from point #3, athletes can identify how they managed these skills during the training session, what did they do or say to promote relationship building or what might they do differently next time.
  5. While coaches will facilitate the above, they need to honour and respect the athlete voices by supporting their choices. For example, during training, the coach must integrate athlete ideas from the opening awareness talk.

For more information about teaching life skills through sport, check out this SIRC blog series on positive youth development.

A focus on winning at all costs has created sport programs in which building psychological, cognitive, social and emotional skills are largely ignored, yet these are essential ingredients for successful high performance athletes. Today’s blog provides an overview of the development of executive functions and social and emotional learning through sport.

Fear of injury and kidnapping, and a belief in the superiority of structured activities, have reduced the amount of time children engage in outdoor unstructured play. This infographic provides the evidence to debunk these common myths that are keeping kids at home on the couch, instead of outside playing.

Parents and other adults can place restrictions on the unstructured play of children, reducing child independence and limiting them to “boring” play spaces. Increasing access to outdoor, unstructured play promotes physical and mental health; improves social skills, creativity and team work; improves learning and attention at school; and improves resilience and risk management skills. Download this infographic about the benefits of play.

Strategies to help athletes develop sport-specific physical skills can also be used to explicitly teach life skills through sport. A deliberate approach includes focusing on one life skill at a time, drawing connections, and using teachable moments. Learn more in the SIRC blog.