How to Model Sportsmanship Through Emotional Regulation

 

As a coach, one of your primary challenges is to help your athletes learn and display sportsmanship. When it comes to sportsmanship, TrueSport Expert and Assistant Director of Sport Psychology at Ohio State University, Charron Sumler, PhD, LPCC, likes starting with the three E's: prioritizing effort over outcome, practicing emotional regulation, and developing and using effective communication.

For coaches, teaching sportsmanship through emotional regulation is especially important. But modeling emotional regulation, or the ability to understand, assess, and control emotions in potentially difficult situations, is no small task. Here, Sumler shares a few ways that you can start improving your own emotional regulation and better model sportsmanship along the way.

Develop Awareness

It's important to remember that anytime you're with athletes, they're assessing and absorbing your behavior, whether they realize it or not. That's why it's important that you're able to model healthy emotional regulation to your athletes. As Sumler notes, parents and coaches must self-regulate if they're going to help athletes do the same. Many coaches experience moments when emotions take over and lead them to act in ways they’re not so proud of. They often report feelings of shame, embarrassment, and disappointment after displaying poor sportsmanship.

Start by Identifying Your Emotions as They Happen

"The first part of emotional regulation is knowing what emotions you're experiencing in any given moment," says Sumler. "You can't regulate your emotions if you don't understand what emotions you're feeling."

Sumler's favorite journaling exercise for improving your ability to check in with your emotions is to write down two or three emotions you experienced during the day before you go to bed. Try to be specific, so rather than saying you were unhappy, identify if you were frustrated, sad, angry, or impatient. Struggling to name your emotions? Look at a feelings wheel or list of emotions to find the words that best describe your emotions. This is also a great exercise to suggest to athletes!

Respond Rather Than React

Emotional regulation doesn't mean hiding your feelings. Instead, it means being able to respond rather than react. "Being able to pause and think about how you want to respond to a situation versus reacting immediately is the next step," says Sumler. Like physical skills, emotional skills take practice and training before they become second nature. Practicing mindfulness can help you “buy” time in tense situations. Starting this week, try to slow down your responses to emotionally charged events by testing out the following strategies: three deep belly breaths, counting your inhale and exhale to 20, box breathing, or progressive muscle relaxation.

Often, this moment of pause is all it takes to shift your instant (often emotional) reaction to a more measured response. It also helps your athletes realize that it's okay to take a beat in the heat of the moment rather than instantly reacting.

Know Your Triggers

Are you a coach who gets frustrated when an athlete shows up late to practice? While it's reasonable to have rules for the team, yelling at an athlete who is three minutes late isn't going to help the team's sense of cohesion or safety. "It's really helpful when coaches are aware of their hot button issues and can tell when they're about to become frustrated and have that emotional reaction," says Sumler.

Instead of reacting with emotions, establish consequences ahead of time for behaviors that are unacceptable and triggering. For example, let the team know at the start of the season that anyone late to practice will be responsible for staying late to clean up after.

In cases where you can't have specific rules in place, or in highly charged emotional moments, Sumler recommends coming back to the power of taking a pause before reacting.