5 Reasons Why Athlete Self-Assessments Improve Performance

More than ever, coaches have learned the reality of confidence issues that plague many young athletes today. Getting past the mental roadblocks can often be more challenging than improving the technical aspects. However, athlete self-assessments will give your players the opportunity to reflect deeply on their own game, set goals, and work towards them.

We all know that 90% of the game is mental and that any mental blockages can greatly affect your athletes’ performance. By conducting self-assessments in SkillShark, you can uncover the answers to many helpful questions such as, “Is their perception holding them back or pushing them forward?” 

What Are the Benefits of Self-Assessments in Sports?

1. Confidence Building

Athletes often compare themselves to others which can be quite damaging to their overall self-confidence. When athletes spend too much time comparing their capabilities to those of their teammates, this is damaging to their mental health and hinders their performance.

Implementing self-assessments will allow athletes to focus exclusively on themselves. Rather than coaches ranking athletes on key components such as their technique, character, and sportsmanship, athletes will have the chance to rank themselves in these areas. This provides an opportunity for self-reflection. Oftentimes, athletes are so caught up in winning the game that they forget the big picture of sports: growth and development. With athlete self-assessments, players can hit the “pause” button and take the time to rate how they feel about themselves.

2. Self-Awareness

How an athlete thinks vs how they are performing often shows misalignment. As a coach, having this overview gives you greater insight into your players.

If you notice an athlete hitting a frequent amount of air balls during games (although they seem to shoot 90% of their shots during practice), you might come to find out through their self-assessment that their nerves get the best of them during big games. Without a self-assessment shedding light on this, coaches would resort to having a one-on-one with the athlete to come to this conclusion (granted that the athlete is comfortable being vulnerable during an oral conversation to open up).

Using SkillShark, you are now able to conduct self-assessments, quickly analyze responses, and indicate where additional coaching is needed. Most importantly, you are giving athletes an opportunity to become self-aware, a huge building block to becoming confident.

3. Goal Setting

Setting goals helps trigger new behaviours and aligns focus while promoting a sense of self-mastery. And It’s proven to work. So why aren’t we as coaches promoting more personal goal-setting in sports?

Goal setting is an extremely powerful technique for enhancing performance. When your athletes can set goals based on personal milestones, this gives them something to work towards (and something to celebrate when they hit that goal!).

Goal setting is easy with SkillShark as each self-assessment question is created by coaches. If you are asking an athlete to rank their ability on a scale of 1–10 within a specific skill, include a question in the self-assessment asking them to set specific & measurable goals for themselves. I.e., “How confident are you in your ability to shoot layups?” Then, follow up with, “In the next 3 months, how many layups do you want to make?”

Self-assessment report

4. Relationship Building

Self-assessments provide transparency from person to person, athlete to coach, coach to parent. Just as an evaluation does, but on a much more personal level. Not only will the evaluation app help you gain a better understanding of your players, but having this open communication will help build an immense amount of trust between involved parties.

There is a certain amount of vulnerability the athlete must endure when conducting a self-assessment, which can be key when it comes to future development. The information you learn about each athlete can be valuable and contribute to your coaching strategy. You truly get to know your athletes on a more intimate level, thus improving the communication between you (the coach) and your athletes, making it a sports coaching app as well.

5. Improved Performance

Self-assessments will help your athletes become more aware of their abilities and self-diagnose relevant solutions for improvement.

Picture this: You are asking an athlete to rank their defense skills in hockey. With a self-assessment, you are asking them to self-reflect (and evaluate) on an area that they might not have given much thought to before.

The end result? The athlete is now self-aware that their defensive skills are an area they need to work on, they develop a “puck-possessive mentality” over time, and their performance is enhanced.

Wrapping Up