5 Reasons to Implement Self-Assessments

Between 50% to 90% of sports is mental, and any mental hurdles can significantly impact a player’s performance. Understanding your athletes’ perception of themselves can help you refine your coaching strategy, helping them build confidence and reach the milestones they have set.

Utilizing self-assessments within our team’s app allows you to uncover answers to vital questions such as, “Is their perception hindering or propelling their progress?” Encouraging athletes to evaluate their performance can be a crucial wake-up call for both the coach and the player.

1. Boost Confidence

Self-awareness plays a pivotal role in boosting confidence and self-esteem among athletes. Incorporating self-assessments allows players to concentrate solely on their individual game.

Athletes often make unhealthy comparisons with their peers, eroding their self-confidence. In many cases, seeking social approval excessively can lead to a fear of failure. The most consistent and successful athletes find ways to focus on their own performance. Self-assessments are a significant piece of the puzzle regarding enhancing sports performance because they foster self-reflection.

2. Self-Knowledge

To build confidence, athletes must first develop self-awareness. Often, there is a substantial disconnect between how athletes think they perform vs their actual performance.

SkillShark’s athlete self-assessment reports provide coaches with a digital overview, enhancing their understanding of their athletes’ mental state. Mentally mature athletes can often pinpoint areas for improvement, whereas less mature athletes may be less aware.

3. Goal Setting

Goal setting triggers new behaviours, aligns focus, and promotes a sense of self-mastery. It’s a proven technique, so why not implement it more in your sports training program?

Goal setting is a breeze with SkillShark, as each self-assessment metric is customizable. Athletes can easily record their responses directly from the app and set goals that are specific to the skills they are being evaluated on. I.e., “In three months, I want to score higher on my throwing accuracy.”

4. Strengthen Relationships

Trying to get an athlete to open up during a one-to-one discussion warrants a plethora of challenges. Athletes might not feel comfortable opening up about what they feel they could improve on. On the other hand, some athletes lack the communication skills to effectively articulate their concerns during a formal meeting.

Athlete self-assessments provide a relaxed environment for athletes to reflect on and share their performance. Upon review, coaches will have a better understanding of an athlete’s perspective. When athletes feel more comfortable sharing their thoughts and coaches gain a clear understanding of their self-assessment, this strengthens the coach-athlete relationship.

5. Coach Modifications

When self-assessment results are made available to coaches, this can help them determine how practices should be structured moving forward. I.e., If a coach determines that an athlete feels moderately confident in their ability to throw a baseball (reflected through their self-assessment), take this as a learning lesson. In subsequent practices, make a conscious effort to run more throwing drills, helping to boost their confidence.

Wrapping Up

Implementing athlete self-assessments is just as important as any other type of player evaluation. Equipping athletes with the resources they need to self-reflect on their skill set and abilities can enhance their performance physically and mentally.

Interested in integrating self-assessments into your player evaluations? See what SkillShark has to offer: an all-in-one software to easily score athletes, dive into player insights, conduct self-assessments and more.