The Role of Coaches in Sports Coaching

In the sports coaching process, the coach is in charge of mediating the learning and performance of athletes, which makes him/her one of the protagonists of the sports environment. Specifically, the coach must make decisions on how to control a series of elements that make up this complex process and provoke a significantly positive influence on the achievement of the different objectives that are proposed during sports training, both the athlete or group of athletes, as well as the technical team itself or even the management team.

Due to the importance given to the sports coach, both in individual and collective sports, we consider it vitally important to carry out research into this figure. Specifically, to find out what training a successful coach should have, the psychological or personality characteristics that identify the coach, the role of the coach in the training process, the strategies that help to optimize the sports training process, and the elements that influence his or her work to be effective.

In this way, we will try to find out what characterizes a successful coach and the key elements to take into account in the sports coaching process both in the training stages and in high performance.

This Research Topic aims to select a collection of articles (original research, case studies, reviews, systematic reviews, or analyses) that promote knowledge about one of the most important roles in sport coaching, the sport coach, both in the formative stages and in high-level training.

Topics of interest could be:

- The academic education of the sports coach.
- Psychological characteristics of the sports coach
- The personality of the sports coach.
- The sports coach and psychosocial variables.
- The role of the coach in sports training.
- The figure of the coach: perception of their athletes.
- The successful coach: strategies in the optimization of sports training
- Teaching models of the sports coach
- The sports coach and the importance of teaching strategies and the design of training tasks
- The coach and the use of new technologies
- The coach and competition.

Keywords: coach, training, training tasks, coaching, instructor

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.