Influence of a mentoring through reflection program on the verbal behavior of tennis coach in a wheelchair high competition

Abstract

Our study deal with the teaching coaches process, applied to the adapted sport field, concretely to the wheelchair tennis of top level. From the literature revision and the collect of the expert opinion, we have designed a formative program in order to optimize the verbal behaviour coach during the training sessions. Concretely, we focus our research about the first information that the coach sends previously to each skill, and about the feedback gave after the execution by the player. The research design had three phases, the first one without the participation of the researcher, the second one where the researcher had a meeting with the coach to analyze everything succeded into the training session, and the third phase where the researcher recorded, only, the training session. Our research has been developed as a study of cases, with three coaches of players integrated into the national wheelchair tennis team, and related to the results we have contrasted the efficacy of the program about the coach verbal behaviour, increasing the number of first information with higher quality, and also the number of feedback, suggested by the experts as the most quality. KEY WORDS: Coaches formation, verbal behaviour; formative program, wheelchair tennis.