This section will look at three similar, but subtly different, psychological concepts: confidence, self-efficacy, and resilience. First, let’s define the key differences. Confidence is the belief in one’s abilities across a variety of contexts. It is a general sense of control and belief in one’s overall competence. Self-efficacy, on the other hand, is a narrower belief in one’s ability to succeed in specific situations and accomplish specific tasks. Since it is a task- or situation-specific trait, it can vary a lot across different areas of one’s life. Resilience refers to one’s ability to adapt and thrive in the face of adversity, stress, and significant challenges. All three of these concepts are crucial to succeeding in trail and ultramarathon events.
Vealey’s sports confidence model (1986) differentiates between trait sport confidence and state sport confidence. Trait sport confidence refers to the degree to which an individual believes in their overall ability to succeed in a sport across all time and situations. This can be seen as a stable backdrop of self-belief and will influence how they generally perceive, and react, to competitive situations. On the other hand, state sport confidence is a momentary feeling of confidence that will fluctuate in specific situations and circumstances. It is how confident an athlete feels right before or during a specific event. Generally, high confidence is associated with higher motivation and performance, increased participation, increased self-esteem, and a greater likelihood to approach competitive situations. So, as coaches, we want to build our athletes’ trait confidence and ability to maintain high state confidence in a variety of situations.
State confidence might sound a lot like self-efficacy, but they are distinct constructs. While state confidence refers to the transient feelings of assurance an athlete might have regarding their capabilities; self-efficacy, on the other hand, is the far more stable belief in one’s capability to perform in a given situation.
Trait confidence refers to one’s general belief in their overall running ability. Self-efficacy then refers to one’s general belief in their ability to perform in specific situations. State confidence then refers to how much the athlete is actually believing in themselves in the given moment (when faced with a specific challenge). It is important to understand these key distinctions so that you can better recognise where your athletes might need to improve. For example, you might have an athlete who generally has good trait confidence and believes they are a competent runner, but they might have some negative views about some specific abilities. For instance, they might believe they are bad at running downhill. That would be someone with low self-efficacy in regard to downhill running. On the other hand, they might generally believe they are a good downhill runner (i.e., have high self-efficacy), but every time they are then faced with a technical descent, they get inside their own head and lose the confidence needed to bomb downhill (i.e., low state confidence). This is where someone might tell you that they know they can do it, but they just freeze in the moment.
So how do we go about developing an athlete’s confidence and self-efficacy? Confidence can come from many factors; as a coach, you will have the most control over their preparation, and you can provide social support. There really is no substitute for feeling prepared, and it goes a long way if an athlete trusts in your ability to prepare them for races. It may also help to talk to your athletes about what they feel they need to do in training to feel ready for their upcoming event (i.e., address the areas of concern where they have lower self-efficacy or have previously experienced low state confidence). Previous performances and race experiences will also play a big role, and you can remind them of some of their previous races (or training sessions) where they’ve done well. You can build your athlete’s confidence and self-efficacy by highlighting their strengths, rather than berating them for their weaknesses. You may even build their confidence by giving athletes specific training sessions where you know they’re likely to succeed.
Previous performance accomplishments will go a long way toward also building self-efficacy expectations. On top of this, vicarious experiences can be very beneficial, such as learning about previous athletes who have been in similar situations and have ultimately been successful. Internal and external persuasion will also play a role; we will talk more in the ‘self-talk’ section about that internal persuasion, and as their coach you can externally persuade them about their capabilities. Again, this is building up our athletes and highlighting their strengths. Finally, an athlete’s emotional and physiological state will also greatly affect their self-efficacy. If someone is upset or injured, they’re not going to hold their ability to perform in high regard. Smart coaching will help avoid/manage injuries and applying some of the techniques in the ‘mindfulness and ACT’ section could assist in regulating their emotional state.
We can also build more resilient athletes through stress inoculation, in other words, exposure to stressors in moderation. This will help create a sense of mastery over future stressors. We can do this by actively seeking out challenging situations for our athletes, and ultimately this will improve their performance. This is probably a very familiar concept, as that is how most physical training works, i.e., we challenge our athlete, and they become stronger because of it. This might mean creating intentionally mentally challenging situations for our athletes in training. For example, they might simulate things that could go wrong in a race. While this might not be something you want to do too regularly, it can still be a useful exercise for an athlete to practise what they would do if they don’t have enough water, miss an aid station, if they are sleep-deprived, have wet shoes, or whatever else you can come up with. It will help them get comfortable with being uncomfortable and prepare them for the worst possible situations by thinking about all the possible “what ifs”. Even if it’s not appropriate for them to practise it in training, they can still go through this thought process mentally so that they can mentally prepare for what to do. That way, they will always have a plan of attack and be ready to go. In all these situations, the techniques outlined in the ‘mindfulness and ACT’ section could also be useful.
Key takeaways
1. Trait confidence refers to one’s general belief in their running abilities
2. Self-efficacy refers to one’s self-belief to perform specific actions
3. State confidence refers to one’s self-belief in a given situation
4. Resilience refers to one’s ability to thrive in the face of adversity
5. We can build an athlete’s confidence through adequate preparation, strength-oriented coaching, and drawing on previous experiences
6. We can build self-efficacy through previous performances, vicarious experiences, persuasion, and positive emotional/physiological states
7. We can build an athlete’s resilience through stress inoculation
Vealey, R. (1986). Conceptualization of sport-confidence and competitive orientation: Preliminary investigation and instrument development. The Journal of Sport Psychology, 8, 221-246. https://doi.org/10.1123/JSP.8.3.221.