Measuring Confidence as a Tool to Build Confidence After Losing It
Confidence is the defining character trait in sports. It’s the difference between average, good, and great. Once you get to a certain level in sports talent, skill, and technique are no longer differentiating factors. Average athletes have the same talent, skill, and technique as those who are good and great.
The one trait that tends to separate everyone is execution. What’s more, an athlete’s ability to execute changes depending on the situation. It’s one thing to execute in practice and in low pressure situations. However, it’s a completely different thing to execute in high pressure, high stakes situations. The latter is what separates average, good, and great. What’s more, an athlete’s confidence has a major impact on how they execute in these situations.
Confidence in high pressure, high stakes situations is something an athlete earns. Sometimes, this happens serendipitously when timing meets preparation. For example, a great week of practice followed by an opportunity to make a game winning shot. This will lead to an increase in confidence. On the other hand, if that same athlete happened to be sick that same week of practice and missed the game winning shot then that scenario could cause a loss in confidence. Especially if this happens multiple times.
After a loss in confidence like this, assuming some serendipitous opportunity doesn’t happen to regain it, the athlete must commit to a process of increasing their confidence. This goes beyond just the typical act of committing to prepare with more focus and intensity. This also means getting help with measuring the process of improving confidence.
Measuring Confidence
Like most things, measuring the process of improving confidence is easier said than done. Not only is it hard for an athlete to admit a loss of confidence, it’s even harder for them to ask for help with something as emotional as confidence. As a result, it’s up to parents and coaches to recognize when confidence becomes a barrier to goals. Then seek out interventions to help.
What I like to do is use what sports psychologist call a confidence ruler. A confidence ruler is a simple measurement technique based on a 0 to 10 scale. The idea is that a coach has an athlete rate themselves against specific performance related skills with 0 being not confident at all and 10 being extremely confident. This then gives both the coach and athlete a visual measurement of confidence. In addition, after specific interventions are implemented on skills with low scores, the athlete can be reassessed and progress or the lack thereof can be tracked.
You can also use a confidence ruler to assess the 9 sources of confidence identified in one of the preeminent studies The role of confidence in world-class sport performance. These assessment questions also allow an athlete to rate themselves on a 0 to 10 scale with the same intent. Instead of rating skills, the athlete rates sources of confidence. You can find these questions in my article Questions to Assess How Confident an Athlete is Feeling.
Finally, other assessments to measure confidence coaches may want to consider include the Sport Confidence Inventory and the Competitive State Anxiety Inventory.