A Phenomenological Research Study On Coaches’ Experience Of National Championship Martial Arts Team

The purpose of this study was to adopt the phenomenological research method toclearly describe the coaches’ experiences of what they perceived about their mostsuccessful national championship martial arts teams. By examining their experiencesof these teams, a deeper understanding of winning teams and coaches was sought.Following the phenomenological paradigm (Pollio et al.,1997)[11], eleven martial artscoaches were interviewed by asking the main research question which was,"What is themost significant feeling about your most successful National Championship team?"The conclusion of this research could be summarized by the following six aspects.(1) The phenomenological research method, as a recently advanced qualitativemethod, provided an effective research tool for investigating sport experiences in thefield of applied sport psychology. The phenomenological research method bought outdeep and specific descriptions of the coaches’ actual sport experience. Following aphenomenological open interview procedure in this study, the coaches may havedescribed their own coaching experiences freely and in-detail with the researcher,thereby engendering meaningful and valuable information to emerge.(2) There were four themes that came out of the experiences of martial artscoaches’ most successful championship team. These included leadership, team work,wushu talent and mental toughness. These themes are not separated from each othercompletely; they are interrelated and interact as a whole which could be viewed as aninteracting system to best understand the experiences of martial arts championshipteams.(3) The first theme of the coaches’ experiences of martial arts championship teamsis leadership, which includes five subthemes: ethical and character based, competence,conscientiousness, consideration, and communicate effectively. Championship martialart teams started with successful coaching leadership. Ethical and character-based isthe first aspect of the leadership, it embodies the culture meaning and spiritual pursuit ofChinese traditional martial arts; competence reflects the coaching capability of theWushu coaches; conscientiousness, the responsibility and commitment of the coaches,is the best predictor of team performance; consideration is the sincere concern forathletes and acting in a supportive manner towards them by the champion team coaches;communicate effectively reflects coaches’ successful ability to communication andhandle the team conflicts constructively. (4) Team work is the second theme in the martial arts champion team coachingexperiences, including four subthemes: common goal, model learning, cohesion andcollective efficacy. Having a common goal motivates the athletes to work hardtogether as a team to realize the same goal; model learning is the positive mutualinfluence among the elite wushu players; cohesion refers to respect and attractionamong athletes and the intimate rapport with the team relations; collective efficacyshows the the sense of honor be in the champion troop and the motivation the effort toimprove performance.(5) The third theme of this study is wushu talent, which means wushu potential andwushu ability. The athlete which has wushu potential shows good physical condition,agility, flexibility and coordination, as well as intelligent and imitation ability. Thewushu ability refers to the superiority and characteristic of each martial arts championteam member.(6) Mental toughness is the fourth theme, including five subthemes: self-efficacy,intrinsic motivation, task-focus orientation, perseverance and emotional control. Mentaltoughness is characterized by an unshakeable perseverance and conviction towardsspecific training and competition goals despite pressure or adversity. The fiveidentified components of mental toughness in this study, are the main characteristics ofmental toughness which are required by Chinese martial arts.