WHAT: A former collegiate athlete, Jordan, finds out that her health status isn’t the best. Her cholesterol and blood pressure are on the rise. She is given the ultimatum from her doctor to increase her physical activity levels or she will be put on medication to control her health problems. Jordan doesn’t know how she let herself get to this state of bad health and thinks it is not possible to get back to the way she was when she was in college. The challenge is simply not only to start working out, but to dig deeper than that and try to increase her self-worth. Her self-perception of herself is very low. Jordan needs to boost her self-efficacy so that she is competent to accomplish her goals to become healthy once again and regain her self-esteem.
SO WHAT: Jordan clearly shows issues of self-efficacy and self-confidence with regaining physical activity she once had. Bandura states that self-efficacy predicts actual performance when necessary skills and appropriate incentives are present (Gill & Williams, 2008). With Jordan’s case, incentives are present with trying to avoid getting on medications but with low self-efficacy, performance will be negatively affected. For Jordan to achieve her physical activity goals and to desire to work towards them, she needs to be able to raise her self-perception. Self-perception is people’s attitudes and feelings about their abilities in a particular domain (Gill & Williams, 2008). Jordan is disappointed that she even let herself get this way and doubts herself in being able to get back to the same physically active person she once was as a college athlete.
NOW WHAT: As Jordan’s personal trainer, the first thing to do is to state to Jordan where her current physical activity status is and how to go about increasing that and confronting her that that her self-worth is low needs to be increased as well. These two areas positively correlate with one another. Gill explains that efficacy can be developed through six different ways and one of them is verbal persuasion. As Jordan’s personal trainer, I will incorporate verbal persuasion during her workouts. Jordan will be given positive motivation such as, “You can do it; I know you have it in you to get back to the way you use to be.” This type of motivation will raise her self-efficacy and in turn increase her performance. Self-talk will also be used as a way to enhance performance (Tod, Thatcher, McGuigan, & Thatcher, 2009). Self-talk cues will also be given to her to say to herself when she thinks she may be struggling or not able to complete a workout. Another way to develop efficacy will be vicarious experiences. Vicarious experiences are known as watching another person perform a skill. As the personal trainer, demonstrations will be presented to Jordan of every weight lifting and cardiovascular exercise so she knows exactly what to do so that she feels she is doing it right. Giving her confidence of completing an exercise will help build her self-efficacy. These types of efficacy developers will help Jordan in a sense of increasing her self-perception in turn enhance her ability to perform her workouts. By increasing both of these areas, Jordan will have reached her goal of lowering her cholesterol and blood pressure as well as feeling better about herself.
CONCLUSION: After evaluating Jordan’s problem, her physical activity level was not the biggest issue. Her self-perception was poor and needed to be changed to increase her level of fitness. These two areas go hand in hand with one another. If one has a high self-efficacy then they will have a high level of physical activity. Without raising Jordan’s self-perception, increasing her physical activity would be very difficult. By increasing her self-perception she will be able to get more out of workouts, which will make her feel better about herself. The better Jordan feels about herself and her achievements through physical activity she will desire to keep working to get back to her college self. If Jordan sticks to the plan then her goals should be more reasonable than she ever thought before she started.
REFERENCES
Gil, D.L., & Williams, L. (2008). Psychological dynamics of sport and exercise (3rd Ed.). Champain, IL: Human Kinetics
Tod, D., Thatcher, R., McGuigan, M., & Thatcher, J. (2009). Effects of instructional and motivational self-talk on the vertical jump. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 23(1), 196-202
Nice view on getting Jordan back on track in this case study. I would agree that your biggest challenge is to increasing and developing her self-perception, allowing herself to feel determined and confident that she can regain her image, strength, and mentality she had when a collegiate athlete. Your techniques of showing her step by step of how and what to do, is a great start, however, I think after you get the snowball rolling downhill, you should wean yourself out of that, allowing her to build more confidence off of remembering how to accomplish certain things on her own. If she needs assistance, she'll ask. Also, using positive motivation to boost her self-efficacy, such as the examples of saying "you can do it" and etc... are great ways to make her feel confident. However be careful not to get in a habit of saying them too often. She may feel as though you are babying her and she's not getting the full drive she needs to be pushed. It's good to mix it up and give her verbal motivation by being kind and gentle as well as being stern at times, while keeping it motivating. This might ignite a fire and drive her to push herself a little harder. With that said, be careful with stern motivation, because some people may be really sensitive to it.
ReplyDeleteI agree before she can get the most out of her workout she must believe that she can. If her health is an issue you should start slowly to avoid possible danger, until she starts to develop a good fitness base back. You should have her focus on getting back to her old fitness level not how she got to the level she is now. You are right to have her focus on her goals just make sure you encourage her and keep her focused on her goals and the progress she makes. I’m sure with support and encouragement she achieve her goals.
ReplyDeleteAlex has a good point about scaffolding. That as professionals we often have to have more input at the beginning and really show the clients/students/athletes how to change self-perceptions, confidence, etc; but, as they learn the skills then we can be less direct and have them use the skills themselves.
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