APPLIED COACHING RESEARCH JOURNAL 2018 , Vol . 1
The growth of the fitness orientation While recent research has looked at the mental well-being benefits of being a volunteer 3 , no research has considered physical activity or health . None of the 28 different motivations found by Cnaan and Goldberg-Glen in their review of the literature mentioned physical activity . The closest they described was volunteering as a way to vary daily activities . This may be due to the fact that the more general volunteering literature does not focus specifically on sport and activity . However , research into the motivations of sport coaches has also tended to ignore these benefits .
When Busser and Carruthers used the Volunteer Function Inventory to examine the motivations of youth sport coaches , they found that the strongest functional motives were altruistic ( values ) and personal growth ( understanding ), but of the 30 functions they tested , none related to physical activity or health .
New evidence from physical education has suggested changing motivations , especially among young people , in line with societal trends around health and fitness . In 2017 Richards et al identified what they called a “ fitness orientation ” among young recruits within physical education training . They found that an interest in health and fitness was leading contemporary recruits to careers in physical education as a way to affect childhood fitness .
Taking this a step further it is interesting to ask if a fitness orientation could be applied to the outcomes for volunteer coaches . The positive health benefits of physical activity are well established and if coaches are more active through their coaching then they are likely to be experiencing a health benefit outside the six listed in the Volunteer Function Inventory .
Testing the idea Combining the new ideas coming out of physical education with volunteer motivation research raises two interesting questions around coaching :
Does being a coach provide fitness benefits ? And therefore :
Could fitness be an additional benefit of volunteering and used to recruit and retain volunteer coaches ?
Asking the questions In August 2017 UK Coaching surveyed 20,000 adults about taking part in sport and activity and coaching 4 . Of these , 1,350 had coached within the last 12 months . The survey considered coaching in its broadest sense and a coach was anyone who had coached , instructed , trained , taught or led any sport or physical activity , to children or adults . This included any environment , such as formal sports club settings as well as informal community settings . It could include any sport or physical activity , including recreational or competitive sport , exercise , fitness , gym , dance , etc .
Two questions related to physical activity and health were asked in the survey . The first question was asked only to coaches . Thinking about their coaching activity they were asked how much they agreed or disagreed with the statement “ coaching keeps me physically active ”. The second question was asked to everyone in the sample and asked them to rate their physical health rating on a scale of one to five ( excellent to poor ).
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