Giving voice to high-performance sports coaches to spotlight their perceptions of psychological well-being

High-performance sports coaches work in achievement-oriented environments that have the potential to enhance or undermine psychological well-being (PWB). Despite context-specific understanding of PWB being important, we know little about what PWB means to high-performance coaches and have minimal understanding of how to help coaches and governing bodies to nourish and protect PWB. Underpinned by our constructivist paradigm and our relativist and subjectivist onto-epistemological stance, we worked with eight high-performance sports coaches to: 1) qualitatively explore what PWB means to high-performance coaches to generate new understanding of the fundamentally important elements of their PWB and 2) build a clearer picture of factors that facilitate and or inhibit coaches' PWB. Using reflexive thematic analysis, we constructed six themes from data collected via semi-structured interviews: 1) from balance to self-awareness: PWB means something different to everyone; 2) curiosity fuels development of self and others, which builds PWB; 3) enjoyment of coaching and escapism from it sustain PWB; 4) being surrounded by good people and seeing them achieve are routes to happiness; 5) coaching can feel like being “stuck in the trenches” whilst waiting to be found out as a fraud; and 6) boundary management is a form of self-preservation that protects PWB. These findings give voice to high-performance sports coaches' understanding of PWB, help to develop an evidence base from which individualized interventions can be developed, and promote the need for systemic changes in sport that will help coaches to live well and be well.