Abstract
Rhythmic gymnastics is an aesthetic sport involving complex and particular training processes with high physical and psychological demands. This study aimed to investigate the athletes' perception of the coach-created motivational climate and its relation to the athletes' motivational and social outcomes.
Ninety-one rhythmic gymnasts (aged 12 to 18; 57.1 % national, 42.9 % international non-elite level) completed an online survey including the Empowering and Disempowering Motivational
Climate Questionnaire-Coach and Athlete Engagement Questionnaire. We hypothesized that the empowering climate (represented by greater autonomy, task orientation, social support, and lower ego orientation and controlling coaching) would be positively related to motivational
(i.e., athletes' engagement) and social (i.e., team cohesion) outcomes.
In regression models, autonomy-supportive climate (βs 0.413, 0.304) and task involving motivational climate (βs 0.34, 0.358) were the main predictors of athletes' engagement and team cohesion, explaining 43.5 % and 33.1 % of the variance, respectively. In the k-means cluster analysis, we identified two latent groups: "empowered" and "disempowered", the disempowering being more prevalent (57 %).
Our results corroborated our hypotheses and thus suggested that a coach-created empowering motivational climate may be an important predictor of motivational and social outcomes in competitive athletes.