More is less? The curvilinear impact of coach competency on athlete psychological engagement

We explored the impact of coach professional and emotional-healing competency on athlete psychological engagement. We tested our predictions with a sample of 418 athletes. The results showed there was an inverted U-shaped relationship between coach professional competency and athletes’ psychological engagement, and a positive relationship between coach emotional-healing competency and athletes’ psychological engagement. We also found that coach emotional-healing competency moderated the inverted U-shaped relationship between coach professional competency and athlete psychological engagement. The findings provide the critical practical implication that coaches should not neglect to foster the competency of emotional healing as they concentrate on the promotion of their professional competency in the process of working with athletes.