Using photovoice to See the Bigger Picture: An Exploration of How Football Coaches Experience and Make-Sense of Well-Being Over the Course of a Competitive Season

Football coaches often address how their work environment is volatile and demanding, encompassing an array of stressors, which can inhibit well-being (Baldock et al., 2021). The cultural masculinity within football habitually instills suppression of voice, often causing inhibition and isolation. To demonstrate the voice of coaches and to facilitate discussion, a combined interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) and photovoice approach (Burton et al., 2017) was implemented to explore how football coaches experience and make-sense of their well-being throughout a football season. Eight professional football coaches (7 male, 1 female) were interviewed at four timepoints across the 2022–2023 season, with coaches collectively providing ∼75 images to aid sense-making. The findings of the study were analysed using an IPA approach and represented through a variety of group experiential themes. Initial findings highlight the temporality of football coaches’ well-being as it often fluctuated in line with environmental and seasonal changes; and the subsequent work demands at those timepoints. Coaches also alluded to how perceived past, present, and future experiences shape their understanding of well-being. Many coaches voiced how they struggle to be present in the moment, often feeling overwhelmed which thwarted well-being and performance. Familial interactions helped mediate coach well-being and performance, specifically via a dissociation of the coaching role. From an applied perspective, the photovoice data collection method acted as a well-being intervention, which coaches expressed to be beneficial for making sense of their well-being and its management. It is recommended that football clubs consider their mechanisms of support for coaches throughout a season.