Motivation is our personal inner drive to achieve a set goal and depends on external rewards or pressures. it concerns the intensity (arousal) and direction of a performer's behaviour. In other words, motivation is the reason why you would want to complete the task.
Motivation is responsible for: the selection and preference for an activity, the persistence at an activity, and the effort put into a performance.
Motivation has two branches:
- Intensity of Behaviour - the degree of strength of emotion.
- Direction of Behaviour - the response made as a result of emotion.
Types of Motivation
There are two types of motivation: Intrinsic and Extrinsic.
Intrinsic Motivation
Intrinsic motivation is what comes from within, the strongest motivation, the personal drive to succeed. It relates to the athlete's own perceptions, attitudes and understanding of their circumstances. Enjoyment of the performance, satisfaction of performance, pride and feeling of well-being. For example, Loosing weight by going to the gym gives you a satisfaction.
This type of motivation will maintain participation for a longer period of time than extrinsic methods, and therefore is more efficient in promoting participation in physical activity in the long term. However, some performers find it difficult and require new challenges constantly to continue participation. Often this is seen as less significant at elite levels of performance.
Extrinsic Motivation
Extrinsic motivation is the rewards that prevail from sport such as trophies, praise from a coach. Feelings coming rewards externally derived (from outside the performer). There are two types of rewards: tangible and intangible. Tangible rewards are prizes, awards. For example, receiving a gold medal in long jump. Intangible rewards are praises and recognition from others. For example, a basketball player getting praise from his team-mates for scoring a 3 point shot.
This type of motivation attracts performers to the sport to begin with and is therefore a useful strategy for cognitive performers. It raises their confidence and increases participation, meaning they're more likely to participate in a physical activity. However, this should be used sparingly, especially with young performers, as they may begin to only perform for rewards, rather than intrinsic motivation, losing enjoyment and satisfaction gained from performing. Ultimately, for these performers, withdrawing extrinsic rewards can lead to total withdrawal from participation.
Factors Contributing to Motivation
Coaches should try and encourage performers to set personal goals and try to generate intrinsic motivation whenever possible.
There are many ways in which a coach can promote a motivational environment. The coach can:
- set fun activities because they're enjoyable and gives satisfaction.
- create a social experience because if young people meet other people and enjoy it, it encourages them to participate.
- set attainable targets because targets and goals that are met during learning will enhance motivation.
- help improve skills and fitness because if people feel that fitness levels are improving or skills are being perfected, then they're more likely to continue with the sport.
- help find role models for performers to look up to because young people are more likely to copy more successful sports players.
- transfer skills because if new skills are built on previous learned skills, they don't seem difficult.
- improve progress because learners are inspired if sports participation is leading to personal benefit.
- give positive reinforcement because learners that are praised by others will be encouraged to participate.
There are many factors that can affect motivation of an individual. These are the factors:
- Type A and Type B personality traits - according to trait theory, people with type A personality traits are more motivated than those with type B
- Situation - according to situation theory, levels of motivation are dependent on the environment the performer finds themselves.
- Interaction of personality and situation - interactive theory suggests that combination of personality traits and situation determines motivation levels.
- Intrinsic and extrinsic rewards - intrinsic rewards are from within and extrinsic rewards are intangible and tangible. Intrinsic are stronger than extrinsic.
Theories of Motivation
Drive Reduction Theory
This theory highlights the importance of maintaining motivation levels, especially with young performers. if they lose their drive or motivation, it has negative effects on their ability to lead a balanced healthy lifestyle. They may become disaffected and lead a sedentary lifestyle.
First, the performer will have a strong desire to learn a new skill. The drive or motivation to satisfy the need to learn the skill is applied. When the skill is mastered and learning has been accomplished, the drive or motivation to continue to work at the skill is reduced. This process then repeats from the drive or motivation to satisfy the need to learn the skill is applied, and goes on and on in a cycle until the performer has no more drive or motivation.
Performers have an initial drive or motivation to succeed at a task. Their drive means they will practise the skill until it's accomplished. As a result of their success, motivation levels decrease, they no longer practise the skill, and ultimately may lead to a reduction in drive. A new task or skill must be presented to the performer in order to renew their drive.
For example, a football team wins the barclays premier league, now they set a new target, which is to win the UEFA champions league.
Achievement Motivation
Achievement motivation is the desire to succeed without the fear of failure.
Achievement motivation is generally regarded as the psychological need to succeed or achieve mastery. Levels of achievement motivation vary between different individuals. As a theory, achievement motivation attempts to explain why performers behave in certain ways when faced with specific tasks. The theory tries to bring together an understanding of personality and competitiveness.
According to McCelland and Atkinson, each individuals have underlying motives which can be categorized into two: need to achieve (NAch) and need to avoid failure (NAf).
The characteristics of sports performers that have a need to achieve are:
Achievement motivation is the desire to succeed without the fear of failure.
Achievement motivation is generally regarded as the psychological need to succeed or achieve mastery. Levels of achievement motivation vary between different individuals. As a theory, achievement motivation attempts to explain why performers behave in certain ways when faced with specific tasks. The theory tries to bring together an understanding of personality and competitiveness.
According to McCelland and Atkinson, each individuals have underlying motives which can be categorized into two: need to achieve (NAch) and need to avoid failure (NAf).
The characteristics of sports performers that have a need to achieve are:
- happy to be evaluated by others
- happy to receive feedback
- happy to face challenges - often bigger and better
- often optimistic
- believe failure is a learning experience and don't mind experiencing it
- happy to take risks
- persevere in the face of difficulties
- happy to take on 50-50 situations
- gain a particular sense of pride and satisfaction when they succeed.
For example, footballer Dimitri Payet would happily take the free kicks, he likes the challenge of trying to score from it and feels great when he does score a free kick.
The characteristics of sports performers that have a need to avoid failure are those who:
- worry about failure but worry about the subsequent evaluation
- don't like personal feedback
- tend not to persevere and often give up easily
- attribute failure to internal factors
- often choose easy tasks to avoid any potential of failure and evaluation
- tend to avoid 50-50 situations
- are demotivated by failure and their performance deteriorates quickly when it occurs.
For example, footballer Memphis Depay has an opportunity to score, he worries that he's going to miss and not score, he's been tackled for holding the ball too long and his performance drops as he's demotivated as he failed to score.
Performers who display NAch motives, who persist and enjoy evaluation, tend to have approach behavior patterns. They are motivated to attempt challenging and competitive situations and wil subsequently gain high levels of pride and satisfaction when they concede.
Performers who display NAf motives tend to have avoidance behavior patterns, often opting to for easy tasks to protect their self-esteem while not persisting in the face of failure. Coaches of elite performers will try to install approach in their athletes, to encourage competitiveness, drive and task persistence.
Attribution theory is the reasons that someone gives for their or someone's success or failure after competition, helping us to understand their actions and motives.
The correct use of attribution is vital: a coach must evaluate feedback effectively if they wish to maintain the athlete's level of performance, task persistence, satisfaction of performance and future expectations.
According to Weiner's model, there are four types of attribution for achievement. They are: ability, effort, task difficulty and luck.
In Weiner's model, there are three dimensions that he place the four attributes. The firs dimension is the locus of causality (the reason is within our control/internal or out of control/external). The second dimension is the locus of stability (the reason is permanent/stable or forever changing/unstable). The third dimension is the locus of control (this dimension refers to internal control/things within an athletes control or external control/things out of an athletes control).
For example, in a post match interview after winning a fight against Connor McGregor in March 2015, Nate Diaz said that his speed, well-timed strikes and good awareness to the situation is what won him the fight, so he attributes his success to internal, stable factors (ability).
Another example, in a post match interview after losing a fight against Royce Gracie in February 2015, Ken Shamrock said that Gracie shouldn't have won the match and should've got disqualified for a low blow, so he attributes his failure to external, unstable factors (luck).
As a coach, you should always attribute failure to external, unstable or uncontrollable factors (task difficulty, luck or effort) as this allows the athlete to believe that changes can be made to improve his or her performance. this helps to maintain motivation and is known as self-serving bias. This is when an athlete is saying "When I win it's all down to me and my efforts" (good for confidence).
As a coach, you want your athletes to maintain high levels of motivation and confidence and to learn from their mistakes, so it's essential that a coach uses attributions effectively. In order to achieve this, a good coach will attribute success to internal, stable or controllable factors (ability), ensuring that the athlete is satisfied with his or her performance and maintains task persistence and motivation levels.
When an athlete has an injury, repeatedly loses a match to the same opponent or attributes failure to internal, stable factors (ability) they may start to believe that no matter how hard they try, failure is inevitable, and as a result they begin to lose confidence and motivation. Even when they are successful, some athletes believe that this was due to luck and that their success will not be repeated. A coach can help athletes overcome feelings of learned helplessness and make them successful by effectively using attributions. This process is known as attribution retraining. Coaches who wish to use attribution retraining should ensure that when an athlete achieves success they:
- attribute success to stable and internal factors (ability)
- attribute failure to unstable and external factors (luck, task difficulty and effort)
- improve self-esteem, confidence and motivation
No comments:
Post a Comment