Are You Motivated?
The following is a summarized version of an article by Sigvor Melve originally appearing in Norsk SkiSport. Summary and translation by Inge Scheve exclusively for xcskiworld.com.
Motivation drives all activity and provides the basis for we do. Motivation is what drives you to strive toward your goals. Each athlete is motivated by different things, which is why it’s advantageous to know something about how motivation works. What characterizes motivated athletes? vIn a ski team, the athletes will have different motivation. One skier can be top motivated while the best skier on the team might wish he was anywhere but there, pursuing anything but skiing. In short, some athletes are self-motivated while others need more feedback and attention.
In a coach’s perfect world, all athletes would be equally absorbed in skiing, but that’s rarely the reality. Because motivation is dynamic and easily changes, it is important to know how motivation works.
First, it is useful to know the characteristics of highly motivated athletes – and poorly motivated ones for that matter. Highly motivated athletes tend to be positive and eager to train. They are attentive and can operate for long periods of time. Athletes who lack motivation, on the other hand, typically have a hard time staying focused and display little joy the activity. They tend to prioritize other activities over practice and competition. Drop-out rates represent a serious challenge in sports of all kinds, and a large number of juniors quit every year due to lack of motivation.
Motivators
Simply put, there are two kinds of motivation: external motivation and internal motivation.
External motivation is the kind of motivation that follows from success, such as winning, prizes and attention. Being recognized in the community and interviewed by the media following a podium finish are examples of external motivation. Feedback becomes an external source of motivation and tied to success. Externally motivated athletes tend to give up more easily when these outside motivators disappear. If these athletes suffer long-term injuries and the outside attention disappears, they typically face a long and hard way back to the sport.
Internally motivated athletes train because it is fun and it makes them happy. The drive is the joy of the sport and the mastering of skills, which contributes to keep them in the sport for the long haul. They come to practice because they like to train, not because they have to win every drill and exercise. Life-time athletes are often internally motivated.
Why Pursue Athletics?
Performance motives and skill mastery are two main reasons for pursuing sports. Athletes who are performance-oriented seek to win, no matter what it takes. They like to “prove” that they are the best. If they need to cheat to “prove” that, they will. They tend to be individualists and are generally poor team players.
On the other end of the spectrum are athletes motivated by skills and accomplishment. This group of athletes is motivated by their own development and improvement. Skiers who stick with the sport are often a motivated by a combination of accomplishment and performance. In other words, they set result-oriented goals but are motivated by improvement and development along the way. When the overall goal is qualifying for nationals next season, it’s useful to enjoy training. After all, most of the days in the year are training days, not race days.
A coach can influence the team environment by encouraging and rewarding both accomplishment/improvement and performance. This can be done by highlighting both individual and team performance and improvement. The coach can give feedback to the individual skiers and to the team as a whole.
Results and Performance
Setting goals can aid motivation, and different goals have different effect on individual athletes. All athletes benefit from goal setting as long as the goals remain attainable. The key is to challenge the athlete while keeping the goals realistic.
Goals fall into two categories: result-oriented goals and accomplishment-oriented goals. Sending three athletes from the team to nationals next season could be one goal, which also serves to establish how much the team will train. This goal also serves to motivate athletes through rough times. Result-oriented goals should be determined by coaches and athletes together. This helps avoid miscommunication and different expectations to what the season will hold, and the athlete feels a sense of belonging and responsibility.
But mastery and development goals are also important. One example is to increase the height of the bars while working on spents and plyometrics. This gives the athletes a sense of success when accomplishing a difficult drill, while at the same time they gain the confidence to be tougher. Other accomplishment goals can be to post a personal best at a time trial.
(Source: “Introduction to Sports Psychology” by Rune Giske, Even Hollingen and Anne Marte Pensgaard)
