Explain the role of motivation in enhancing a sports performance.
Explain the role of motivation in enhancing a sports performance
Motivation plays a key part in sport, without motivation, how can you get yourself to take part and play well in sport.
Motivation is the internal mechanisms and external stimuli, which arouse and direct behavior. It is generally suggested that we have two basic motives that require fulfillment, our physiological and psychological needs. Each performer has differing needs that motivate them to participate, which fall into two broad categories:
> Intrinsic Motivation - Involves gaining self-satisfaction or pride from achievements; the desire to challenge oneself; or simply the enjoyment of taking part, e.g. an individual, may decide to learn how to play squash as a form of recreation, to develop their fitness levels and to see if they can master the game.
> Extrinsic Motivation - Involves receiving either tangible or intangible rewards. The former includes medals, cups, certificates or money, while the latter may involve praise from a coach, family, peer group or the media, as well as glory, social approval or achievement records.
Many of the latter examples can be utilized to reinforce learning, but should be used with care, as the over-use of extrinsic rewards can undermine the intrinsic values needed for long-term participation, e.g. a novice swimmer may be encouraged to learn to swim for numerous reasons including the safety, enjoyment, social and health benefits received. However to maintain their interest, awards and badges may be used, but care must be taken to ensure the swimmer does not simply continue because of the next reward, otherwise what happens after the final award? Ideally, a performer should be motivated by a combination of intrinsic and extrinsic rewards, in order to optimize learning.
More factors which effect your motivation are arousal, achievement motivation and attribution theory.
> Arousal - The energized state of readiness of an individual to perform a task, motivating them to direct their behavior in a particular manner. (The complete A-Z physical education handbook) It can affect the performer positively or negatively, both physiologically and psychologically, depending on the individual's perception of the situation, but can be controlled to produce an effective performance. The level of arousal is controlled by the reticular activating system, which interprets the level of stimulation entering the body and initiates an appropriate ...
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More factors which effect your motivation are arousal, achievement motivation and attribution theory.
> Arousal - The energized state of readiness of an individual to perform a task, motivating them to direct their behavior in a particular manner. (The complete A-Z physical education handbook) It can affect the performer positively or negatively, both physiologically and psychologically, depending on the individual's perception of the situation, but can be controlled to produce an effective performance. The level of arousal is controlled by the reticular activating system, which interprets the level of stimulation entering the body and initiates an appropriate response. The primary aim of the performer is to Maintain their arousal at an optical level suitable for the activity undertaken so that concentration and decision-making are not impaired. Arousal can be measured using a variety of methods including observation, self-report questionnaires and biofeedback.
> Achievement Motivation - Refers to an individual's interaction with the environment and their desire to succeed. (The complete A-Z physical education handbook) This is said to be a combination of personality and situational factors. People display either a need to achieve or need to avoid failure tendency when placed in certain situations. A situation is evaluated in terms of an individual's probability of success and the incentive value of that success.
> Attribution Theory - Suggests that the reasons perceived by an individual or term for the outcome of their actions can affect their levels of motivation in future performances. Attributions help to explain success and failure, ensuring motivation levels remain high. Weiner proposed four categories of attribution: ability, effort, task, difficulty and luck. Generally to gain feelings of satisfaction, success is attributed to internal factors and failure to external factors. To maintain motivation using the 'locus of stability', success is based on stable factors and failure on unstable factors.
As I have been through so far, motivation plays a huge role in enhancing a sports performance, and can be the difference between a great and a poor performance.
The internal mechanisms and external stimuli, which arouse and direct our behavior (Sage 1974) this is what Sage said about motivation. Some information about motivation is below:
- Most major sports have extrinsic awards at all levels.
- High levels of intrinsic motivation are shown when a sport is being played for the 1st time.
- In certain conditions, extrinsic motivation can decrease Intrinsic motivation, therefore, sometimes use of extrinsic rewards should be discouraged.
- Some extrinsic rewards represent a high level of ability, so can increase intrinsic motivation.
- Motivators are the reasons why sportspeople think and behave as they do
- Motivation has five components: Direction, intensity, persistence, continuity and performance
- Early theories focused on the notion of 'drive' current theories are based on social perception and goal orientated.
Self -motivation is a key factor in being motivated for an activity. It is the extent to which a person is able to persist in tasks or to generate action. If you are not self motivated then you are not going to like what you are doing, therefore give out a probable bad performance. The major motives, which encourage youths to participate in sport, are improving skills, having fun, being with friends, experiencing thrills, achieving success and fitness. The major motives for adults are health factors, weight loss, fitness, self-challenge and excitement, feeling better, and socializing.
The types of motivation I haven't been through yet are positive and negative motivation, and primary and secondary motivation.
> Positive and negative motivation - Positive motivation makes us want to continue an activity; negative motivation will decrease our enthusiasm for it. Reasons for dropout given above will lead to negative motivation.
> Primary and secondary motivation - Primary motivation comes from the activity itself; something or somebody else, i.e. encouragement from the coach, provides secondary motivation.
Motivation to participate varies across age groups, gender groups and sport/exercise. There are many different motives to participate in activity and people often participate for several reasons. Intrinsic motivation derives from the activity itself and is a powerful motive. Extrinsic motivation derives from tangible rewards and positive/negative social reinforcement. Extrinsic rewards can have a positive or negative effect on motivation depending on how the performer perceives them in relation to pace, play, control and competence.
Team motivation is another key factor in how motivated you are as others around you effect how much you are motivated for an occasion, i.e. if the team is really motivated, it will be easier for you to get motivated intrinsically and extrinsically, but if the team is laid back and doesn't care then it will be much harder for you to get motivated. People seem to work less hard in a team as on their own, for example, in 1972 Olympics, the time of the winning double sculls was only 4% faster than that of the singles sculls, and the eights only 6% faster than that of the fours. There may be a technical reason for this in terms of the relative size and weights of the boats, but experiments suggest that it is motivational losses, rather than coordination losses, which are the most significant.
Overall motivation plays a huge part in enhancing a sports enhancing a sports performance, as without it you can't perform mentally and physically anywhere near you fall potential. Many thing effect motivation, and the more you are motivated the better you will perform, as you will be more focused on success, so you will try so much harder to succeed. All the things combined build up the maximum motivation, and if you are low on one of them then you won't be able to reach you maximum motivation level. So when it comes down to it, motivation plays a large part in life, especially sport.
