Motivation

Return for a moment to the question of drop-outs. Why do some athletes keep playing through pain, hard training, injury and academic pressure, while other equally talented players stop after a few early failures? Two questions are worth asking:

1. What motivates a player to behave in a certain way?
2. How can we motivate an athlete to perform better?

Both turn on the idea of motivation. The word comes from the Latin movere, meaning “to move.” Motivation is the driving force that spurs a person into action — the basic reason behind any human activity. Robert Baron (2008) described it as a process to initiate, guide and maintain behaviour over time; it can also be defined simply as the direction and intensity of effort.

Motivation is shaped by two factors:

• Objective — the “why” of an action: the reason or purpose that gets a behaviour started.
• Direction — the “what” of an action: what the person wants to do and plans to achieve.

If either the objective or the direction is missing, the quality of the action suffers. To reach a goal you need a purpose that gets you moving, a clear direction to move in, and enough “fuel” to stay persistent until the goal is achieved. Once a goal is reached, the drive is reduced and the activity stops. …