Motivation is considered to be the cornerstones of all athletic accomplishments and efforts. Regardless of having intensity, emotions, focus, confidence, and many other mental faculties, you can not improve your performance in sports without resolve and impulse. To be the best athlete, you need to be motivated to excel in your performance. At times, athletes lose or fail to retain their motivation level during the hectic season. There comes a common question in the athletes’ minds as to how they could manage to have high motivation while participating in a long season.
There might have been some difficult moments when you would have confronted challenging situations during competition and could not concentrate on your performance. And sometimes, you might have been unable to participate with toil in training sessions. Subsequently, at the completion of your season, you might have wondered to discern the reason for such demotivation.
What precisely is motivation?
Motivation is a rudimentary driving force for willingness, actions, and objectives. The word motive is the key to the motivation which needs contentment. It is a host of certain things including initiatives, and emotional, biological, and social forces that strengthen a behaviour. Hence, motivation refers to the cognitive action that leads, steers, and of course, guides the athletes’ attitudes as regards the performance, training, manoeuvring an unpleasant and difficult situation, and above all, the competition.
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Types of motivation in sports
In sports, motivation can be categorized into two types such as intrinsic motivation and the other one as extrinsic motivation.
Intrinsic motivation is regarded as an act of carrying out something regardless of any ostensible external rewards. As regards sports, it alludes to the athletic behaviour propelled by internal substantive rewards. The intrinsic rewards include personal growth, pride, satisfaction, feelings of achievement, learning, opportunities to discover, and recognition of potential. Intrinsically motivated athletes further their participation in the sports due to certain causes like the distinct challenges of competition, the pleasure of playing their game, getting at the new levels, discovering potential and traits improvements. Actually, they always focus on upgrading their skills and development as athletes.
Unlike intrinsic motivation, athletes with extrinsic motivation take part in sports for external rewards. The extrinsically motivated sportsperson are always driven by external recognition such as scholarships, media coverage, trophies, medals, and titles. These athletes also make efforts to avert the unfavourable consequences, especially displeasure of their coaches, dissatisfaction of parents, and a fear of getting benched. In fact, the extrinsically motivated sportsperson has the propensity to contemplate the tangible end results of his or her competition.
Which type of reward is better, intrinsic or extrinsic?
As a matter of fact, extrinsic rewards seem to be better than intrinsic rewards as a basic element in competitive sports due to certain factors. For instance, if there is a sports activity without any media coverage or no scholarships by colleges, consequently, the athletes would get demotivated. Thus, the extrinsic reward serves the purpose provided these are used appropriately. Undoubtedly, the extrinsic rewards are beneficial to the athletes; however, their excessive use could lead to demotivation and thereby affecting the athletes’ performances as well. In fact, when the motive of playing sports becomes for extrinsic outcomes alone, it may increase a lot of coercion and stress for the athletes, and they will always perform for tangible things and might get disappointed in the case of failure in the game. Subsequently, they would find it difficult to manage the failure. Therefore, the larger part of your motivation needs to be an intrinsic one. This helps focus on the current scenario and will keep up your motivation steady. Moreover, you will be quite attentive to your practice and feeling relaxed and confident.
Thus, intrinsic motivation improves your overall performance and expertise. In order to enhance your intrinsic motivational level, you have to develop personal objectives and goals. Furthermore, always take part in sports for grounded and strong reasons because sports is your passion.
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