Motivation in Sport

Motivation is the force within a human that drives them to accomplish certain goals or expectations that may have been put upon them in certain cases. There are many different things that may motivate someone to do something. Motivation in sport may be created from the desire for better performance, or the desire to be the best and even the desire to prove someone wrong.

Scientifically there are considered to be two main types of motivation, these are intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation is driven by the natural tendency to seek to become better for one’s own personal satisfaction such as fun, interest or curiosity as well as finding the activity itself rewarding in one’s own life devoid of input from others. Extrinsic motivation is he engagement from others that may be incurred from winning or avoiding punishment and proving someone wrong or right. Different people may favour different types of motivation due to various factors in their life, the way to go about coaching or teaching these individuals also varies in order to get the best possible commitment and performance out of that certain person. For naturally intrinsic motivated people it helps to avoid extrinsic motivation such as rewards or punishments as it may undermine why the participant is doing it in the first place, perhaps taking away from the magic that they have in the sport. Its common phrase that winning can go to someone’s head and I believe that once someone wins a large competition, they get a taste for extrinsic motivation, therefore decreasing the love for the sport for the sports sake. An example of this is a young Tiger Woods, once Tiger got a taste for winning he lost the love and the respect for the sport thus acting out in other aspects of his life as he didn’t care as much for the sport of Golf intrinsically.