Coaching Guidance in Sport
"You get the best effort from others not by lighting a fire beneath them, but by building a fire within." (Bob Nelson, 2002).
Motivation
Athletes want to be highly motivated to have a good performance, this can be influenced by creating a motivational climate. Motivation can be referred to as either the individual characteristics, external factors or the explanation for a performance. It has been defined by Sage (1977) as the direction and intensity of an individual’s effort to a task. Intrinsic motivation (IM) is seen as an athlete performing a task for the enjoyment and personal mastery, unlike extrinsic where a task is completed to attain a rewardable outcome such as money or trophies (tangible), or positive feedback and praise (intangible) (Ryan and Deci, 2000). Yoon et al., (2015) findings showed that intrinsically motivating people had a more significant effect in comparison to extrinsic but, they also observed that the extrinsic motivation can be altered due to level of importance of the reward to the individual.
(We Share, 2016)
The Self Determination Theory (SDT) is based around the human needs of autonomy, competence and relatedness. Aicher & Brenner (2015) state that the autonomy stage of SDT, coaches need to allow their athletes to feel in control of their goals and how they behave. Cresswell & Eklund (2005) specifically identified that providing autonomous motivation to players decreased the chances of burnout, compared to a controlling environment which had an opposite effect. Then the competence of the individual is needed to gain mastery of a task and to learn new tasks to be intrinsically motivated, affecting the performance and level of competence of your athletes (Dongwook and Yongkuk, 2015). SDT also explains that human needs transmit with player’s similarities to others, which IM is highly dependent on as the players can find relatedness through learning and enjoyment.
The Cognitive Evaluation Theory (Ryan & Deci, 1985) describes the effects of varied sources of extrinsically rewarding motivation on IM and suggests that children will be intrinsically motivated if they have some control/choice, have a relatedness to the activity and feeling good throughout (Mandigo & Holt, 2013). This is backed up by Goudas et al., (1995) whose study resulted in children having an increase in IM when they were provided with options in lessons, rather than being controlled. Langan et al., (2015) study showed an increase in player IM when using the SDT with additionally having a decrease in time for players burning out during a performance.
(Gap Year, 2015)
Coaching Guidance:
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- Provide athletes with choices of session content or group goals. For younger athletes, question what they would like to practice at the end of the session, such as a match or penalty shootout to keep them motivated.
- Partner performers up with someone to work with and have a relatedness with, especially for obese participants or those with movement difficulties.
- Getting your players in to ability level groups will ensure their relatedness. Lower ability players can hide away from activities if they are practicing with a higher ability player, which can eventually leave to the player dropping out.
- Remember that each player will find some tasks easy, yet others hard so ensure to enhance their perceived ability even for what can be seen as small achievements. Specifically verbally praise younger athletes when they have achieved a skill.