Tag Archive for 'motivazione'

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Which is your dominant motivation a migliorare?

Inter-Milan wins the team more motivated

Sorry, this entry is only available in Italiano.

The role of the motivation in the athlete-coach relationship

The sport activity allows the affirmation of an attitude that can be summarized in the following sentence: “It is thanks to my commitment that I become better and better at what I do. Young athletes who will become champions are motivated by an inner drive that is fed by the subjective perception of satisfaction that they derive from performing a given task to the best of their ability.

Any external intervention that tends to reduce this perception will negatively affect the athlete’s motivation. This is the case when a subject is committed only to receive a material prize (win a trophy) or symbolic (“I do it for my parents or the coach so they will be happy or because I will be more admired by my classmates”). The sporting performance thus becomes only a means to achieve another purpose that is, instead, the true end of the action: the young person does not act for the pleasure that the activity itself provides, but to receive a certain recognition. Therefore, external reinforcements that encourage him to attribute his participation to external motives may reduce his internal motivation.

What the coach can do

Operationally, the coach should not use reinforcements that are perceived by the athlete to be more important than participation in the sport itself, but should provide useful feedback to increase the sense of satisfaction that the young person derives from the competitive experience. In this regard it has been documented that sports results that are perceived as the result of internal personal factors, such as skill, dedication, commitment, rather than external factors (luck, limited ability of opponents, refereeing decisions in favor) are associated with states of mind of satisfaction and pride.

The reasons to play football

A master’s thesis discussed today by Michele Aquila, Tor Vergata University, Roma, clearly illustrates how the dominance of task- or result-oriented motivation determines in each age group differences in the reasons for playing soccer.

Self-Motivation: Three good reasons & some strategies

Renato Villalta with the Italian basketball team played 207 games, ranking 7th in the attendance chart and scoring 2265 points, 3rd overall among scorers; he participated in the 1980 Moscow Olympics, winning the silver medal, after losing the final 77-86 against Yugoslavia. In 1983 in France, in Limoges, again with the National team, he won the gold medal at the European Championships and the silver medal at the Mediterranean Games. In 1984, together with his national teammates, he finished in 5th place at the Los Angeles Olympics. In 1985 he gained another medal at the European Championships in Germany, winning the bronze medal behind the USSR and Czechoslovakia. The following year, at the World Championships in Spain, the team placed sixth.

Coaches’ key role to empower youth in sport

Tsz Lun (Alan) Chu, Xiaoxia Zhang, Joonyoung Lee and Tao Zhang (2021). Perceived coach-created environment directly predicts high school athletes’ physical activity during sport. International Journal of Sports Science & Coaching, 16(1) 70–80.

Sport participation is an important means for adolescents to achieve moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA), yet most high school students including athletes do not achieve the 60-minute daily MVPA guideline. As psychosocial factors influence athlete engagement and physical activity during sport, the perceived environment created by coaches could play a role in this influence. Guided by self-determination and achievement goal theories, this four-month prospective study examined the direct and indirect effects of perceived coach-created environment on high school athletes’ MVPA and sedentary behavior (SB) during sport. During the third to fourth week of a sport season, 225 high school athletes (Mage 1⁄4 15.24 years) completed a survey assessing perceptions of coach-created empowering and disempowering climates as well as psychological need satisfaction and frustration. Four months later, their MVPA and SB percentage times (%) during sport were measured using accelerometers. Path analyses partially supported our hypothesis, indicating significant direct effects of a perceived empowering climate on need satisfaction (b 1⁄4 .41) and need frustration (b 1⁄4 –.29), and direct effects of a perceived disempowering climate on need frustration (b 1⁄4 .38) and MVPA% (b 1⁄4 –.28). No significant indirect effects on MVPA% or SB% were found. Findings support and provide new insights into the important role of disempowering beyond empowering climates in predicting high school athletes’ PA. Specifically, when coaches display ego-involving and controlling behaviors, high school athletes may disengage during sport and achieve less overall MVPA. Further examination of these relationships using a longitudinal design across more diverse samples is warranted.

New sport season, renewed motivation

The American former sprinter Michael Johnson, Olympic winner of five gold medals and eight-time world champion, summed up the importance of motivation:

“My best motivation is always coming from the pure joy of running and racing, is the same thrill that I had as a child of 10 years. Have you ever met a 10 year old child sickened by what he does? You have to find their initial motivation for this reason you will become an architect. This is the secret of perseverance.”

Sport should allow the emergence of an attitude that can be summarized in the following sentence: “It’s thanks to my commitment and the pleasure I feel that I became increasingly good at what I do.” Performance motivated by an inner strength are based on the subjective perception of satisfaction coming from performing a specific task. Therefore any outside intervention to reduce this athlete’sperception will negatively affect their motivation. This is the case when the athletes perform only to receive a reward. Sport performance represents only a means to another purpose that becomes, instead, the true purpose: the young do not act for their pleasure to practice sport but to receive a certain recognition. Therefore, the external reinforcements encouraging the athletes to perform for external reasons reduce their internal motivation. The coaches should not make use of reinforcements that can be perceived as most important of the same sport participation, but they should provide helpful tips to increase the athletes’ feeling of satisfaction.

If the sports results will be perceived as the result of internal factors personal, such as the ability, dedication, commitment rather than external factors (luck, reduced ability of opponents, refereeing decisions) the athletes will feel satisfaction and pride.

The external reinforcements that the athlete receive  can also play a positive action. For example, children who have not yet had an experience sports or with adults who have reduced sports experience. In this case external reinforcements for the supply of sports equipment or gadgets, or social support derived from practice can encourage participation. The same applies to the financial rewards obtained by high-level athletes in recognition of their sporting value.

Every coach knows that setting targets is essential to enhance the motivation and improve performance. At this regard:

  • Working on goals defined and accepted helps to improve the emotional climate of the workout. YThere will be a reduction of problems related to delays, laziness and lack of discipline.
  • Athletes, even the youngest, strengthen more and more their autonomy and learn to take responsibility for their choices. In these cases the determination to achieve the objectives and to maximize their potential will increase.
  • The coaches’ leadership is accepted by athletes through the increase of their personal credibility.

Finally, despite the importance that the choice of tgoals plays in increasing the performance, there is also another reason that makes it necessary on the part of the athletes. In fact, if the sport and competition have a social value, so each individual has the right to succeed. Certainly in the top sport, the struggle for success is for the podium and who can aspire to this kind of result is  aware of the difficulties he/she will encounter along the way. Then, there is the success of all of those who have set their goals properly and are committed to achieving them. Every person involved in sport has the responsibility to obtain the personal success. It’s the case of those who want to run a marathon in 4 hours, if they reach this  goal they won they race. The observation of children engaged in sports activities not organized by adults should teach something very important: and if they do not reach the goals they have set, the hildren lower the level, learning from mistakes and trying again and again. After a series of adjustments and trials the success is guaranteed. The opposite happens when instead they are successful, they increase the level of difficulty. In other words, this means that spontaneously young people change their goals by moving them to the limit of their capabilities. In this sense, the mistakes are used as an integral part of the learning process and are not interpreted as a failure.

The motivation to start the new sport season

In many sports this time of year is usually a period of restart, I am referring to team sports such as soccer, basketball and volleyball and many individual sports.This happens again this year with a variant, in different disciplines is from February that the athletes do not compete or have competed but only in races held in Italy, often without the appeal of the comparison with the best athletes. It is not easy then to restart the training, when you have not done anything else for months or you are competing in races that until a few months ago athletes of absolute level considered secondary.

In these days I have been talking to athletes who experience this situation and their training and daily lives suffer from it. It is in these moments, that we all realize the importance of competitions. Not only because they represent the test in which to demonstrate one’s value as an athlete, but above all their absence determines a disaffection from training, from the desire to correct oneself. We are talking about athletes who train about 1,400 hours a year. This commitment is aimed at providing performance at their best, but if the opportunities are missing, it is not so easy to find every day the right motivation.

The work with the sports psychologist can be very useful to support the athletes in this commitment and in establishing objectives and evaluation systems within the training cycles that allow them to maintain at the highest level the quality and intensity of training.

Marathon runner motivation and coaching

In the next issue of the Journal of Italian Track and Filed Federation.

The secrets inside the motivation

The understanding of motivational processes is undoubtedly one of the topics that has always aroused the interest of sports psychology scholars.

Once they asked the great mountaineer George Mallory (1886-1924) why he wanted to climb Everest and he answered “Because is there.”

In few words he explained the inwardness and intensity of the motivation but it will take decades to begin to understand what it is; what it is “this hypothetical construct used to describe the internal and/or external forces that produce the beginning, direction, intensity and persistence of behavior” (Vallerand and Thill, 1993).

To reflect, what is your concept of:

  • Commitment
  • Difficulty of the task
  • Impossible is nothing! Is it true or not? And why?
  • How do you learn to set short and long-term goals?