Motivating Athletes

Abstract

Motivation is the foundation of sport performance and achievement, and in order for athletes to perform at a high level, they must know how to maximize all the tools necessary to be fully motivated. Some people are born with motivation skills so that they can attain anything they want, and others have to work hard in order to get to that same point. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, motivation is the psychological feature that arouses an organism to action toward a desired goal. In this case, the organism talked about is the athlete. According to Vallerand and Thill (1993), motivation is a concept described as "the hypothetical construct used to describe the internal and/or external forces that produce the initiation, direction, intensity, and persistence of behavior" (18). Prominent theories on motivation include Vallerand and Losier's (1999) integrated theory of motivation in sport. Vallerand and Losier incorporate Deci and Ryan's (1985) concept of self-determination in a sport environment as the core of their theory. The theory explains how social factors, including coaches' behavior, affect the athlete's psychological perceptions pertaining to motivation.