MOTIVATING ATHLETES

MOTIVATING ATHLETES: LITERATURE REVIEW

How can coaches motivate athletes to perform to the best of their ability? The review of literature presented here attempts to answer this question by examining salient research. All studies examined are analyzed in terms of how they defined motivation, their research questions, sample subjects, data collection/analysis methods, findings, and conclusions. The review ends with a summary of research findings and an application of these to motivating athletes to perform at their personal best.

Even a cursory review of the literature on motivation in relation to athletic performance indicates that researchers define and measure it in very different ways. For example, a substantial body of the literature defines motivation in terms of need achievement. Breheny (2002), for example, looked at motivation in marathon running using the need achievement model. According to the author, the need achievement model of motivation holds that athletes perform best when they are intrinsically motivated; that is when, they have an internal and personal need to achieve at a high standard of performance as opposed to external needs such as the need for a high salary or status. In her study, Breheny (2002) examined the need achievement motivation levels of 292 individuals who were recruited from exercise and sports clubs in Virginia in order to determine whether those with higher need achievement motivation performed

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ehavior, e.g., high quality athletic performance. Based on behavioral models, the authors hypothesized that the ways in which athletes talked to themselves about their performance (negative or positive self-talk) operated as a reinforcer of motivation levels, both low and high motivation. To test the forgoing hypothesis, the authors used a sample of 90 high school athletes. Athletes were required to complete questionnaires asking them questions about their motivational state and about the ways in which they talked to themselves about their performance. Measures were collected both before and after practice. According to the researchers, several correlations were observed between athletes self-talk and their levels of motivation (emotional arousal). Specifically, it was found that negative self-talk may indeed motivate some athletes. However, in general, positive self-talk was associated with higher levels of motivation than negative self-talk. Another portion of the existing research on athletic motivation does not address the athlete's personal motivational levels, so much as the general motivational climate created by the athletes' coaches, schools and/or organizations. Pensgaard and Roberts (2002) state that existing rese

Category: Psychology - M