Motivation in respect to an athlete & a coach

Athlete’s response can be varied depending upon sport type such as team sports like rugby or individual sports such as boxing. Focusing on team sports motivation and cohesion is important in order to achieve a positive performance, there are two types of cohesion task & social. Task cohesion as stated in the name is adherence to a task or goal oriented objective such as winning.(Malina,2008; Pate et al,2000; Warburton et al,2006) understanding adherence to sport from the

Perspective of health is timely and important. But necessary in order to achieve a positive group dynamic which has shared norms ready for that all important performance. Johanson and Vahlne

(2011) this is allow synergy to occur, Martin et al.(2011) suggests the potential productivity of the individuals is smaller than that of the combined productivity of the team, as a team more can be achieved.

Now obviously not all teams benefit from this synergy as members in the team may lack motivation in their roll to the team I.e. a defender in a football team whom day dreams and thinks more about themselves than the team and lacks activation within the game situation. This is known as social loafing which can be described as a performer’s reduction in effort and activation as group size increases allowing individuals to disappear in the team. The Ringelmann effect helps explain potential decreases in performance. As can be seen from the below graph the Ringelmann effect diagrammatically shows the potential force per athlete and how the gradient between expected performance & actual performance are worlds apart as the number of participants increases the negative correlation for actual performance shows the scale of social-loafing this raises other issues such as group formation and structure and the four key stages forming, storming, norming and performing. During these stages it’s essential to allow the group to develop socially and organically as a naturalistic feel within a team gives confidence and set boundaries with in the team.

Many athletes suffer from poor attribution when analysing performance usually blaming external factors such as opposition bias, “it was a strong team”, when really the cause for failure is as a result of faulty processes within the team allowing a less skilful but more cohesive team to come out successful. (Weiner, 2006) locus of control suggests there are two variables internal and external and these are what we use when attributing success which is usually attributed to internal qualities whereas failure or incorrect technique due to external factors. Now from a coaching stance this is easy to evaluate when speaking with the athlete about a previous performance its useful if the past performance has been recorded so that analysis can be performed with the athlete and coach in unison. Weiner (2006) also looks at stability of an athlete’s performances weather or not the cause changes naturally over time or not at all, Weiner’s model focuses on elements such as what’s in an athlete's control along with that of a in a coaches control this includes elements where skill are in question in comparison to luck. As most understand luck is un-quantified and as such immeasurable but used to attribute success against all the odds.

A coaches task is to ensure that the athlete has mastered the key skills required for a particular sport and that they are able to implement that skill autonomously through vicarious experience and practice, practice & more practice this ensures development of an athlete’s experience levels along with kinaesthetic feel for the sport, boosting confidence in themselves and developing motivation levels which can be applied in a game situation.

As mentioned earlier not all sport involves groups and teams i.e. Snooker, Boxing, Judo, Darts, and Body-building etc. Intrinsic motivation in regards to these types of sport could be argued that are greater as the level of activation required throughout the sport along with the level of determination have to be self-sustained in order to achieve elite level performance. Coaches support structure should be tailored to suit the athlete to allow them to keep progressing positively and avoid injury. A worry with motivation and trying to boost it is the lead to aggression rather than assertion, there are two types of aggression hostile and instrumental, (Russell, 2008) suggests that hostile aggression takes place unexpectedly caused intrinsically through the athlete. Whereas (Anderson, 2000) instrumental aggression is purely the desire to cause serious injury to another athlete purely for an outcome goal such as winning or financial gain. Frustration hypothesis helps explain why aggression prevails in sport as an athlete strives to cause harm whilst there goals are constantly being blocked, the act allows catharsis and arousal levels to decline resulting in motivation being put back solely into the game.

The trailer above shows some of the issues which athletes face when entering a new team as an individual and the development which they undergo in order to fit in (norm) to produce a successful performance, the trailer also shows what happens when this fails resulting in poor performance due to a lack of cohesion and driven task cohesion. Coaches in the segment trailer use a range of techniques to inspire the athletes individually and tailor communication techniques i.e. language and tone of voice, one to ones and break down to the athlete of their individual importance to the team, plus what can be achieved as “Fast girls” in the Olympics. The main reason this video was chosen is sole because I believe it help shows the majority of issues discussed around motivation, cohesion, arousal & aggression.