B05. Increase motivation

TOC

It is said that increasing motivation improves the quality and quantity of learning and behavior, and encourages people to take on challenges, which in turn improves performance (Norsworthy C, et al. 2021; Wulf G & Lewthwaite G. 2016). Improving motivation is an important key to improving performance in sports, studies, and work. On the other hand, motivation is greatly affected by the stress level of the goal . People are not motivated by unreasonable goals, and they are not motivated by easy goals either.

Well, sometimes you feel depressed when you try to go to practice, or you lose motivation because the level of the people around you is too high or too low, or your opponent is too strong. How can you get motivated?

To increase motivation , it is important to have confidence in yourself and think that you can go to a higher level, such as "I'm doing well, and people around me are praising me. I'm sure I can do better, so I'll try harder." To do this, it is important to set a somewhat challenging goal, achieve it, and get positive feedback by focusing on the good points of your performance . If you focus on what didn't go well, you won't be motivated. By focusing on what went well, you can praise yourself by saying "Oh, I can do it" or "You did well." This will increase your motivation to "challenge yourself to a higher level of performance" or "I can do better if I can fix what didn't go well."

It is also considered a good idea to record your best performances and create a collection of your best performances using yourself as a model ( self-modeling ). Watching it gives you a sense of self-efficacy that you can do it , an internal reward that "it was worth the effort," and a positive feeling that you can perform at a high level (intrinsic motivation) . Furthermore, even when you are not performing well, watching the video of yourself as a model can help you regain the movements you had when you were doing well. Watching a video of a good performance and visualizing it can help you visualize success even in tense situations such as a match.

By exchanging opinions, coming to an understanding, and then putting it into practice, or by thinking and making choices and decisions for yourself (autonomy) , rather than simply following a plan instructed or proposed by a coach or trainer, you can gain a sense of accomplishment that comes from "being able to accomplish something with your own will and ideas" rather than "being forced to do it by someone else," and this increases your self-efficacy and motivation. Also, I think everyone feels happy when they are recognized, receive a prize, or are praised by their coach. These are called extrinsic rewards , and the feeling that you are recognized and that you have been able to recognize what you have done increases your self-efficacy, and your expectations that the next challenge will also go well increase, increasing your extrinsic motivation to try again and take on a new challenge.

In sports documentaries and movies, we often see scenes in the locker room right before an important game, where players are filled with anxiety and tension. They are full of energy but quiet, the calm before the storm. Then the head coach starts giving the players a pep talk. The players are in a fight-or-flight state right before the game, but the coach looks back on what they have achieved, awakens their confidence and determination, inspires them, motivates them, and moves them in the direction of fighting. The players who were sitting quietly with their heads down stand up, and the players who were wandering around restlessly stop, form a circle, change into fighting expressions, their muscles swell, and their will to fight is unified. They all roar and run from the small locker room to the stadium where the huge crowd is waiting.