Sport psychology plays an important role in the motivation of athletes; it’s the study of the psychological and mental factors that are influenced by participation and performance in sports, exercise, and physical activity (Vora & Nail, 2016, P.354). Moreover, motivation is the foundation of all athletic effort and accomplishment; it is essential to many social psychological theories that aim to explain behavior, including self-determination theory. Motivation is the intrinsic determination toward goal attainment. Besides, if an athlete does not have the desire and self-determination to improve their sports performances, all of the other mental factors--confidence, intensity, focus, and emotions--are worthless. They are two different types …show more content…
Sports and games are means of mental and physical growth, and contribute in the formation of character (Vora & Nail, 2016, P.354). Moreover, sport psychologists play an important role in the mental preparations of athletes. They are involved in assisting coaches in working with athletes as well as helping improve athletes’ motivation. Sport psychologists and coaches should be able to differentiate if an athlete competes just to get a reward or because they enjoy the process. According to the authors, people engage in different activities for different reasons. Athletes are intrinsically motivated when they engage in an activity from the pressure and satisfaction derived from the activity itself, whereas extrinsic motivation describes behaviors performed to attain material or social rewards (Vora & Nail, 2016, P.354). Intrinsic motivation for exercise and sports are behaviors that are performed for the satisfaction gained in the activity itself. In the study, the researchers found a gender difference in the motivation level of female and male athletes. Female and male athletes have different strengths and weaknesses within the motivational …show more content…
The data was collected from players who participate in individual sports, team sports, and both of the categories. The researchers used “convenient sampling” in the study (Vora & Nail, 2016, P.356). The mean obtained was 143.52 and 127.38 with the corresponding standard deviation of 19.37 and 18.93 for male and female respectively. On the T-Test conducted, the t-value was computed to be 3.01(p<0.01) (Vora & Nail, 2016, P.356). Furthermore, the results of the assessment indicate that males displayed a tendency to depict higher levels of motivation than females. Males showed significantly higher overall sports motivation and in the dimension of extrinsic motivation. Moreover, the external regulation and motivation in the form of support from coaches and societal acceptability increasingly predisposes males to a higher motivation. To support the results, males tend to be more motivated because they see sports as a passionate hobby or full-fledged career option, both intrinsic and extrinsic motivators. On the other side, the results showed insignificant correlations between extrinsic motivation and female performance, which might point to intrinsic motivation in regards to females. So female sports players do not lack motivation; rather they are internally motivated to display a winning performance (Vora & Nail, 2016, P.357-358). Males are motivated externally while females are motivated
Smith, R. E., Smoll, F. L., & Cumming, S. P. (2009). Motivational climate and changes in young athletes’ achievement goal orientations. Motivation and Emotion, 33(2), 173-183.
Sport and exercise science is a multidisciplinary field that draws on knowledge from the broader parent disciplines, the subareas that make up sport and exercise science also draw on measures, constructs and concepts from each other. In fact, it is suggested that sport psychology should include knowledge from other sub-disciplines within sport and exercise science in order to gain better understanding of situations specific to
A change from a self-determined engagement in a sport to a much lesser degree of self-determination is a common theme among athletes’ burning out. In other words, as the true passion and love for the game fades away, the perceived costs of sustained engagement begin to outweigh the rewards afforded by the sport. After time passes, the inability to handle the negative appraisals can lead to such harmful outcomes as physical and emotional exhaustion, reduced accomplishment, devaluation, and then complete dropout of the sport (Holmberg and Sheridan,
Wiese-Bjornstal, D. M., Smith, A. M., & LaMott, E. E. (1995). A model of psychological response to athletic injury and rehabilitation. Athletic training: Sport health care perspectives, 17-30.
The age of overwhelming strength and stamina governing sports is over, and the age of the mentally tough athlete has arrived. Athletes are no longer the superficial jocks and robots programmed to accomplish one goal, victory. Modern athletes ranging from the high school to professional levels are faced with many pressures and temptations, normally outside the realm of their sport. These pressures can inhibit an athlete’s performance substantially; therefore, the pressures need to be dealt with by psychologists. The effectiveness of sports psychology is demonstrated through the fields many theories, applications, and variety of techniques and procedures.
Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology 12.3 (Sept 1990): 217-222. Edwards, Tara and Hardy, Lew. “The Interactive Effects of Intensity and Direction of Cognitive and Somatic Anxiety and Self- Confidence Upon Performance.” Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology18.4 (Sept 1996): 296-312. Ferraro, Tom.
Sports Psychology Today. Mental Edge Athletics, 4 Sept. 2012. Web. 28 Oct. 2013. Forde, Pat.
Sports are an important aspect in society. They help people to strive to reach certain goals and join people together, but they also can divide people and turn a fun game into the main purpose of someone’s life. Taking sports games too seriously can be harmful for both the athlete and the spectator. The attitude of always winning at any cost in sports and has managed to distract us from other important parts of our lives, such as health and education. This importance of the value of sports can heavily influence the way that we see ourselves as both the spectator and the athlete by creating a positive self image and distilling confidence and discipline within the player, or by embedding self doubt and invertedness.
Computers are vitally used in exercise and especially for sport psychologists to gather all sorts of data for the athletes, all the data that the sport psychologists collect from questionnaires; individual analyses will be monitored and assessed. The psychologist can use computers to give these assessments to the athletes, and then gather and analyse their results. Computers can also be used to keep stats when observing athletes. They can also be used to keep records of meetings. Sport psychologists can use computers to make mental training programs to improve an athlete's psychological health.
Whether in training or in competition, there are tough times, and this is when motivation is crucial. A lot of research on the subject suggested that self-determination, self-realization and self-esteem were very common motivations among athletes: it's the constant drive to better yourself. (Perreault) Along with that goes self-efficacy, which is believing that they have the talent and skill to complete the task. It is a key component to being mentally tough because these athletes need to believe in themselves to be able to have self motivation to complete the task at
medals. An example of this could be a player who is offered a lot of
Firstly, it is vital to note that anxiety, motivation, and concentration tremendously influence people's self-confidence and their performance at the long-run (Damon & Raedeke, P 188). Higher self-confidence reduces anxiety. The vice versa is also true. This is based on the fact that optimally confident sports people experience fewer doubts on self. Their worries reduce and give room for concentration in their activities. Additionally, motivated athletes are in a better position to strive towards achieving their goal. Motivation enables sports people to combat negativity and low self-esteem as they focus more on their goals other than obstacles. Therefore, it is fundamental to note that coaches and sports people must collaborate in finding any mechanisms that could stimulate and uphold self-esteem since it is, directly and indirectly, impactful to their
Sports psychology continues to evolve in order to ensure that comprehensive and evidence-based psychological services are available for athletes and teams. Giving athletes an understanding of their psychological functioning, and building the ability to implement a range of psychological strategies in competition enables athletes to both execute their skills and thrive under pressure as they strive to reach their performance potential.
Motivate the motivation, simple words that can mean some much to an athlete, but what is motivation really? In the games and sports, psychological and physiological factors play an important role in determining the performance level (Grange & Kerr, 2010; Schilling & Hyashi, 2001). Motivation also plays an important role in determining the performance level an athlete, but plays a role in the psychological and physiological factors as well. Motivation is more than a behavior or idea, it is an impact on how we interact with others, how we process defeat, feel, and how we play. Motivation will not only help an athlete get the starting position or gain an award but more importantly, help an athlete reach their potential. Motivation like most things
Sport and exercise psychology is a mandatory aspect of the sport science discipline. This discipline contributes to the various professional practices associated with physical activities such as - teaching of physical education, recreation and health promotion, and kinesiology related professions - because it plays a mental role for the participants. Sport and exercise psychologists view physical activity in several different ways: physical activity as a tool for health, physical activity as a tool for human potential, and physical activity as a tool for social change. This aspect of psychology may be the most important aspect of physical activity, because of the contributions of exercise and sport psychology to health, human potential, and social change.