Sport Motivation and Inspiration
Every competitive athlete goes through a ‘bad patch’ or two in their career when maintaining sport motivation becomes important . Reaching peak fitness is a process, so it’s unrealistic to expect to be able to maintain peak fitness throughout an entire career. Olympic athletes make a great many sacrifices in pursuit of their ambitions: not all will realise their dreams. But, in today’s sporting world of lucrative product endorsements and sponsorship deals, a great many move into successful careers that extend beyond the Olympic arena – a motivational prospect.
In the 1936 Berlin Olympics, Jesse Owens, arguably one of the greatest Olympians of all time and certainly one of the most memorable, became the first American in track and field history to win four gold medals at a single Olympiad. The grandson of a slave, he grew up in a culture and environment of racial segregation. He had none of the extensive back-up support that Olympic athletes have today; and none of the funding. In fact, he didn’t even receive a track scholarship at university and had to work in several jobs, including pumping gas, night elevator operator, and waiter, just to be able to support himself and his wife.
His efforts and his determination to achieve his dream are motivational in themselves but if you’re currently experiencing a ‘bad patch’ in your career and perhaps struggling to recover from an injury, consider this:
In 1935, Owens hurt his back after falling down a flight of stairs. He was unsure if he would be able to compete in one of the big events scheduled as part of his Olympic preparation. He persuaded his coach to allow him to try the first event, the 100-yard dash, as a “test” for his back. He not only tested his back, he equalled the 100-yard dash world record and, despite the pain, went on to set new world records in his next three events. In the space of 45 minutes, Jesse Owens broke three world records and tied a fourth.
Even though his 1936 Olympic achievement would not be equalled until 1984 – by American Carl Lewis in the Los Angeles Olympics – there was no multi-million dollar advertising campaign awaiting him on his return in those days. He continued to work in a variety of jobs just as he had done before going to Berlin and one of them was playground director. Through that initial connection with underprivileged youths, he became a highly sought after motivational speaker, described as, “A dreamer who could make the dreams of others come true, a speaker who could make the world listen and a man who held out hope to millions of young people.”
Athletes like Jesse Owens are both inspirational and motivational. How do you want to be described as an athlete?
“People come out to see you perform and you have to give them the best you have within you. The lives of most men are patchwork quilts. Or at best, one matching outfit and a closet and laundry bag full of incongruous accumulations. A lifetime of training for just 10 seconds…One chance is all you need”
- Jesse Owens
Sport Motivation , What Floats Your Boat?
What’s your sport? The same question applies whether you enjoy sport as a competitor or as a spectator. What sporting activity do you look forward to after work or at the weekends? What sport keeps you putting in regular training hours; keeps you glued to your television for hours, or keeps you cheering in the crowd for hours? What sport floats your boat?
Whatever your involvement in sport, something motivates that involvement. So what motivates professional sports players to get involved in their sport?
“When I was young, I never wanted to leave the court until I got things exactly correct. My dream was to become a pro.”
- Larry Bird, basketball Hall of Fame superstar
What’s your sport motivation?
From a young age, basketball star Larry Bird knew that he wanted to be a professional player. He spent hours on court practicing his skills with the aim of one day realising his dream. But, even when his dream became a reality, he continued to practice relentlessly and was renowned throughout his career as a constant perfectionist.
Bird’s initial motivation to put in hours of practice was clearly to achieve professional status, but what then motivated him to keep on putting in the hours of practice once he’d established a successful career?
Inside-out motivation:
Players like Larry Bird get a “buzz” from their sport. They love their sport and they take part for the sheer enjoyment of it. If you’re motivated from the inside-out, you participate in your sport simply for the sake of the sport itself, the way it makes you feel. Winning is not the be-all-and-end-all when you’re motivated this way but chances are, the more skilled you become and the better you play, the more motivated you are to keep improving. Players like Larry Bird continually strive for perfection because they thrive on the ‘feeling’ of success.
Outside-in motivation:
It’s estimated that Larry Bird earned something in the region of $26.5 million during his basketball career. If you’re someone who’s motivated from the outside-in, that represents a big incentive. Outside-in motivation is all about external rewards – prize money, awards, sponsorship deals etc. – and very little to do with the sport itself. In fact, winning very often does become the be-all-and-end-all for sports players motivated from the outside-in and if winning, or at least ‘winning’ rewards, is no longer an option, they’ll drop out of their sport completely.
“I’d run over my own mother to win the Super Bowl.”
- Russ Grimm, American football Hall of Fame player and coach
What’s in it for you?
Understanding what motivates your involvement in sport can go a long way towards making sure you stay motivated. If you’re a competitor, knowing what motivates you becomes essential in terms of reaching your full potential. You need sport motivation to stick at it when the going gets tough and you need motivation to be able to give every performance your best shot.
“Sport is 90% inspiration and 10% perspiration.”
- Johnny Miller, pro golfer
If you enjoyed this blog be sure to sign up for your FREE report “The Winning Edge “ 7 keys to playing the game of your life click here to sign up
Sport Motivation and the Coach
Motivation is a huge subject. It’s well documented that athletes who lack sport motivation are unlikely to perform at their best or to achieve their true potential, and any sports coach worth his or her salt strives to understand what motivates each and every athlete they coach. So, if you’re the coach, what’s your motivation to be the motivator?
“A good coach will make his players see what they can be, rather than what they are”
- Ara Parasheghian, American football coach
Behind every successful athlete, there’s a successful coach-athlete relationship. The main role of a coach is often seen as fitness and skill trainer but a good coach might also be an educator, a counsellor, a friend, and an inspirational motivator. Motivation is complex but to begin to understand what motivates you as a coach, you must first identify your preferred coaching style.
Carrot or Stick?
Most people involved in sport have memories of being yelled at by a ‘Sergeant Major style’ coach at some point. Coaches using this autocratic style of coaching often feel that the best way to motivate athletes is to shout, so when more motivation is required, they shout louder! If this is your preferred coaching style, it’s quite likely that your main motivation is winning and you expect your athletes to respect your authority, buckle down, and do it your way.
At the other extreme, some coaches prefer a more democratic ‘friendly helper’ style of coaching and athletes are motivated by being involved in the decision making process at every stage of their training. If this is your preferred coaching style, chances are that your main motivation is maintaining the coach-athlete relationship, irrespective of competition results. Winning is not everything.
“The most important thing about motivation is goal setting.
You should always have a goal”
- Francie Larrieu Smith, Olympic athlete
The goal of most coaches, whatever their preferred coaching style, is to see their athletes succeed and achieve their dreams. With that being the case, it’s fair to say that the majority of coaches are motivated by simply helping their athletes to realise their full potential and to become the best they can be. At top level, there are very few “stick” only coaches and very few “carrot” only coaches. A successful coach must be adaptable and flexible in their approach to coaching.
There’s no one-size-fits-all when it comes to motivation and maintaining your sport motivation as the coach remains inextricably linked to maintaining the motivation of your athletes.
The motivational climate you create as the coach will have a direct impact on the motivation of your athletes. So who motivates the motivator? You do.
“You can motivate by fear, and you can motivate by reward. But both those methods are only temporary. The only lasting thing is self motivation”
- Homer Rice, American football coach
If you enjoyed this blog be sure to sign up for your FREE report “The Winning Edge “ 7 keys to playing the game of your life click here to sign up
Sports Psychology, NLP and the Tour De France
Ever heard of Bill Burl? What about Charlie Holland? No? How about Chris Hoy then? Yes, I expect Sir Chris Hoy rings a few more bells! In fact, they’re all British cyclists. So, in terms of NLP sports models, how many other names are overlooked due to the relative obscurity of road cycle sport in Britain?
British cyclists dominated track cycling in the 2008 Olympics and Sir Chris Hoy’s triple gold medal winning performance inspired an entire nation.
“The World Class performance programme of British Cycling has demonstrated how effectively a winning combination of coaching, facilities, and teamwork can realise ultimate success” - Scottish Cycling
Burl and Holland were part of a ‘British’ team entry in the 1937 Tour de France, perhaps the most famous road cycling race in the world. But, if asked to name a famous road cyclist, who would you name? Any British names spring to mind? It’s quite possible that unless you’re a road cycling fan, no names spring to mind at all. However, undoubtedly the most famous name in the history of the Tour de France is Lance Armstrong, a record-breaking seven times winner, and an American.
In this year’s Tour de France, there are an unprecedented number of British riders and a British-based team, the first team entry since 1987. Team Sky is managed by British Cycling performance director Dave Brailsford CBE. He’s the man who led Britain’s Olympic team to fourteen medals, including eight golds, in the Beijing Olympics, so in terms of NLP sports models , he’s the man!
“Team Sky will bring to a professional road team the principles that have worked so well with the current GB teams; commitment, meticulous planning, the aggregation of marginal gains and a rider-centred philosophy…This will be an epic story; building a British team to take on the best in professional cycling, and win” - Dave Brailsford
In simple terms, NLP can be described as a study of what makes successful people successful. Dave Brailsford is a hugely successful performance director, making him a worthy NLP sports model of excellence but, what makes him a particularly interesting study is that he himself is using the hugely successful GB Olympic cycling team as a model of excellence for the newly formed professional road cycling team.
Road cycling is a very different sport to track cycling. The Tour de France covers 3,642 kilometres over three weeks and Sir Chris Hoy won his three gold medals in races that are timed in seconds – not weeks! This highlights the very important point that NLP sports modelling is not about trying to become a clone of any one person, it’s about studying the successful habits and routines of successful people; the routine actions and thought processes of those people, and identifying ways to incorporate them into your own personal circumstances so that you too can develop the same winning ways.
If you enjoyed this blog be sure to sign up for your FREE report “The Winning Edge “ 7 keys to playing the game of your life click here to sign up
Opening Your Mind with NLP to Become a British Open Champion
The 2010 Open Championship, often referred to as the British Open, is once again being held at St Andrews, the ‘Home of Golf,’ on the Old Course, one of the oldest golf courses in the world. It’s a course steeped in history and Jack Nicklaus, Open Champion in 1970 and 1978, once said, “If a golfer is to be remembered he must win the Open at St Andrews.” So what does it take to be remembered? What sort of physical and mental skills must be mastered to master the Old Course?
“To win at St Andrews is the ultimate” – Tiger Woods, Open Champion 2000, 2005
On the official St Andrews Links website it says, “What all St Andrews champions have in common is that they learned to plot their way around the hazards that litter the links and prey on the mind.” Speaking from an NLP sports psychology point of view, that one sentence pretty much sums up the content of this article! It takes more than a mastery of physical skills to master the game of golf, it takes a mastery of mental skills to make it all the way to the top.
The phrase, “prey on the mind,” highlights one of the most difficult mental aspects of the game of golf. It takes a long time to get around a golf course and it takes days to complete each game in a Championship tournament; that’s a lot of “thinking” time – a lot of time for doubts, worries, and negative voices to prey on the mind. The Old Course at St Andrews is home to some of the most famous, or infamous, holes in the world, known to golfers and non-golfers alike. The notorious 17th ‘Road Hole’ has ended the dreams of many Championship contenders and many ‘big names’ have endured the cameras of the world spotlighting their struggle to escape from the Road Hole bunker. So how do you get beyond the ‘what ifs’?
To answer the ‘what if’ questions and to cope with the potential for doubt to creep in when ‘thinking’ time provides the opportunity, champion golfers use mental skill. A champion golfer is not only a skilled player, he’s a master at the art of visualisation.
“Success in golf depends less on strength of body than upon strength of mind and character” – Arnold Palmer
A golfer at the top of his game can play every inch of a course without setting foot on it. The whole course can be ‘played’ in detail in his mind. Past experiences can be drawn upon to provide 3D images and to create realistic ‘virtual’ versions of every hole on the course. Crucially, he can also visualise every eventuality, good or not-so-good, and ‘see’ the way forward out of any predicament he may find himself in: he can “plot” his way around the hazards. The most effective mind tool to use against negative ‘what ifs’ is a positive mental attitude. The learned mental skill of visualisation helps to sharpen that tool.
“Golf is a game played on a five-inch course – the distance between your ears”
- Bobby Jones
If you enjoyed this blog be sure to sign up for your FREE report “The Winning Edge “ 7 keys to playing the game of your life click here to sign up
