Making Motivation in Hockey Players- Part 1 of 3
A Brief Description of Motivation
Sometimes, it's hard to get athletes interested in the occasionally intense work required to reap benefits we know they'll enjoy, like being more resistant to injuries, stronger, more powerful, and harder to knock off a puck. As passionate practitioners, we want to help sustain the hardest working players' motivation and aid in elevating the drive of less bought-in teammates. While we know what a motivated player looks like, we need an agreed upon set of terms to have a targeted discussion.
Motivation is the intensity and direction of effort. Intensity refers to how much effort is put forth in a specific situation and direction is approach or avoidance of that situation. It's important to understand “motivation is an ‘inner condition,' it is not something that you can give to your athletes. You cannot motivate someone else. However, you may be able to influence them in such a way that they can better motivate themselves” (Vernacchia & Statler, 2005, p. 425). A coach with an awareness of factors that feed motivated behavior is more likely to understand his or her impact on it.
Motivation is a process impacted by individual characteristics (personality, goals, needs, perceptions, attributions, etc.), the situation, and fulfillment of psychological needs, all of which interact to influence motivated behavior, the expression of which is controlled by the athlete. This article aims to create an understanding of motivation and how you, as an outsider to that process, can indirectly influence it.
A Little Theory and Self-Awareness Go a Long Way
Becoming informed about factors that influence motivation helps to build an awareness of what positively impacts a player's drive: fulfillment of the need for a sense of autonomy, competence, and relatedness to others contributes to sustainable, intrinsic motivation.
Autonomy refers to how self-initiated and self-directed a person perceives their actions to be.
Competence is how capable a person feels.
Relatedness is the desire to feel connected to significant others in one's life (Ryan & Deci, 2000).
Heavy time demands and prescribed training regimens or lifestyle choices make it easy to feel like control was remised upon signing on the dotted line. While heavy demands are part of the deal, a strength and conditioning coach can positively impact autonomy in simple, meaningful ways.
Autonomy
Autonomy is supported through a player perceiving their actions and decisions are self-directed and self-initiated.
In attempting to help your players build a sense of autonomy, it can't hurt to find out individual goals. Personal goals will likely come second to what the coach wants his or her team to be capable of (faster, better conditioned, stronger, etc.), but having that conversation can be meaningful to the player and to your interactions with him or her.
Where possible, you can address how the things you're already doing in your programming will help an athlete achieve what they want. You're also able to find out if there are things the player wants to learn about and do on their own to gain some control over their training, diet, overall health, or how they approach their personal goals.
Allowing the team to make decisions about exercise selection is simple, requires remission of control, planning, and foresight, but can be done intelligently to feed into a sense of autonomy without sacrificing benefits or performance. This might mean having a team vote to select which drill or movement to perform as part of a larger workout. It could mean giving players the option to perform one of several stretches pre-workout or recovery methods post-workout. With knowledge and creativity, we can provide equal, or near-equal, substitutions in the interest of a sense of autonomy.
Some self-awareness helps, too. Sit down to take stock of what you already do or don't do to create a sense of self-directed or self-initiated decision-making. Ask yourself questions about how your environment or weight room culture impacts autonomy. If you've got a sport psych on staff, can they help you brainstorm ways to help players self-motivate, or can you tag-team on a project in that vein?
Competence
Competence is supported by feeling masterful and recognizing that skill acquisition or learning is happening. It's probably safe to say this applies to things the athlete cares about mastering. Knowing an athlete's goals, the coach's goals for the player and their playstyle may aid in identifying what the player cares about mastering. Helping an athlete understand the importance of certain drills, movements, or aspects of your programming that are especially and specifically meaningful to them, then reinforcing successes and technical progress could impact competence or, at the very least, create some buy-in. For those of you who're fairly read up on sport psychology, this might also help you create a task- or process-focused training environment.
Creating competition in the weight room via movements meaningful to your players could foster a comradery - which in turn will impact competence. This might mean something as simple as posting testing numbers, championing weekly leaders in metrics meaningful to your team, or getting a little more creative. A coach I had the privilege of working with in the past organized groups who were similarly strong to use racks next to one another and encouraged competition within reason. One coach I had the pleasure of hearing at a regional conference created ‘clubs' and t-shirts for leaders in power, strength exercises, and sport-specific drills.
Asking yourself some questions can't hurt either. As a coach, are you wise about what you celebrate in regard to technical progress, mastery, and approximations of success? Or are you more inclined to only speak out when something's wrong? This doesn't mean becoming a rah-rah coach, it just means becoming mindful of where you give feedback, how and when it's given, and if there are any missing pieces.
Relatedness
Since relatedness deals with feelings of connectedness to significant others, a strength coach has less influence over it. Much of helping an athlete gain a sense of relatedness may fall outside the role of a strength coach - the athlete may not even share who those people are or what their relationship is like with those people and that's okay. However, team activity or challenge that doesn't interfere with training and still contributes to performance doesn't hurt in that it can create stronger relationships or team cohesion. Refer to your team's sport psych - if you know a player is having a tough time with a significant relationship or suffering from a tough loss in their network.
Wrapping Up
You control how you conduct yourself, what you say, and are a major contributor to the environment. Although you can't control how your behaviors are interpreted or completely control the culture, you can employ strategies that help players self-motivate and build an environment to facilitate motivated behavior. If you try any of these suggestions or brainstorm some of your own, keep track of what does and doesn't work well. For those strategies that appear effective, be consistent and see if the change was temporary and due to something being different or if it's consistent. If you've got the luxury of a sport psych in your department, run some ideas by them and collaborate - they'd probably love being involved and challenged.
References:
Read part two of this three-part series.
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