Sports Player Motivation

  Keeping a team motivated is hard. An unexpected defeat, run of patchy form or just a lack of focus are things that every sports team suffer from- and overcoming it falls into the lap of the coach. Motivating your team to be the best they can be is one of the most difficult tasks you're faced with. In the sporting arena, coaches can adopt the same strategy. Extrinsic motivation might be the promise of being paid a match fee or a promotion to team captain. More negatively, a coach might threaten to drop a player from their team or even consider banishing them from the club altogether. Intrinsic motivation is the internal desire within a player to improve, achieve and succeed. Its your job as a coach to be able to inflame that desire within a player, challenging them to become the best every single day. The best coaches will use intrinsic motivation, inspiring players and meaning the unpredictable and less effective extrinsic methods are not required.

  We all undergo similar emotions when playing sport, and one of the most pressing is the will to win. Competition is a central topic to motivating yourself to succeed, and your team are no different. There's nothing wrong with inflaming that innate competition in sportsmen and women. It fuels that necessity for fun and helps to motivate your team to constantly improve and become better than their peers.