Motivation and Arousal

The aim of this lesson is to find out about the psychological side of performing, motivation and arousal (Equivalent to UK GCSE Physical Education)

Motivation is what drives us on to succeed. It can come in two forms:

Intrinsic motivation

This comes from within. It is your natural desire to achieve something. You would participate even if there is no prize or award, because you enjoy the challenge

Extrinsic motivation

This comes from outside of us. It can include things like praise and recognition from other people, or trophies and awards.

Goal Setting

Goal setting is a good way of staying motivated. It is a way of aiming towards long-term targets, by setting short-term goals to achieve on the way. Goal setting:

Motivates you to work hard
Helps prepare you to perform and know what you want to achieve
Makes you feel in control and less worried about a performance
Gives you confidence when you achieve a goal

Goals should stick to the following rules. You can remember this using the acronym SMARTER:

Specific - goals should be specific to what you want to achieve

Measurable - you need to be able to tell when you have reached a goal

Agreed - you should agree these goals with your coach

Realistic - it should be challenging to reach your goals, but not impossible!

Time-phased - you need time frames so that you have reached all of your short-term goals before the event/performance

Exciting - goals need to be interesting to keep you motivated

Recorded - you should keep a record of them to chart your progress

Arousal

Arousal is your level of excitement and readiness to perform. Arousal can have positive and negative effects on your performance. Your performance will be best at an optimum level of arousal. After this level, performance gets worse as you become anxious and nervous.

This is a graph which demonstrates this theory. It is called the Inverted U theory as it looks like an upside-down U!

Inverted U theory