What type of motivational climate is just right?

Written by Louis Ross

According to Nicholls’ (1984) individuals are either task-involved; meaning they are concerned with their own personal improvement and they seek skill mastery, or ego-involved, in which they judge their own success in comparison to others. Existing literature (see Cury, Biddle, Sarrazin, & Famose,1997; Van-Yperen & Duda,1999) shows that there is a relationship between the ego and task involvement and the amount of effort one puts forth. Both orientations can influence the choices one makes in relation to their performance (i.e. their work rate may increase/decrease). Understanding what motivates a player is important for coaches as it can help in challenging...

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Transforming Coaching Award - supported by Believe Perform

At the UK Coaching Awards 2019, BelievePerform is proud to support the Transforming Coaching Award, which recognises an organisation that is transforming coaching to enhance the development and well-being of people providing and receiving great coaching. The prestigious showpiece event will be held at The Tower Hotel London on the 5...

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The ‘Fine Line’ in Perfectionism

How an athlete can turn unhealthy into healthy perfectionism Perfectionism is logical. The highly competitive nature of the sport environment accompanies a variety of stressful circumstances such as, injuries, pressure, interpersonal conflict, and an evaluative atmosphere where athletes must deal with others’ and their own personal scrutiny of performance [1,...

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Talent that shouts and talent that whispers

I saw a picture doing the rounds on Twitter this week of a U15 match for Ajax vs. Sparta Rotterdam where one boy looks almost fully developed and the other boy doesn’t. It got me thinking about the Relative Age Effect (RAE), this is the phenomenon that sees children born...

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Success over sanity: The expectation for athletes to always be OK

Athletes are considered heroes to many, often representing strength, resilience and mental toughness. Despite these qualities benefiting sport performance, there is a connotation that an athlete must always be OK and that expressing any suffering, doubt or negative thought is considered a weakness, especially for male athletes. There is often...

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Can an athlete’s personality tell us about future success?

Forget ability, is personality a new way to gauge if someone is going to be successful in the future? The answer is fairly complex, but in short: an athlete’s future success won’t solely be predicted because of certain parts of their personality, but it may well give us a better...

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Raising Young Athletes: The Effect of Sport on Identity Formation

Identifying as an athlete can be fantastic: it serves as a solid foundation for healthy identity development and empowerment. But what happens when a youngster begins to see themselves as only an athlete – e.g. ‘I am a football player’ – to the exclusion of all else? This is where they fall...

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Competitive Edge – where do you get yours?

Do you sulk if you lose a pub quiz? Have you ever kept going until you are sick in order to win an eating competition? Or passed out trying to hold your breath in a tunnel? And what about parenting: are you one of those people screaming ‘kick it in...

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Never Stop Trying to Get Better

Now that your season is winding down, when is it OK to relax the atmosphere of your team and “just let them play” the remainder of the season. The short answer is never. But the Stoics and pop culture have much more to say on that. Stoic philosopher Diogenes in...

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Athletes Post-Sport: Unqualified or competitive advantage?

Many elite athletes when considering their success in sport, can probably tell you that it didn’t always come easy… in fact it usually comes at a price. When training for the Olympics, United States Gold Medallist Michael Phelps trained 25-30 hours per week. During his 2008 interview with NBC, Phelps...