HOW DIFFERENT TYPES OF MOTIVATION IMPACT OUR CLIMBING
Have you ever wondered if there is a rule of thumb for staying motivated?
Motivation is a funny concept. You might have experienced something like this yourself. One day, you are super psyched. It’s all fun and buzz at the crag or in the gym, and on the next day, you just want to stay in bed and don’t even want to think about your (climbing) goals. So let’s take a closer look at motivation and how it impacts our climbing.
Generally, motivation (lat. movere) desribes the ‚activating orientation of the momentary execution of life towards a positively valued target state‘. To put it in simpler terms, it is what drives us to achieve a certain goal. We want to feel good, hence a positive goal state motivates us to engage in an activity whereas a negative goal state might hold us back from it or motivate us to avoid a given behaviour.
As an example, you might feel motivated to get up in the morning and train if you know that it makes you feel good whereas the prospect of getting yelled at by your coach might rather motivate you to stay away from him/her and the training session.
On top of that, a distinction can be made on whether you want to go train for a so-called external reward, e.g. strength gain effects, recognition, or seeing team mates, or if it is the activity itself that motivates you, meaning you are self-motivated, often referred to as intrinsically motivated. In this case, the goal is the activity itself, such as climbing.
Understanding our motivation and goal orientation in climbing thus helps us to develop both training and mental strategies that can ultimately help us improve our performance and well-being.
One motivational sport psychological model that is often used in sports is the self-determination theory (SDT), developed by Ryan and Deci (2007). In psychology, motivated behaviour is described on a continuum of autonomy and self-determination with three motivational subsystems:
Intrinsic motivation
Extrinsic motivation
Amotivation
Intrinsic motivation means that we do something (e.g. go climbing) for its own sake because we enjoy it and it fulfils us. If we are intrinsically motivated in climbing, we love climbing for its experience, for the pleasure, satisfaction and interest. We might love the joy of moving on the wall, solving the problem in front of us (whether that’s a route or a boulder) and being in the moment.
Extrinsic motivation means that we are motivated by outcomes that do not necessarily lie in the activity, e.g. wanting achieve a purpose with the main interest lying in the consequences of an action, e.g. sending a specific grade, winning a competition, gaining external recognition (e.g. by your coach) or getting sponsored.
Finally, amotivation means there is a no intention to act. It is therefore associated with lack of persistence in sport.
Now, take a moment to reflect on your own experiences: In which cases did you feel intrinsically motivated, when were you extrinsically motivated or even amotivated?
As said before, the three different forms of motivation are seen on a continuum. There are different forms of external motivation, moving between amotivation to self-motivation, depending on how well we identify with them:
For example, if you do not really like climbing and all the training required to get better at it but your parents push you to train a lot and put pressure on you to do so, it is a form of extrinsic motivation. You don’t identify with climbing and you perceive it as impersonal. Climbing is also externally regulated, meaning your motivation is controlled by someone other than you, in this example, your parents.
Thankfully, there also forms of extrinsic motivation that feel a lot better.
For example, you like climbing. And training together with your training group motivates you because you like spending time with your friends. This motivation to go climbing is not entirely intrinsic because it is partly the aspect of seeing your friends that motivates you.
You can tell though that there is a difference between being motivated by the thought of training together with friends and your parents putting pressure on you to go climb. Self-motivation is higher when we consider the action (climbing) as important and it agrees with our values and goals. It is important to feel a sense of choice and an identification with the activity.
For example, you go climbing because you feel it is valuable and important to you.
Figure 1. Self-Determination Theory (retrieved from Agawa, Toshie, Takeuchi & Osamu, 2016)
There are three intrinsic needs that are essential to self-motivation, that all of us humans have:
The Need of Competence
The Need for Autonomy
The Need for Relatedness
In general, the more autonomous and self-determined we are, the more frequent, more persistent and more committed we are in sports.
Autonomy in climbing can be ensured by e.g., reducing external pressure, and giving positive feedback rather than external rewards (Szaynok, 2020). While external motivation is not necessarily bad, autonomy is highest in intrinsic motivation since we don’t need any outside incentive to motivate ourselves. In the long-term, intrinsic motivation is absolutely essential (Teixeira et al., 2012). However, more autonomous forms of external motivation can also be initially important, e.g. the desire to be part of a climbing group and therefore to go climbing. This is particularly relevant for youth teams as we know that for youth climbers having a social network and peer group at training is an essential motivational factor to keep going to training. Another factor that impacts our participation is when there are task-inherent reasons, such as fun and challenge.
To sum it up, there are times when extrinsic factors are relevant and important, but in the long-term, it is important to foster intrinsically motivating tasks in climbing.