It is the start of February, meaning that the first month of the year has already past. Maybe you set yourself some new goals around at the start of the year or at the start of the season. If so, are you still engaged in pursuing your goals? Do you still follow through with the required actions to reach your goals? Or are you already lacking some motivation?

This blog post is about motivation since we all know, motivation is a central aspect of our training and, of course, everyday life. There are always training days where we might not be as psyched as on others. That’s absolutely normal. But if we always tend to lack motivation, if we always find it hard to push ourselves or if we always question our goals or stop pursuing them soon after having set them, it might be worth having a closer look at our motivation. In these cases, we can also recommend to work on it with a professional.

What drives us and why do we do what we do?

Can you find yourself in one of these following situations?

• You are in the climbing gym, following your new training program, which you find challenging. Your next exercise on the plan is five dead hangs until failure with 30 seconds to 1 minute resting time in between. Right before the 4th dead hang, your forearms and stomach muscles are already burning. You decide to not finish this exercise – there can’t be such a difference on whether you do 3,4 or 5 dead hangs. You go home, take a shower and eat some food.

• You have a tight deadline at work or an exam coming up at school/university. You need to do work or study hard, when you really feel like rather watching some Netflix, listening to music or going out for a coffee with your mate.

In both of these examples it can be very interesting to look at WHY we would choose which action. This depends on our individual motivation. Motivation is described as reasoning to act in a certain way. The root of the word motivation is the word motive. The Latin form is “movere”, meaning “to move”. The desire to move, opposed to remaining stationary, is the essence of motivation. If we are motivated, we will take action, e.g. study, get all the work done in time or finish our training program. However, if we are not motivated – if nothing “drives” us, we would just go home, without finishing our training plan.

The first question, you should ask yourself when setting yourself a goal is, why do you want to achieve it? What drives you to follow your training plan or to work hard at university/at work?

Motivation can be further differentiated into intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.

Being intrinsically motivated means that we are acting in a certain way because we find the action by itself rewarding, e.g. we experience enjoyment while doing the task (e.g. enjoying climbing) or you feel a sense of accomplishment.

If we are extrinsically motivated, we are driven by external rewards such as money, trophies, results, recognition by our coach or parents, or in order to avoid an external punishment like a (financial) penalty, social judgment or criticism etc. In this case, we would engage in a behaviour not only because we enjoy it or find it satisfying, but to either get something in return or to avoid something unpleasant.

Research shows that being intrinsically motivated results in a more stable and reliable demonstration of the desirable action. This means, if we are intrinsically motivated, it can be more helpful in order to reach our long-term goals. However, this doesn’t mean being extrinsically motivated is not useful and beneficial either. In fact, it can be useful and beneficial as well since it can help us to complete a task that we find unpleasant. Also, an external reward can spark our interest and participation in something in which we would have had no initial interest at first. Neither extrinsic nor intrinsic motivation is better; both are important ways to motivate ourselves and can be used successfully. Often, it is not even possible to differentiate whether an action is purely intrinsically and extrinsically motivated.

We all know that there are some aspects of training (or in life) which are easier to complete as they might find them enjoyable in that moment (intrinsically motivated). It is important to remember these enjoyable aspects as well as what we love about what we do in first place and why we do it when we lack motivation, when we feel anxious about a competition or a certain outcome. Other aspects of training (or life) feel really hard. They might feel unenjoyable. For such unenjoyable actions, it might be helpful to think about what could be an external source of motivation (extrinsic motivation).

For instance, if we think back to the examples from the beginning, one could add an external reward for having finished everything on the training plan. This could be a small thing like making your favourite meal for dinner that night, or getting a nice cup of coffee afterwards. Another approach would be to try and make the unenjoyable action more enjoyable and therefore potentially shifting the necessary motivation from extrinsic towards intrinsic. This shift could be done by e.g. listening to our favourite motivational music, changes in our training environment or inviting a training partner to join in for training etc.

Now it is your turn!
When you think back to your own goals for 2020 and the required actions to achieve the latter: are there any actions easier to complete than others? What drives you to do these behaviours? Are the required actions enjoyable or do you have some form of external reward motivating you?

Would you like to improve your own mental skills?

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