Intrinsic motivation can be applied to all aspects of your life and has been shown to be an effective way to improve performance. By changing the focus to the internal rewards of a task, such as satisfaction and enjoyment, you can better motivate yourself and others. Simply put, intrinsic sporting motivation relates to playing a sport you love because it’s internally rewarding to you in some form.

Extrinsic motivation is reward-driven behaviour where incentives like praise, fame, or money are used as motivation for specific activities. Being paid to play a sport is an example of extrinsic motivation. Athletes, players, coaches etc are motivated to work (train for and play their sport) because like all of us, they need to earn money to pay bills. Extrinsic motivation doesn’t always have a tangible reward. It can also be done through intangible rewards, like praise and fame.

A combination of Intrinsic and extrinsic motivations creates a well-balanced motivation model that can be adapted to many situations.

Reinforcements are used by coaches, managers, and parents very commonly as motivators in sports but what are the fundamental differences between positive and negative reinforcements?

Simply put…….

Positive reinforcement is categorised as a reward for performing a behaviour correctly. It typically will come soon after the behaviour is performed. Vocal praise and supportive gestures are the most common demonstration of this in sport but can also be the gifting of a small token of appreciation.

Negative reinforcement follows a correct performance but involves removing something undesirable to reinforce the desired behaviour. A basic example of this in junior sports may be reducing or removing a challenging exercise or workout if players perform well through their certain behaviours such as concentration whilst completing drills or, verbally encouraging their teammates in a match.