Intrinsic Motivation

In hockey, a player’s motivation level can predict whether or not they will be successful. However, usually a player’s level of success is used to determine how motivated they are.

It is my philosophy that a player can become more successful from restructuring their motivation to promote a greater desire to train, practice and play. To optimize the structure of player’s motivation let’s begin with gaining a greater understanding of motivation, and then apply the subtle focus points that can change everything.

The Integrated Theory of Motivation by Vallerand and Losier, helps explain that social factors such as how much success, failure, coaching and competition we have, help shape our preconceptions about our competency and autonomy (self control over our success). Together, the social factors and preconceptions we develop determine our level of motivation, which decides the levels of sportsmanship, persistence and intensity we exert.

Vallerand and Losier further determined a continuum for the five different types of motivation. The least to most powerful types of motivation are:

External Motivation - wanting to earn money or a title. Or doing it because you were told to.

Introverted Motivation - avoid negative emotions. Doing it because you fear what will happen if you don’t.

Identified Motivation – wanting to compete in sport or associate with its benefits, such as health benefits.

Integrated Motivation – associating it as a part of you. “It’s who I am.”

Intrinsic Motivation – the big word here is FUN. It is fun to participate in the sport or the training.

In summary, there are all sorts of different reasons that move us to do things, but the key is that the most important one is doing something because we enjoy it. Notice that when we do things because we have to, ought to, or even want to, that we are not nearly as motivated with respect to when we do things because we enjoy to or love to.

So, the subtle focus point is that it is “ok” to be motivated by reasons outside of pure enjoyment, but in order to optimize our motivation the core of our focus needs to be on the enjoyment we experience during the activity. Focusing on the enjoyment will make players train, practice and play with more intensity and persistence, which we know is instrumental to being successful.