Working with unmotivated teenagers!
Today’s post is about motivation, and what to do when you’re working with a particular breed of animal..the teenager, who doesn’t always have much of it!!!
I occasionally like to post on aspects of psychology as it is a huge part of what makes a successful athlete and coach. In a previous blog I spoke about building confidence through results. Click HERE for the full article.
In that post I made the point that the results the player/athlete gets (winning a match or beating a personal best) build confidence that what they are doing is working and therefore are seen as contributing to a sense of achievement and increasing competence (e.g. time splits in swimming or running that are better – that’s what PB’s are about).
Achieving Personal bests though is not as easy as it sounds so as well as having confidence you need to be motivated!
Most children that start playing sport when they are young do so because it is fun! Some children might have dreams about being a professional sportsman or woman, but many do not.
For me, one of the greatest challenges is working with athletes who say they want one thing (e.g. be a Tennis Professional) and yet aren’t motivated to do the work. Alistair McCaw wrote a great article: ‘What happens when the parent wants ‘It’ more than the kid? – which you can read HERE.
”It’s easy for an athlete to say they want to be a professional, or one day win a grand slam championship. However, It’s much harder for them to say they want the struggle, hours upon hours of mundane repetition and the challenge.”
In the article Alistair talks about Intrinsic motivation, which he refers to as motivation that comes from inside an individual rather than from any external or outside reward. The motivation comes from the pleasure one gets from the task itself or from the sense of satisfaction in completing or even working on a task.
Working with teenagers is particularly challenging as they are at a point in their young careers where the stakes become higher. They are often forfeiting full-time main stream education to afford them the opportunities to practice more in their main sport. It’s also a time when there are a lot of distractions socially that just seem way more fun.
The reality is when you make the kind of commitment required to realise a goal of becoming a professional sportsman or woman you have to enjoy the GRIND! You need to enjoy the process of doing the work which coaches call GRIT!
As Alistair says, ‘To be successful in anything, you need to have a passion for what you do and then have the GRIT, in other words you need to deeply love what you do, and are able to embrace struggle and take challenges head-on.’
So how to do you build motivation then? Because to get the PB you have to put a lot of work in and some people just seem to be more willing than others to do it!
The Challenge:
I work with a group of athletes aged 11-16 years for 45-60 minute sessions up to 10 times a week. I write session plans that they can complete in the allotted time. But the problem was that (in the past) too often they got distracted and talked and then not complete all the exercises.
The solution:
I had thought about using the time management idea of High school football coach Shane Nelson, where he has in his weight room, a 3-foot by 4-foot digital timer that he uses to time his various stations. In his current mesocycle, he set the timer at fifteen minutes and it counts down to zero from there. There is a horn that sounds to begin and end the “quarter.” The football team uses that term to stay in a football mindset. See the full article HERE.
Rather than using the timer I decided I was going to use another way of holding them accountable for getting the required work done. I was going to use a merit system (reward system), where I would sign their training diary if they completed the session and did it to a good level. I said I would award a prize after 6 weeks for the person who got the most merits.
Did it work?
It had a good effect for the first week but once they realised that they would be out of contention (if they had a few days off ill, or were at a tournament) they said they no longer valued having a merit. They didn’t care if they got one or not as it wouldn’t make a difference to getting the prize.
Why didn’t it work?
It didn’t work because I was tapping into Extrinsic Motivation.
This is the problem with rewards (and punishments)- when players can’t win they give up! This sends an interesting message about the mentality of some of the athletes I am working with; they are only prepared to push themselves if there is a guarantee of a ‘prize’ at the end of their efforts – rather than the fitness training being an ‘end’ in its own right.
This you need to be mindful of because YOU cannot change them, they have to change themselves!
Is there a more successful extrinsic reward?
Yes- the possibility of higher levels of sports performance.
These kids need to feel that what they are doing ‘directly’ and ‘quickly’ translates to them achieving higher levels of performance (and that performance is meaningful to them).
Therefore it is vital that both the S&C team and the Technical Coaching team make the link between being a better athlete and a better sportsman or woman.
The bit in brackets here could be a problem, because although they might get better results from doing their fitness, if they do not feel as if they are going to achieve their ultimate aim (however high that might be) then they will easily opt out – because the effort required just doesn’t justify the gains they ‘could’ make! So, the fundamental problem might not even be the fitness training per say, but their lack of confidence in their ability to achieve their aspirations and therefore their tennis goals are not inspiring them.
So it comes back to intrinsic motivation!
Intrinsic motivation will happen in a few of them and it can take time for it to develop (years – when it is already coming from the place of extrinsic reward and punishment based approaches).
You are basically looking for the thing that will ‘trigger’ that intrinsic desire to work out (above and beyond what it will or could do for their sports performance). That will be different in each of them and for a good number of them they probably will never do anything intrinsically – they are too engrained in the rewards mentality – this is no criticism, it is where the world is at (as a result of the last 50 years of change).
However tap into other motivations they might have to work hard on their fitness:
- Feeling healthy
- Getting a sweat on
- Getting a beach body
- Getting ripped
- Copying their role model’s training
Be a great Role Model
You need to deliver your passion and have those who are interested go along with you. Give your (most) attention to those who do go with you and stop worrying about those who don’t. Again, remember they are responsible for making their choices. You are responsible for leading by example. If you are not smiling and having fun in the gym – they won’t be either. It will all get too serious and if its not fun it will most often be too much like hard work – and not worth the effort, because their goals aren’t going to be massively affected by any improvements.
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