This Distance is Relentless

More often then not, I find myself putting in long hours and hard work and feeling like it isn’t getting me anywhere. I recently started attending the Cycling fitness class offered at the Dugan and felt the same way, all that cycling and you don’t move one inch. However the class instructor Caleigh pumped us up at the appropriate times and the next day my body certainly didn’t feel like I went nowhere. Staying motivated for the long haul is something every student, athlete and regular old Joe face almost everyday, so how do you find and keep motivation?

            In an issue of Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology published in 2000, Anthony J. Amorose and Thelma S. Horn arrived at some very interesting results for what they called “Intrinsic Motivation (IM).” The study was done on a sample size of 386 male and female athletes in various sports from Division I Universities. Amorose and Horn discovered that a) scholarship athletes reported higher levels of IM than nonscholarship athletes, b) male athletes reported higher IM than female athletes, and c) perceived coaching behaviors were related to athlete’s IM. Athletes who perceived their coaches to have high frequencies of positive and useful feedback as well as low punishment-oriented behavior showed greater levels of IM than athletes perceiving the opposite of their coaches. My favorite line being “teachers who act in a controlling manner undermine their students’ perceptions of self-determination, which in turn results in a decrease in intrinsic motivation.”

A sport that requires great intrinsic motivation, mostly due to the fact that most of the senses are subdued is swimming. Some, swimmers spend more than ten hours in a pool just swimming back and forth, talk about monotonous.  Olympic medalist for all 1984, 1988 and 1992 games held in L.A., Seoul and Barcelona respectively, Matt “the California Condor” Biondi told reporters that the hardest game is the one you play against yourself throughout practice and the meets. “Persistence can change failure into extraordinary achievement,” Biondi said.

Three time Czechoslovakian gold medalist in the 1952 Summer Olympics, Emil Zátopek said his track/cross country career began when his coach forced him and four other boys to run in a race. Though he tried to say he wasn’t in proper shape the race took place and as Zátopek began to run he felt the need to win like never before. He is best known for his last minute decision to run the first marathon of his life and win gold at the ’52 Olympics. “An athlete cannot run with money in his pockets. He must run with hope in his heart and dreams in his head,” Zátopek said.

So keep your inner coach shouting words of encouragement. Let your mind wonder to its most creative regions and remember that hopes and dreams once built a great nation.