World junior badminton champion Zulfadli Zulkifli was named as the SAM-100 PLUS-KBS “Best Young Athlete” for 2011 by the Sportswriters Association of Malaysia (SAM) yesterday. The 18-year-old Zulfadli made history by becoming the first Malaysian to win the boys’ singles’ crown at the World Junior Championship in Taiwan after stunning favourite and defending champion Victor Axelsen of Denmark 21-18, 9-21, 21-19 last November. Earlier, in April, he also became the first Malaysian to clinch the Asian Junior title in India. An elated Zulfadli said the award will spur him on to win more titles.
“I’m surprised to be named as the winner but am obviously very happy to be chosen,” said Zulfadli.
“The award will motivate me to do better this year.
“I also want to thank all the sports writers who had supported me.”
Medal provides extrinsic motivation
Zulfadli, winner of the 100PLUS National Junior Circuit last year, will receive the award and RM3,000 during a ceremony this Sunday. The highlight of the ceremony will be the “Athlete of the Year 2011” award. This year, SAM have also introduced two new awards – “Best Comeback Athlete” and “Most Dynamic Association”.
A Grand Overall Award winner will be picked from the six categories and will take home RM7,000 and a crystal trophy. Each winner of the six categories will receive RM3,000 and a trophy. All five nominees for each of the six categories will receive RM500 and a medal. (source: The Star)
What is actually mean by motivation? Em, motivation has been described as the desire to fulfill a need. It has been seen as having two aspects which are it is what drives us to do things (it energizes our behaviour) and it makes us do particular things ( it directs our behaviour). Some psychologists have seen motivation as due to arousal. But I don’t want to discuss in detail yet about this view. What I want to share is what motivates people achieving their need?
Before that, let’s look at what was Maslow (1954) proposed about needs. According to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, we all have a hierarchy of needs as a desire to fulfill our needs. He stated that the most basic being biological needs such as food. And the highest needs being those related to self-fulfillment. He argues that it is not until our basic needs have been at least partially satisfied that our higher needs become important. This means, e.g: that a young player’s needs for safety and comfort must be met to some extend before he is motivated to try to achieve or to understand. Maslow claimed that the highest motive which is self-actualisation can only be fulfilled after all other needs have been fulfilled.
So, participation in sports and exercise offers opportunities to fulfill these needs since it offers a direction for fulfillment of the needs. This shows that in this hierarchy, self-actualisation is an ultimate goal to achieve success in our life.
How does motivation come? Based on learning theory which is operant conditioning as developed further by psychologist,Skinner, he applying two principles of reinforcement and punishment. We will look at these principles together how it can be linked to motivation in a sports setting.
1. Positive reinforcement
A young badminton player makes an accurate pass and his coach shouts ‘nice one David’, the youngster grins with delight. David’s behavior (the accurate pass) has brought pleasant consequences (approval from his coach), so he is more likely to make an accurate pass next time. If the coach waits until half-time to say ‘nice one’, the reinforcement will probably not be as effective. The sooner after the action that the reinforcement is given, the more likely it is to be repeated. Thus, to be effective in strengthening behavior, the consequence of an action must be rewarding to the individual.
2. Negative reinforcement
Behavior can also be strengthened (reinforced) if the consequences bring relief from something that is unpleasant. A young who does not enjoy physical activity will find the training session in the school unpleasant, he tries his best but become increasingly miserable at his foolish act. Finally, he makes no effort to have training. The coach tells him to go and do a simple balancing task instead. As consequences, he realized that ‘not trying’ are pleasant to him. He gets let off the difficult work. Thus, he is likely to ‘not try’ in the future. This behavior has been strengthened.
3. Punishment
Punishment has the opposite effect on behavior (it weakens it). If a behavior brings unpleasant consequences, the individual is less likely to repeat it. So punishment should stop a player from performing an unwanted behavior, which is the purpose of the yellow card in soccer. Research shows however, that punishment is not a particularly successful technique, it may create not satisfied and anger. A more successful approach to correcting errors or weakening unwanted behavior is, where possible to: Reward correct behavior and ignore incorrect behavior, and frame criticism or negative comment in positive way.
On the topic of the winner badminton junior champs return, there are some drives that motivate him to achieve success. Further explanation from above principles of reinforcement is linked to inrinsic and extrinsic motivation. The distinction between two types of motivation is important because they work in different ways and have different effect on the individual’s attitude and success in physical activities.
This young player's pleasure provides him with intrinsic motivation
If the reward comes from outside the individual (such as praise, medal), then it is known as extrinsic motivation. In contrast, the satisfaction of improving your best lap time comes from inside yourself. Thus, this satisfaction is an example of intrinsic motivation.
Intrinsic motivation is like any drive, never fully satisfied, so the individual will continue to seek out opportunities to satisfiy these needs. This means that intrinsic motivation can be very persistent and it should therefore be the aim of every coach to encourage the development of intrinsic as opposed to extrinsic motivation.
By its very nature, sport provides many forms of extrinsic motivation. By giving rewards such as a trophy, money (tangible things) or praise ( which are also known as social reinforcement). They can acts as motivatiors, making an individual more likely to perform the behaviour which are being rewarded.
However, if rewards are used excessively or inappropriately, they can demotivate. For example if everyone on the team is rewarded equally, this reduced the effectiveness of the reward for the individual. Excessive use of rewards may also be seen as a form of bribe, which may be resented. Therefore, extrinsic motivation useful to identify and encourage the performance of correct skills, moves and behavior.
It must be used with caution by the coach and manage well by the athletes. For instance, the coach provides the opportunity for the athlete to develop the correct skills successfully such as by feeding easy forehand shots in a game so that he or she experiences feelings of mastery and competence after gives praise for the correct execution of a forehand stroke. These both motivation will motivate the athlete to continue to play and improve even though without extrinsic reinforcement from the coach.
Therefore, motivation is important in ourselves. It serves us as a needs to achieve success in our life!
