Knowing when is the best time to hang up the racket or boots: Motivation in HP sport

An interesting month for top sporting athletes retiring with one turning on his heals and coming back to his sport for another season (at least). Let’s start with the story closer to my home; Ash Barty. Late April, Barty stunned the tennis world with her announcement via social media that she was ending her career immediately, less than two months after winning the Australian Open title. She said via social media:

Today is a difficult day and exciting for me because I am announcing my retirement from tennis. I want to chase other dreams. I am aware that this is the right choice, at this moment I have no more motivations and above all I do not have the desire to play at high levels.

My happiness wasn't dependent on the results. Success for me is knowing I've given everything I can. I don't have the physical drive, the emotional want, and everything it takes to challenge yourself at the very top of the level anymore.

I am so thankful for everything this sport has given me and leave feeling proud and fulfilled. Thank you to everyone who has supported me along the way, I'll always be grateful for the lifelong memories that we created together.

However, it was the following day that really made me question our sporting society and media coverage around her decision. The world No.1 spoke to the media in Brisbane the following day, and confirmed there was nothing lingering in the background that forced her to leave the game. Ash Barty says she's not "hiding anything" with her surprise decision to retire. She followed up by saying:

I am excited about my next chapter as Ash Barty the person and not the athlete.

I have always been a homebody, and this is where I recharge. This is where I get my energy from. I'm excited to reacquaint myself with my mum and dad and sisters and nieces and nephews. And spend quality time with them as a person.

Even her coach, Craig Tyzzer came out and Barty retired "the way she wanted to do it", and that there's so much more to the professional athlete, than being a tennis player, saying that's not "who she is".

There are lots of other elements to her life, so I just know that she's made the right decision for her.

These comments and the fact she had to do a second press conference make me again contest and ask….why do we as a society question her desire to seek other challenges or respond to her gut, knowing her passion and drive is now away from the tennis court? Why do we not understand and acknowledge that even when on top of the world, we should lean into where or how we draw our happiness or energy from like highlighted by Barty? We were offered clues, had we listened to her and her mentor, Ben Crowe. Crowe reported and discussed points around my argument earlier this month; speaking of Barty’s drive and growth as a person, he mentioned:

The lesson was in the art of living - what lights you up? What makes you happy? It was never about pleasing other people and finding self-worth in trophies and rankings…they are extrinsic things. It was about intrinsic things.

“Why is what she did unusual? Because most of us define success by achievement. To make us feel significant. When someone redefines success we go ‘whoa’ - it can freak us out too.

She had the perspective to find the self-worth not just through what she does and what she wins. If you can perform at your best, leave nothing on the table, and retire from that chapter and have these goals and dreams for this next chapter, that’s exciting. Who knows what this next chapter is?

Another NEARLY retirement caught the sporting world’s attention last month also; on 1st Feb, Tom Brady announced his retirement as expected to many but still in disbelief after such a long successful career. However, 40 days after making this announcement, he came out with a second statement:

These past two months I’ve realized my place is still on the field and not in the stands. That time will come. But it’s not now. I love my teammates, and I love my supportive family. They make it all possible. I’m coming back for my 23rd season in Tampa. Unfinished business

While there is a lot of excitement around the most successful quarterback to ever play the game STAYING in the game, I reflect on his retirement announcements vs Barty’s statements and question what motivation may still be there, if any, for Tom Brady? Like Crowe suggests, is it the weight of expectation to sign off with one more trophy or the constant questioning from other people what dragged him back? He says he loves his teammates, his family yet doesn’t show the intrinsic desire eloquently described by Barty when talking about why or why not to stay within the sport. Yes, Tom Brady has Shadow Lion, a company of about 15 employees that has run his social-media accounts for years so some of the emotion may be lost in these posts. in fact, Shadow Lion helped craft the 53-word message (now shared more than 200,000 times on Twitter) for Brady’s approval so it will not have the same directness as Barty’s discussions with the media but the series of events made me consider and question athlete motivation. How do athletes find this intrinsic drive that Crowe mentions? What factors into our motivation for sport and life goals in general? How can we as coaches help harness athlete’s drive and determination in and away from sport? Let’s look at the research….

Understanding motivation is necessary to investigate why athletes play and sustain their engagement or drop-out (even retirement for these athletes) from sport. Basic psychological needs theory (BPNT; Deci & Ryan, 1985) is one of the sub theories within self-determination theory (SDT; Deci & Ryan, 1985). Autonomy (self-determination), relatedness (belonging), and competence (mastery) are the espoused universal needs (BPNT within SDT) that underpin why we do what we do. Self-determination theory, which is a popular framework for understanding motivational processes and outcomes (players’ cognitions, affect, and behaviours), is a social-cognitive and organismic theory of motivation and personality development that focuses on the social factors that influence different forms of motivation through influencing perceptions of these universal psychological needs.

High performance sports environments including tennis and American Football have contextual moments in which environments or coaches can nurture psychological need satisfaction and subsequent internal motivation to enhance both performance and well-being (Amorose, 2007; Mallett, 2005). Satisfying these basic needs is said to foster self-determined motivation (Hollembeak, 2005) and has been associated with higher self-esteem and lower anxiety through greater engagement (Deci, 2001). Athletes or players like Barty or Brady are then better placed in developing intrinsically defined motivation in the pursuit of their sporting goals. Basic needs satisfaction also results in positive psychological consequences such as adaptive coping strategies for personal development and flow experiences, ideal for player development and both consequences required for specialising athletes as part of personal development (Lonsdale, 2009), all areas Barty said was now lacking for her from continuing to be involved in the sport and something I wonder whether Brady is even aware of, having so much of his identity wrapped around his involvement and success within NFL.   

Like Barty describes, when athletes’ psychological needs are not satisfied and indeed thwarted, externally regulated motivations are likely to lead to less adaptive outcomes in how players think, feel, and act (Bartholomew et al. 2009; 2011. For example, often overlooked symptoms of burnout, such as reduced sense of accomplishment and devaluation of sport may be exacerbated by behaviours or environments where athletes experience low levels of need satisfaction or perceive their basic needs to be chronically frustrated. For us coaches supporting these athletes, research by Gould and colleagues (1996) suggests that coaches should cultivate personal involvement with players, offer two way communication, utilise player input and understand player’s feelings so as to enhance player engagement and motivation whilst reducing symptoms of burnout including depersonalisation towards their sport (Gould, Tuffey, Udry, & Loehr, 1996). Mallett also explained that “intrinsically motivated behaviours involve genuine interest and enjoyment in pursuing particular activities with natural tendency to seek unique challenges, explore and learn” (Clifford J. Mallett, 2005, p.418). Therefore, again why should we challenge or question Barty’s desire to follow her heart and chase new goals, answering her desire to find new avenues of intrinsic motivation and facilitate learning and growth?

My recently concluded research looked at the personal strivings or characteristic adaptations of elite age grade athletes, areas of which I find applicable and interesting when considering Brady and Barty’s actions or choices. Understanding characteristic adaptations focuses on motivations, social cognitions, and adaptions to socio-cultural influences (Prophet et al., 2017). These are important areas for understanding of what motivates, engages, and drives elite athletes such as Brady and Barty. Understanding the personal strivings of athletes allow us to better understand their inherent goals and adopted behaviours and choices as a reflection of their personal identity. If Barty as example is able to express a sense of herself or achieve outcomes that they value personally, it shall increase her engagement in new or different sports. Understanding the personal strivings of sports people should allow us to better understand their inherent goals and adopted behaviours and choices as a reflection of their personal identity….something I hope to develop in future.

It’s worth remembering that athletes motivations or goals are typically linked with emotions and memories of emotional events which lends coherence to life stories by helping organise events as goal based stories (McAdams, 2001). For example, personal strivings are “activated in response to and shaped by everyday social demands and are how individuals meet situational, strategic and developmental tasks in social ecology of their lives” (McAdams & Pals, 2006, p.213). Habermas and Bluck (2000) identified that before a person can formulate a convincing life story, they must become acquainted with culture’s sense of biography (Habermas & Bluck, 2000), suggesting identities can be ascribed by culture rather than constructed by the individual whereas, McAdams’s (2001) research suggested life stories mirror the culture wherein the story is made and told, being formulated with internal and external audiences in mind (McAdams, 2001). All this considered, it would be beneficial for sports coaches and organisations to better understand how knowing the athlete as a person can shape their motivation and engagement in sport.

So, what can we do as coaches? Sport is often limited to a narrow focus on dispositional traits as opposed to capturing the major domains of personality development (Coulter et al., 2016), which strengthens the hypothesised society’s argument of “why chase your dreams or follow your gut while you’re winning?”. Acknowledging that social and cultural forces exert a strong impact on the content, timing, and player’s articulation of characteristic adaptations and motivations of athletes, it might be beneficial for coaches involved with high performance athletes to be more aware of their goals in AND away from the courts or fields to better understand their internal narrative identity and desired cultural demands or encouragement expected to effectively develop their life story. Like mentioned, Barty should be commended for following her gut and responding to her desire to follow her intrinsic drive that Crowe mentions.

Like highlighted, following these intrinsic motivations or recognising the basic needs satisfaction shall result in positive psychological consequences, which we want for our high profile athletes to assist them psychologically manage stressful situations yet is ideal for youth player development and building good people as well as good athletes. We as coaches should reflect and build our interpersonal skills to allow us to take time to better know and understand our athletes and help them recognise what they are intrinsically motivated by. We as coaches need to gain a holistic view of involved players and athletes of all ages. Work on empathetic relationships and having a better understanding of your athletes or players as this will allow you to modify your environment or approaches for greater impact and understanding of your players on and off the field. Know your players, know their story, know their context and then put it into practice….