Sports Psychology Essay

Sports psychology plays an important role in the motivation of athletes; it’s the study of the psychological and mental factors that are influenced by participation and performance in sports, exercise, and physical activity (Vora & Nail). Moreover, motivation is the foundation all athletic effort and accomplishment; it is essential to many social psychological theories that aim to explain behavior, including self-determination theory. Besides, if an athlete does not have the desire and self-determination to improve their sports performances, all of the other mental factors, confidence, intensity, focus, and emotions, are worthless. They are two different types of motivation. The first one is the extrinsic motivation, which happens when athletes

Sports and games are means of mental and physical growth and contribute to the formation of character (Vora & Nail). Moreover, sports psychologists play an important role in the mental preparations of athletes. They are involved in assisting coaches in working with athletes as well as helping improve athletes motivation. Moreover, sports psychologist and coaches should be able to differentiate if an athlete competes just to get a reward or because they enjoy the process. According to the authors, people engage in different activities for different reasons. Athletes are intrinsically motivated when they engage in an activity from the pressure and satisfaction derived from the activity itself. Whereas extrinsic motivation describes behaviors performed to attain material or social rewards (Vora & Nail P.354). In the article, the researchers found a gender difference in the motivation level of female and male athletes. The female and male athlete has different strengths and weakness within the motivational climate. Moreover, motivation is the intrinsic determination toward goal attainment. Intrinsic motivation for exercise and sports are behaviors that are performed for the satisfaction gained in the activity

The data was collected from players who participate in individual, team and both the categories. The researcher used to convenient sampling in the study. The mean obtained by male and female was 143.52 and 127.38 with the corresponding standard deviation of 19.37 and 18.93 respectively. On the T-Test conducted, the t-value was computed to be 3.01(p<0.01). Furthermore, the results of the assessment indicate that male displayed a tendency to depict higher levels of motivation, than females. Males showed significantly higher overall sports motivation and on the dimension of extrinsic motivation. To support the results, male tend to be more motivated because they see sports as a passionate hobby or full-fledged career option. Moreover, the external regulation and motivation in the form of support from coaches and societal acceptability increasingly predispose males to a higher motivation. On the other side, the results showed insignificant differences on most dimensions related to intrinsic motivation, female’s sports players do not lack motivation as such; rather they are internally motivated to display a winning