In my sports psychology lectures, I was taught about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. And it’s something I have been thinking about a lot lately.
Intrinsic motivation comes from our own enjoyment – it’s internal. The participation itself satisfies us in some way and makes us want to do the thing. Extrinsic motivation is about doing the thing for some external reward, be it bragging rights, leaderboards, or money.
It’s more reliable to be intrinsically motivated
You’re more likely to do something consistently if you enjoy doing it, and a sudden change in your environment won’t interrupt that. For example, if your main motivation to exercise comes from wanting to be in shape for your holiday, and then the holiday is cancelled, what keeps you going? If you exercise because you enjoy the experience, it doesn’t matter whether you’re going on holiday or not. Fundamentally, this is why lots of people adapted to home workouts during lockdown, while others stopped exercising altogether.
While extrinsic motivators are less reliable, in that they can be taken away, I’ve always found them to be more powerful. The desire to win or to gain the respect of those around me will bring about a much greater effort than simply wanting to take part and enjoy the experience.
What motivates me?
Simply put, both internal and external factors can be motivators for everyone. And for me, as the world of competitive CrossFit springs back to life, this has recently hit home. My main goal is to be fit enough to enjoy life for as long as possible, however, the competition experience is what enriches my life.
The question is, where does my effort need to be in order to tick both boxes? The effort required to be competitive in the sport of CrossFit is much higher than the effort required to be fit and healthy for life.
The first thing that made me really think about this was failing to qualify for The European Championships. I really tried, and I was happy with my efforts, but I didn’t qualify. And how can you enjoy the experience of competition if you don’t make it onto the competition floor?
So, the effort needed to be higher.
Being motivated by results
My own intrinsic motivation wasn’t enough for me to achieve that goal. I’m intrinsically motivated enough to be fit and healthy, but seemingly not intrinsically motivated enough to qualify for TEC. I need people around me who want the same things, I need to care about what they think of my performance, and I need to accept the vulnerability of really wanting to win, without any guarantees. I need extrinsic motivation.
This was reinforced even more at The Rainhill Trials in Manchester this past weekend where I competed with Sam, Tanya, and Oscar. For the majority of the day, I was happy with how things were going. The first two workouts left me 30 places above where I qualified, which I was pretty pleased with, and I also felt like I got the best out of myself. However, the third workout wasn’t good. I didn’t get the result I wanted and I also didn’t feel like I’d tried hard enough. It’s easy to hide and say it wasn’t a good workout for me, which it wasn’t, but I knew I could’ve done better.
Add to that an unscheduled four hour delay, and my motivation dwindled further – as did everyone else’s. I knew the last workout would be the hardest one, and I also knew that my position on the leaderboard wouldn’t be anything special regardless of how I performed. Intrinsically, I was telling myself ‘you are healthy, you are fit, you don’t need to bury yourself in this workout’, which was true. However, I knew that if I half-arsed another workout, I would go home disappointed in myself.
Being motivated by a team
I think Sam must have noticed my internal conflict. After he went out of his way to prep me with a warm-up, and talk tactics, my performance became about something more than just satisfying my own intrinsic appetite for competition. The workout was now about repaying him for his effort, and making sure he knew it was worth it. Not only that, it was about respecting the efforts of Oscar and Tanya in their heats before mine. They had gone through the same four hour delay as me, and still left everything on the floor.
The extrinsic motivation from Sam, Oscar, and Tanya brought about my best performance of the weekend, and I left the competition both satisfied and proud of myself. I don’t think that would’ve been the case without their input.
It feels vulnerable in writing this, because I’ve never really felt like I rely on others to motivate me, but that last workout brought home just how important both types of motivation can be when you challenge yourself. We all need a push sometimes, and we have to be willing to accept that push when it’s given.
It’s another reason why the community of CrossFit is so powerful. When your own intrinsic motivation fails to match up to the challenges you’ve set yourself, there will always be someone there to get you going.