Now that you better understand what achievement motivation and competitiveness involve and how they develop and influence psychological states, you can draw implications for professional sports psychology and coaching practice. To help you consolidate your understanding, we now discuss methods you can use to help the people you work with.

Recognize Interactional Factors in Achievement Motivation

You now know that the interaction of personal and situational factors influences the motivation that particular students, athletes, and exercisers have to achieve. What should you watch for to guide your practice? Essentially, you assess:

• the participants’ stages of achievement motivation,
• their goal orientations,
• attributions they typically make about their performances, and
• situations they tend to approach or avoid.

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Motivation can be defined simply as the direction and intensity of one’s effort. Sport and exercise psychologists can view motivation from several specific vantage points, including achievement motivation, motivation in the form of competitive stress, and intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.

These varied forms of motivation are all parts of the more general definition of motivation. Hence, we understand the specifics of motivation through this broader, holistic context, much as a football coach views specific plays from the perspective of a larger game plan or offensive or defensive philosophy. But what exactly do these components of motivation—direction of effort and intensity of effort—involve?

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