Condor Performance Blog - Motivation

Many people know (will tell you) that at the elite level it’s about 90 % mental and yet they only spend 10% of their time on this part of their performance. There is a good explanation for this oddity. At the highest level of most sports the reason why the top 10 and the 100th best are most different psychologically is because the technical and physical areas have evened themselves out. In other words everyone at this level does about the same quantity and quality of work on the technical and physical parts.

Therefore the reason why psychological strengths are so dominant at the deciding the very best from the almost best is because this is the only part of performance that hasn’t “plateaued” yet amongst the super elite. I’ve worked with elite athletes who have made it to the top 100 in the world but whose “mental capabilities” are so poor it would be the technical equivalent of an equestrian athlete getting onto the horse facing the wrong way. Of course this also explains why 10% only work on the mental side. Regardless of how keen they are to improve the BIG FIVE (confidence, concentration, performing under pressure, decision making and motivation) very, very few people actually know the science based mental skills that – when delivered appropriately – do this.

Let us know your thoughts, GJM

One of the odd things about our work is we come across certain words a lot and we’re often amazed at how they are misused or misunderstood. From this list the undisputed king is the concept of ‘motivation’. I often explain the myth that some of us have more of it than others with a little story. Imagine we knew someone who spent all day, every day sitting at home on the couch watching TV and eating chips.

It would be tempting to call this person unmotivated, wouldn’t it?

But we’d be wrong. In fact the couch potato is a highly motivated individual albeit towards activities you and I might not think are very productive. The fact is, until we die, we all have the same amount of motivation and it’s the direction of these efforts (eg. choice of how we spent our time) that differs from one person to the next. Have a think about that the next time you hear or use the terms motivated / motivator / motivation.

Cheers, GJM PS – feel free to comment on the above or make suggestions of future posts by submitting comments below.