By Thomas Keay & Eric M. Martin
(August 2, 2024)

Strength and Conditioning (S&C) has many benefits including increases to aerobic capacity, muscular endurance, maximal strength, as well as preventing injury (Ci̇N et al., 2021; Reeser et al., 2015; Takano, 2013). These benefits extend beyond the traditional elite athlete performers, and apply to all genders, ages, and sport types. Yet, even with these wide-ranging benefits, S&C is still an underutilized tool for many adolescents and high school students for a number of reasons.

Many of the reasons for the lack of engagement in S&C center around psychological factors. One in particular, an athlete’s motivation, can influence their engagement in the weight room and can impact their sport progression and development (De Francisco et al., 2020). If we, as coaches, can positively influence our athlete’s motivation to participate in regular S&C training, then we can positively impact their overall sporting performance.

Motivation is defined as the direction (i.e., what we choose to do) and intensity (i.e., how much effort we put into the activity once we choose to do it) of our efforts. In the weight room context, motivation may be seen as regularly attending scheduled weight training, giving 100% effort throughout each session, making consistent attempts to progressively overload exercises each week, following the coach’s directions, and proactively asking for advice and feedback. For youth athletes in the weight room, we want to increase their motivation towards S&C training in both aspects. How do we do that?

One way to increase an athlete’s motivation is to increase an athlete’s autonomy. However, this process can be difficult for a number of reasons. One reason increasing autonomy is complex is there is not one consistent way to increase every individual’s autonomy as each person responds differently to changes in their environment due to their previous experiences, prior accomplishments, and goals for the activity. Secondly, it might be hard to increase autonomy in the S&C domain because the norm within the weight room as a coach is to dictate all the action that happens. Providing autonomy does not mean eliminating boundaries; rather autonomy is about finding an optimal balance between providing choice and maintaining control that elicits a suitable learning environment. Some suggestions for integrating autonomy into the S&C environment include:

• Provide guided choices for individuals, such as providing choices on athlete exercises (e.g., “Select either Lat pulldown, Pull ups, or weighted chin ups to complete the horizontal pull;” “For your last exercise, choose either Deadbugs or Weighted sit ups, both with 3 sets of 6”). By providing athletes with the autonomy of selecting which type of movements they complete, they can feel a greater sense of choice and control within the weight room.
• Instead of having a set warm-up protocol before a lift session, allow students to create their own warmup so they are ready for the lift. For example, you could provide them instructions like: “You have 10 minutes to do any warm-up you like that gets you ready for this lower body workout”. In this scenario, athletes would have more decision making, with some guidelines, that would allow for a greater sense of autonomy.
• As athletes build trust within the environment, allow them to be included in some of the decision-making processes. This can include things like whether or not they attend game day lifts or letting them choose the lifts they complete prior to competitions (with proper guidance).

Another aspect that can influence youth athletes’ willingness to engage in S&C is their goal-orientation. Goals for athletes can typically take two forms (Nicholls, 1984); Mastery Goals, where an individual judges their progress on effort and improvement (e.g., I am getting stronger), and ego goals that focus on demonstrating their ability in relation to others (e.g., I am the strongest member of the team). In the S&C context, example mastery goals include athletes trying to reach a new PR on Front Squat, building on their previous PR they set 6 months ago, or focusing solely on performing a difficult sequence for a complex movement. Ego goals might include athletes trying to beat a friend’s lift rates, focusing on performing highest on a specific lift (where they might neglect other muscle groups), or putting forth the least amount of effort to still finish in the top 25% of the team. Although success comes from both forms of goal-setting, mastery goals are preferred for all athletes for a number of reasons. For athletes who are not meeting their ego goals (e.g., top 25% of team), they might become disillusioned and disengage and for those athletes who are the top performers on the team, they might not push themselves to reach even higher levels because they are only judging themselves based on their teammates.

To help support athletes, researchers have employed the T.A.R.G.E.T. model of goal setting. By using this framework, coaches have the opportunity to foster adaptive achievement goal orientations and enhance intrinsic motivation for those athletes engaging in strength training. Using the T.A.R.G.E.T. model allows for athletes to focus on mastery type goals and avoid ego-oriented goals that can hamper motivation. For each of the aspects represented in the T.A.R.G.E.T. acronym, I will provide a brief explanation and then describe how this might look in practice.

• T = Task – Coaches are instructed to design strength training programs for as much variety as allowable and foster individual improvement versus competitive challenges. A coach should have a range of exercise selections, periodization, and blocks to allow each athlete to see their individual progression through weeks, months, and seasons.   
• A = Authority – Strength coaches should allow selected participants to participate in decision-making where appropriate, as this will foster self-management and self-monitoring skills, similar to providing autonomy. A strength coach could provide autonomy for their athletes in exercise selection or the type of workout completed that day.
• R = Recognition – By recognizing individual effort and improvement, usually through intangible rewards, coaches allow equal opportunities for all athletes to earn rewards and praise. This could look like starting a ‘Lifter of the Month’ award, where recognition is given to individual athletes when they show individual improvement and achievement. By recognizing hard work and effort, motivation is more likely to stay high for those individuals recognized, and those who are not recognized know future recognition is based on effort instead of body type or ability.
• G = Grouping – Coaches should advocate mixed groups, as opposed to one consistent workout partner over an extended duration. As a strength coach, you could physically create different lifting groups every week, month, or season; or you could allow individuals to create new groups at pre-approved times. By creating mixed groups, athletes will be less likely to create ego goals for themselves as they are not trying to follow the same person’s progression for an extended time frame. This also allows them to learn from a variety of teammates.
• E = Evaluation – When the time comes to evaluate athletes, it is important that coaches base their evaluations on individual progress and include the athlete in this process so the evaluation is meaningful to the individual. One-on-one scheduled meetings are a great way to go about this, however, if time is an issue, a quick chat during a session also works, as long as you are able to get across your evaluation and allow time for athletes to ask any questions they might have about the process.
• T = Time – Coaches should realize that time is a necessary component for increasing task-orientation and establish a schedule with athletes for how they can meet their goals. Scheduling a number of hours or a certain number of sessions a week could be a great way to allow athletes to be consistent in reaching their mastery-goals throughout their athletic career. Coaches should also acknowledge that athletes move at different paces and recognize these differences.

A final aspect that may impact an individual’s willingness to engage in the weight room is the competence of the athlete. Competence is found within the theoretical framework of self-determination theory and is used to describe a person’s perception of their basic capability of carrying out a behavior or task (Rodgers et al., 2014). Essentially, competence is whether someone believes they can complete a task or not. Athlete’s competence can be promoted through a range of mediums, listed below are a few.

• Focus on Past Performances – Athletes can gain competence through previous performance accomplishments – “I have lifted this weight before so I can do it again.”
• Verbal Persuasion – Receiving positive feedback from someone of a higher status can promote competence – “My S&C coach told me I implemented a good leg drive on my last set of bench press; I should do that again in my next set.”
• Positive emotions – Arousal, eustress, appropriately challenging situations, and a positive team culture can all promote competence – “My teammates are some of my best friends; I give 100% in the weight room for them as I know they are doing the same for me. I also feel safe expressing myself during workouts.”

As there are several factors that influence athletes’ motivation in strength training, it is important to mention that there are also aspects that might negatively influence athletes’ attitudes. Howe and colleagues found that endorsing gender-stereotypes for resistance training towards men lowers their future participation rate (Howe et al., 2017). Males with lower masculinity scores on a traditional masculine or feminine questionnaire, were shown to have less autonomous motivation and less overall participation in resistance training. Applying outside and stereotypical pressure towards men, in particular, was also found to negatively impact their motivation towards resistance training. As coaches, we can do our part to avoid these gender-stereotypes by promoting weight room training for all. We can meet with athletes 1-on-1 to discuss any barriers they may experience; we can create a fully committed positive motivational climate to allow athletes to thrive and set goals they may not have had before, or we can offer a greater sense of autonomy to better provide the athletes with competence during weight lifting sessions and potentially create new mastery related goals.

The motivation of youth athletes in the weight room is still an ever-growing piece to coaches’ roles and responsibilities. Providing more autonomy, engaging them in mastery-type goal-setting, and increasing their competence, are just three of the ways we as coaches can promote an athlete’s motivation in the weight room. This post provides some ideas for how to increase motivation, but it is the beginning when it comes to amplifying motivation for athletes, and there is still ongoing work to find the best ways to motivate athletes to both attend, and perform, in the weight room. It is important to note that each individual responds to these aspects differently, but these aspects are great starting points for coaches to begin building motivation in their athletes in their S&C climate.

Sources

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Nicholls, J.G. (1984). Achievement motivation: Conceptions of ability, subjective experience, task choice and experience. Psychological Review, 91, 328–346.

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