How to incite motivation.

[giverdada]

I heard Lizzy Armistead is self-coached.

Wow.

I'm currently reading a book called The Golden Mile, really well-written account of the three guys going after the four minute mile barrier in the mid-1950s. Utterly fascinating. Two of the three self-coached.

And tomorrow, my oldest kid runs her last 1500m of this year's indoor season. I have no tricks. I do not know how to incite motivation with her. I spend my days working to motivate other people's kids in the pursuit to be better versions of themselves when the clock ticks round. It's a great gig. Super frustrating. Often feels worth it. But it's beside the point: I have no idea how to help my own kid tap into her own potential and make something of her capabilities in a footrace.

I don't know that she has talent for running, though many people have said that she is a very good athlete. She rarely wins. She seems to be afraid of truly hurting in the pursuit of a fast time or finish line. She used to not want to confront/pass her friends. Now she races alone and gets to the line and sometimes kicks her own ass in making moves and getting around and really digging deep. And sometimes she just jogs it out, wearing a pain face but running slow.

How do you motivate kids to truly, honestly, do their absolute best?

I know I should be glad that she likes running. I know I should just foster that and stop being such a soccer-mom and placing huge adult expectations on her to perform. I know I should not even try to coach her. But what bugs me is that she isn't trying her best. (We ran a fun 10k together back in the fall, I pushed her, literally, with my hand on her back, for some of the harder boring middle miles. Then I told her that if we ran fast enough, we wouldn't feel our legs so they wouldn't hurt at all, and I took my hand off of her back and she ran the last kilometer in 4 minutes.) So yeah, I'm hoping to be a good dad, and I'm hoping to make sure I raise a good kid who knows how to dig deep and do her best and knows that she is loved and supported regardless of results. It truly does not matter to us if she wins or podiums or whatever; it bothers us that she jogs around the track in a race.

Anyway, if you have tips on how to motivate kids, or how to help them tap into their greatness, I'd love to hear it. Maybe you coach. Maybe you had a coach who helped you be you. Maybe you became this wicked success story because of one line someone mentioned in passing at a hotdog stand before your botany lab. I don't know. But I'm all ears. And thank you!

[sandyrs]

I don't know your daughter AT ALL obviously, and this is in no way meant as a rhetorical question. Do you know that she *likes* running?

Growing up I never was really great at any sports and was a bit out of shape. During college I got into bikes- first riding around campus, then working on dumb fixies, then eventually racing. I'm not a very good racer but I've never loved a hobby the way I love riding and if tomorrow for some reason it was handed down from above that "you can't ride anymore, time to get your exercise some other way," I would be at a total loss. I occasionally run and if I had to (say, because I was a teenager a parent was making me) I could see myself doing it frequently but never with the same joy with which I ride and race my bike. I'm sure I would fall back into the same habits I had until I hopefully stumbled upon something else I loved even half as much as riding. It could be that your daughter needs to find a sport (or non-sport!) she really loves to go that extra 5% that creates what we glorify as "all-out effort" but in reality is often an expression of love for the activity at hand.

Comes with the usual caveat that I'm only 25 and don't have kids so this is spoken more from the perspective of a son, not a parent.

[merckx]

Teach her how to be intrinsically motivated, and then step back.

[EDS]

Just tell her you love her and to go have some fun.

Running fast involves enduring pain and no amount of coaching will allow a person to reach their potential unless they own that pain. Was it LeMond who said it doesn't get any easier, you just get faster?

[carpediemracing]

I'm not there yet as a parent - our son (I refer to him as Junior on the forums) just turned 4. We're probably the least pushy parents I know of. You'd think, for example, that I'd have been piling on the bike stuff on him. The reality is that he hasn't seemed ready so he's spent maybe 20 minutes on a balance bike in his entire life, and that was just a couple weeks ago. We tried before, maybe 3 or 4 times, but he didn't want to try so we just put the bike away.

The following has to do with self-motivation, rather than external motivating factors. For example if your daughter just wanted to destroy everyone in running races then I think you'd find her extremely motivated but maybe for the wrong reasons. I'll bring up Lance as one person who appeared to be motivated by the idea of beating everyone else, rather than just doing it for less aggressive reasons.

I do race, but I don't race to beat others as much as to race as well as I can. I've won on occasion but much more often I'm on the receiving end of the riding pain cave. However, even when I'm struggling, it's motivating to me to do as best as I can, with what I have at the moment. Perhaps you can capture that feeling for your daughter.

As a kid I know that my mom struggled to motivate me to get things done. Her biggest thing was to try hard, to live life with dignity. If I do something then just do it, do it well, and then it's done. As a kid I took "do it well" as "do it fast", so, for example, when we had to rake leaves we did it as fast as we could. That's good, right? Well, there were other things. My violin practice was me playing whatever piece as fast as possible (and not very well) a few times, putting the violin away, and scampering off to do something else.

About 10-12 years in (I started at 5, we're talking when I was maybe 16 or 17 years old) I suddenly found myself playing in an extremely focused way for 2-3 hours at a time. It wasn't satisfying to play for 15 minutes - I felt like I got something done only after 60-90 minutes, and after maybe 2-3 hours I needed a break. Long sessions were 5 or 6 hours, and I had to be dragged away from the violin to eat or do chores or even go for a ride. I found the motivation from somewhere, mainly in a quest to do each section of a piece "just a bit better". It felt really good to do a section a bit better, even if no one else knew or understood it.

Not sure if this is anything you can use but maybe you'll glean something out of my post.

Now to go do a JRA ride on the trainer.

[DreaminJohn]

I'm sorry that I don't have much to offer, but as the parent of a special needs child (autism) as well as personal experience all I can give you is....

....it has to be her idea.

Instead of focusing on direct motivation I try to offer the praise, ego boosts, and other similar insights that make my son want to be a better piano player.

Also, I looked for The Golden Mile and couldn't locate it. Can you please provide more info?

[berserk87]

Why do you want to motivate her to want to run? Is it for her, or would her success be something that would be good for your own ego? I don't mean this to be harsh - it is something that I have had to address, myself.

Encouragement is good. There is a line between encouraging and pushing your own agenda.

I have 3 children, all runners. I have given up on trying to motivate them by pushing. I offer tactical feedback that helps during races (i.e. split times, gap times and such) but don't prod off of the track. I give feedback if asked. I applaud results and listen to them vent regarding their failures.

Years back I found I was trying to push my oldest, to want to run and motivate him more. I found that I was ruining it for him. He wants less out of running than I would have at his age, and that's fine. He is a good runner but it is just another extracurricular activity for him. I found that my pushing him was about me, and wanting to be able to tell the other dads how great of an athlete my son is, around the water cooler.

My middle child ridiculed running for years, and then in spring of her 8th grade year she surprisingly went out for the track team. She found that she was decent at it. Then she ran cross country the next year as freshman and made varsity. She is now a sophomore and has the fire for it, and is currently the teams' best middle-distance runner.

To echo the above, the desire has to come from the child. If not, they will not maintain the motivation for the activity for long.

My youngest child is my best natural runner, but she is only 11. I want to make running fun for her, and encourage her, and have her understand that she does not have to run if she does not want to. I don't want her to feel compelled to do it since her older siblings have.

There are things times in life when motivation is really important - academics, helping others, learning self-control, learning coping skills and such. I think that youth sports are sometimes overemphasized. In 10 years, it will not matter a hill of beans what kind of track athlete a child was. Your may find that your daughter will remember most fondly running with you on training runs, and hanging out with her friends more than anything. And if she has a physical gift for running, it will manifest itself regardless of what you do.

[redir]

My Personal take on it is that I don't think motivation is a learned thing. It's just something that occurs naturally in certain people. Even if there is a nice big fat carrot at the end of the stick it will only make those who are innately motivated to be even more motivated and those who are not still don't care.

It doesn't mean they are bad or even lazy people really, they are just different.

[shovelhd]

Age is really important. Coaching elementary school kids is different than middle schoolers which is different from high schoolers. I've never coached track, only basketball and cycling.

I guess I'd start with data. Gather her similar event times and set goals based on them. Ask her how she feels when she sees her friends on the podium. I'm sure she's happy for them. She's a good kid, that goes without saying. Dig deeper. Has she had success at anything else in her life? Top score on a test? Tops in her class? Sold the most cookies? It doesn't matter, just find out if success motivates her. If it doesn't, then she is going to be a good athlete, and maybe you might want to focus on the joys of team sports. If she really wants to be a winner, then you have to set intermediate goals. Don't overwhelm her with an elaborate plan, just take it step by step.

I'd adjust the level of influence based on age. If she's really young, fun has to be first.

Good luck.

[giverdada]

I agree. The motivation has to come from within, and I do not know that she loves running. I love bikes. I like running. My daughter says she enjoys running. And even if it's true, I don't know if it's true that she enjoys the act of it, or the act of doing something that I like to do. I don't know. I remember my dad saying, years later, that he purposely avoided getting into mountain bikes because he wanted me to have something of my own. To this day, we still ride road bikes together, and those are some of my favourite memories in the world.

The problem is, at some point, these things become economized, and I cannot justify the actual monetary cost of a pastime/passion that does not seem to make the kid motivated or cause her true, profound joy. We can't drive to D.C. for her to jog around the track in a $300 uniform. It's just too expensive.

And whatever. We can figure these things out. I still want to know how you encourage intrinsic motivation to occur, how you put forth opportunities for motivation to be discovered, etc. Tips? Tricks?

[giverdada]

Thanks for the replies folks. I'm appreciating the insights a lot. Also: the book is The Perfect Mile by Neal Bascomb. Awesome read thus far.

[carpediemracing]

One more data point.

One of my brothers slayed the 8th grade 600 yard run record (the Presidential Fitness thing), like he absolutely crushed it. He smoked, he played music, and he certainly didn't work out or anything. He was running on Vans sneakers where the front half of the sole wasn't attached to the shoe so he had to kick his foot up on each step to flip the front of the sole up so it wouldn't curl under his foot. Yet he just crushed the school record, just crushed it.

The high school running coach happened to be a cyclist, and he happened to do rides with us (he was a member of the club but didn't race). He asked me about my brother, he called the house, everything, trying to get him to run with the team.

My brother had zero interest in running and never ran, jogged, nothing. He poured his energies into music.

You can lead a horse to water...

[Dead Man]

Kids are funny, man. Mine are really weird (relative to... like.. me) about wanting to do stuff involving physical exertion. I think it really comes down to getting bitten by an activity - till something strikes and bites you and gets you hooked, you're just not going to have any motivation to really put yourself out there.

If my oldest has some kind of incentive, he can do pretty incredible things... but lacking incentive beyond personal accomplishment, it just turns into "I can't do this!" and "it's too hard, my legs are going to break!" Yet if I tell the kid "if you make it to the top, I'll give you $50" suddenly his legs are just f'ing fine and he'll make it to the top with a smile. Crap is unreal.

"I'll bet you if there was some pussy up there on top of that obstacle you could get up there!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Cy60odOnUc

[nathanong87]

lizzie armistead might not have a coach now, but she admits he is still a mentor in her life. no to mention the GB, team sky (phil) and other resources she has at her disposal to give her advice / motivation.

[Dead Man]

Pushing hard is a personal thing, man. You absolutely cannot give that to someone. You gave her your good genes, now all you can do is support her, offer gentle encouragement... but if she doesn't like to kill herself for the win, she just doesn't have that bug.

She might later, though. I didn't get bit for endurance sports till I was an adult. Wish I'd gotten into it earlier, 'cause I'm sure I could have made a career out of it.. but that's just not how life played out for me!

[Mzilliox]

you can't at this point. This is something she will desire on her own or not. One can build a foundation for competition, one can encourage their children to do their best, but one can not force another to endure pain, want to win, or enjoy a bit of suffering. it is a unique trait in athletes, the willingness, or sometimes, the desire to hurt. Its what separates the game breakers from the average athletes. I have had a relationship with pain every since i can recall. I enjoy a certain amount of pain, even crave it.

that can't be taught. it is or isn't

[berserk87]

I agree. The motivation has to come from within, and I do not know that she loves running. I love bikes. I like running. My daughter says she enjoys running. And even if it's true, I don't know if it's true that she enjoys the act of it, or the act of doing something that I like to do. I don't know. I remember my dad saying, years later, that he purposely avoided getting into mountain bikes because he wanted me to have something of my own. To this day, we still ride road bikes together, and those are some of my favourite memories in the world.

The problem is, at some point, these things become economized, and I cannot justify the actual monetary cost of a pastime/passion that does not seem to make the kid motivated or cause her true, profound joy. We can't drive to D.C. for her to jog around the track in a $300 uniform. It's just too expensive.

And whatever. We can figure these things out. I still want to know how you encourage intrinsic motivation to occur, how you put forth opportunities for motivation to be discovered, etc. Tips? Tricks?

That's a toughie, given the cost-benefit element. My family is experiencing this also, with dance classes and my middle child.

I guess I will approach it from another direction: I can't tell you how to motivate your child, but I have plenty of personal and secondhand experience on how to kill a child's enthusiasm. That comes from being too helicopter-ish and pushing an adult agenda or expectations on them.

Good luck. I wish life came with an instruction manual for this kind of thing. My own upbringing with sports ranged from parental indifference to actually good insight and support at times, so my experience is really odd.

[giverdada]

My own upbringing with sports ranged from parental indifference to actually good insight and support at times, so my experience is really odd.[/QUOTE]

Mine too! Rare times of insightful comments or whatever, and mostly just an uninvolvement in whatever I was doing to chase pain. I loved pain/work/suffering in the athletic sense. No reason why. Just really liked it. And I've never really been one to compete well against others or cause them suffering. I just like to see how much more I can do.

I think I'm going to lean more towards the let it happen attitude, as I too know all kinds of good ways to kill a kid's motivation to do something. Anyway, last meet this weekend, and then she and I can run only for fun. There are plenty of years to suffer...

[staggerwing]

Without speaking to motivation, please exercise extreme caution in encouraging skeletally inmature kids to push through "pain barriers."

http://journals.lww.com/sportsmedarthro/toc/2011/03000

Sorry, the actual articles are behind a paywall, although the introduction is available.

FWIW, I'm a lab guy, not a doctor, although I have contributed to similar lines of research.

[unterhausen]

I never pushed my kids to do anything athletic. The truth is that we are not genetically gifted athletes and so we are going to be doing something else for a living. Maybe a discussion of what you think she could accomplish if she was more focused would help. My son would always go to martial arts competitions and not do that well. He's really good at some elements of the sport, but he didn't practice away from his classes, and that really hurt him. I used to suggest that if he wanted to do better he needed to work away from the classes. Didn't happen, no big deal.

[Pastashop]

Kids and sports... Kids and school work... Kids and being polite... Kids and... I go through the same debates in my head and in conversations with my spouse... Got no good answer for ya.

I was reading somewhere that there are some aspects of body and eye coordination that can only be acquired in earlier years (like being able to ride downhill fast and corner fast), and some activities that help brain and temperament development (like passing to teammates, or throwing a baseball or a spear), and some things that help maintain vision (like being outside is good for peripheral vision). Plus, being able to sweat every now and then, they say, helps work the toxins out of the body...

So, for my own kids, I want to give them an opportunity to gain skills and fitness that they can enjoy / fall back on later. Like riding a bike, which you never forget. Hitting a tennis ball properly, so they can - if they want to - play it into their 80s and learn more about themselves through it. Or (love of) reading... Skills for living well, not necessarily winning.

(On that last point, here's an interesting, admittedly tangential read: "Finite and Infinite Games" by Carse)

[weisan]

What (or how) motivates a human being?

What makes us tick?

Why we do what we do?

This question exists ever since ....time begins.

Many have tried to answer questions of such nature in various ways, from different angle.

Not easy. Never satisfactory. Always solve one part or parts but never the complete puzzle.

In order to fully and adequately address this question, one has to return to the place of origin.

If we want to find out everything about a frame, who do we ask?
You? Me?
We can help sometimes but looking at the serial number that tells us the size, year, make, model. The labels tell us the tubing. The joint tells us the kind of construction. We can take our own measurements to get at the geometry.

But, at the end of the day, where do we prefer to go back to or who do we prefer to ask or tell us what we would like to know?

The place of origin or the person who built it, the framebuilder.

Like I said, bits and pieces of information are out there... some are really available, it's not some kind of mystery or requirement to join a secret society...but if it's up to us, where do we go or who do we ask?

Place of origin.

[Dead Man]

What (or how) motivates a human being?

What makes us tick?

Why we do what we do?

This question exists ever since ....time begins.

Many have tried to answer questions of such nature in various ways, from different angle.

Not easy. Never satisfactory. Always solve one part or parts but never the complete puzzle.

In order to fully and adequately address this question, one has to return to the place of origin.

If we want to find out everything about a frame, who do we ask?
You? Me?
We can help sometimes but looking at the serial number that tells us the size, year, make, model. The labels tell us the tubing. The joint tells us the kind of construction. We can take our own measurements to get at the geometry.

But, at the end of the day, where do we prefer to go back to or who do we prefer to ask or tell us what we would like to know?

The place of origin or the person who built it, the framebuilder.

Like I said, bits and pieces of information are out there... some are really available, it's not some kind of mystery or requirement to join a secret society...but if it's up to us, where do we go or who do we ask?

Place of origin.

Would you settle for an evolutionary divergence?

http://ancientufo.org/site/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Space-Odyssey-monolith.jpg

[berserk87]

Wesain! Getting' DEEP on a Sunday afternoon. You may have inadvertently facilitated my latest existential crisis! (Don't worry, I have 'em all of the time).

[weisan]

B man, of course!

Use or add whatever flavor or perspective you are predisposed to. It doesn't matter. Just abide by personal integrity, be consistent and carry your logic all the way through. That's all I ask. :D

ベルセルク pal, you are welcome. ;)
I am at your full disposal....if you want to carry or continue this conversation offline.

OK. Just got back from bikepacking trip, family time!

bye guys...Good night!

[giverdada]

sure man. place of origin. at the origin, it was succeed or die. every effin time. now what? succeed or we'll find a way to accommodate your inability to succeed. succeed or we'll diminish the socially-imposed obstacles to your progress and write a thesis on inclusion or diversity or other some-such well-minded thing that results in dissolution of limits both fair and unfair. succeed or don't. it's postmodern postmodernism, man. the old systems are in place but dissolving. their rules no longer apply but there aren't enough new ones, and they're aren't encompassing or appreciative enough to undertake the new flow. it's a new river with new fish and new water and the old dam just can't hack it. and our lures and hooks and nets aren't always going to cut it!

either way, going to the origin of the kid: she comes from parents who compete against themselves, for nothing more than satisfaction of journey. i've never won an entire race. i've won my age group a couple times in offhand duathlons. i've gotten some poems and some articles published. i've finished every race i've ever entered. that's it. i like to exert and find some pain to push through and realize goals that are tough and make me better when i try to meet them. the kid doesn't like to hurt. the kid doesn't seem to want to pursue anything that will result in suffering of any kind. we're still trying to figure it out. it's a journey. :crap::crap:

[tumbler]

Just tell her you love her and to go have some fun.


^This. Your job is to love her, encourage her, and love her some more. There are certain things, like teaching kids to be kind, to understand right and wrong, to pay attention in school, etc. where you should be firm and make sure that they get it. There are other things, like amateur sports, where you need to let them be themselves and set their own goals. Is her goal to win the race and crush the competition? Or does she just enjoy running, staying in shape, and being on a team? Let her find what makes her happy and understand that not everyone wants to dig deep and leave it all on the track. I ran track and cross country with kids of all different abilities and motivations. Some of the slowest kids on my team were the ones that had a real love of running (not racing) and still keep up with it all these years later. Some of the fastest kids were the ones whose parents didn't even know they were on the team. Just encourage her to do her thing and make sure that she's having fun. That will last a lot longer than the results of this race.

[giverdada]

it's funny. two years from this last thread, things have changed.

i just started re-reading this thread as i needed to find another thread about a hub i broke. turns out my kid is now 13, took herself for a run last night in extreme heat and humidity, tries out for every team at school of her own accord, chose track training over soccer club after school, and is always willing to run with me and the old folks on tuesday nights. whaaaaaaaaat?

the intrinsic motivation thing remains a struggle. it's not so bad with my own kid; i'm learning what makes her tick and what she's into and thinks about, and i love her more than anything. working with other people's kids, trying to get them off of their phones and into their educations/potential, woah. daily struggle. i'm reading frankl's Man's Search for Meaning these days, and it's SO poignant it's ridiculous. the concern about the youth, even back in the 50s and earlier. the concern about the youth turning to drugs because their lives are vacuous. same stuff these days. drugs and phones. escape from the vacuum. frankl states that the best remedy to the existential crisis of the vacuum (wherein one has waaaaay too much time to think about the purpose/meaning of one's life) is tension. like drive. like struggle. struggle is good. try conveying this to 17-year-olds with phones in their hands and drugs in their brains... struggle. rock on.

[Gummee]

....it has to be her idea.

Instead of focusing on direct motivation I try to offer the praise, ego boosts, and other similar insights that make my son want to be a better piano player.That

You can't push a cooked spaghetti noodle, but you CAN pull it.

Raced track with a junior racer who's dad was 'that guy.' You know the one: yelling on the boards, always push! push! push! Beat that guy! etc. Kid burned out at 18 and hung up the bike.

Not that I have kids, but I HAVE had employees. Set a good example. Show your own motivation. Encourage. Correct when needed. Make whoever you're trying to lead want to follow.

That last sentence is probably the hardest, but ya gotta keep at it.

M

edited to add: Bought a book recommended by a cycling coach (but haven't read it) called Motivational Interviewing by Miller and Rollnick. May try reading that too for ideas