1 Why is a sense of control important in motivation?

In Session 2 you were introduced to fifteen burnout factors. One factor under ‘Situational characteristics’ suggested that a sense of limited control over circumstances can contribute to burnout. This factor is common to motivational (e.g. Cresswell and Eklund, 2005) and social (Coakley, 1992) burnout perspectives. The next activity explores this further.

Activity 1 What does ‘limited control’ mean in training?

Timing: Allow about 10 minutes

Watch the following video in which former Olympic rower Bo Hanson presents his thoughts on burnout and control.

Do you feel his explanation that limited control is a ‘leading cause of burnout’ is an oversimplification?

Download this video clip.Video player: Video 2

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Transcript: Video 2

BO HANSON

There was an interesting study done on-- they took 400 Finnish athletes and they looked at what were the leading causes of burnout amongst athletes. And what they found was that the leading cause of burnout was not a physical occurrence. It was the fact that athletes felt as though they were operating in a controlling and pressuring structure where they were unable to effectively have two way communication with their coach.

And so what that means is that, imagine that if you turned out to practise, and instead of you saying to your coach, oh, coach, my leg is killing me. It might be caught from the weekend. You haven't gotten over it. Or maybe you're just really fatigued or you're mentally just exhausted, and your coach didn't take that into account, to the point where they say, you know what? Get out on the field and try like everyone else. Where the athlete therefore feels like they had such a low level of personal control over their situation. That was found to be the leading cause of burnout.

One of the first questions our coach used to ask us, every single time we turned up to training, we had as a process, before you wake up, before you get out of bed in the morning, your alarm goes off. It goes off at about 5 o'clock in the morning or even just before. You let your heart rate come down from the initial shock of the alarm beeping. And then once your heart rate comes back down, you take your heart rate. If it's more than sort of eight beats above what it normally should be, your heart rate, you go to your coach the next morning and you turn up at training and coach says, how is everyone feeling? It's the first thing he says.

Guys, the programme's on the backboard. It's set for the next month, every week in absolute detail down to the percentage time you're going to spend at every heart rate zone. Every work piece is on there. Everything in the programme is there. But that is subject to change at a moment's notice. As soon as the guys say, coach, heart rate's 10 beats above normal. That's right. Right, you're out of the boat. Jump on the ergo. Let's modify your session. There was always that possibility. You know what I'm saying? So an athlete never felt like they didn't have control over their situation, always felt like the coach cared.

End transcript: Video 2

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Discussion

Hanson certainly provides a good example of what control means in a coach–athlete context. He describes a ‘controlling and pressuring structure’ and lack of genuine two-way communication with a coach. He presents this as the single most important cause of burnout. As you have seen burnout has many contributing factors. Perhaps he fails to connect the feeling of a lack of control to how this can create perceptions of stress. In addition, exhaustion factors are downplayed.

Having some control over your work, sport and life generally is important since, without it, it can be debilitating (Deci and Ryan, 1985). Exerting some control is a feature of a Self-determination theory (SDT) approach to understanding motivation. In SDT literature, the term autonomy is used rather than control.

To examine the role of the three SDT needs, you will apply each in the following section using the case of former Olympic cyclist Victoria Pendleton.