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The motivation and emotion are important topics in sport sciences, worthy of careful study, is obvious. But why are they considered together? Actually, there are several good reasons for this, first from your own experience, our efforts to satisfy various motives often involve powerful emotional experiences. For example, do you want to attain success? Then be prepared for feelings of elation when you succeed, discouragement when you fail, and envy when you see others attain goals that you wanted for yourself. So, motivation and emotion are certainly linked. Second, emotions can often influence motivation. Imagine, for example, that you are worried sick about a pending examination. What will this do to your appetite? Increase it? Reduce it? Both reactions are possible, but in either case, the point is that strong emotions can influence even a basic form of motivation such as hunger. In view of these and other basic links between motivation and emotion, it makes sense to consider them together. Athletic accomplishments can be attributed to many factors working together in an ideal “intermix”, but none are referred to with more reverence and less understanding than what the more avid sports enthusiasts refer to as “the mind and the heart”. Others have coined the synonymous phrase, “the will and the guts”. The urge and the ability to achieve is due in part, no doubt a great motivational state of the athlete.
