Motivation
By Renee Beveridge, September 2019
Motivation is a funny thing, and it is different for everyone. Success is obviously a result of training and skills, for whatever sport. But regardless of your success or experience, you can struggle with motivation, while someone who may be less successful can be extremely enthusiastic and motivated, and vice versa.
I’ve always had issues with motivation and would honestly rather wake up with amazing fitness everyday than have to go through the boredom and physical exertion of training; particularly in winter when you can’t even get a tan, and it’s cold and wet. I would rather be honest than try paint a pretty picture of “how amazing training is”. This isn’t me wanting any sympathy and I am certainly not pretending I don’t ‘need’ to train (there is no doubt training improves my results), but rather to talk honestly about motivation and training, because training is not enjoyable for everyone. Ultimately it’s your own fault if you can’t be bothered training, but the difference between orienteering in Europe compared to New Zealand has a huge influence on people’s motivation to train, and ALSO simply wanting to go to Orienteering events.
How is my motivation influenced?
With the following text, I hope to shed light on my own struggles with motivation in a hope to help others struggling with the same mentality, and ultimately to encourage others to go to big events in Australia and Europe (which consequently may help motivate people). My training was pretty absent before I started going to Europe, although I was pretty active anyway. But I never trained for Orienteering specifically. My mentality was and still sometimes is “Why would I want to continuously strain myself for ages for results I don’t even know I will achieve”. In other words, it’s easier to find the motivation to train for something that is a month away than something that is six months away. I know that’s a terrible mentality, but it can be hard to convince yourself six months prior that “you won’t regret it”. Logically I know I will be thankful I put in the effort, but logic isn’t enough to make me ‘want’ to do it. People who are super driven to train and love the “rush of endorphins” can find it hard to understand this mentality. I get pleasure out of good results, but it is a lot better to have pleasure out of training too, since that occupies the majority of your sporting life. Unfortunately, I think in New Zealand competition-training ratio is swayed too far, in that we have too few events relative to the number of days we train a year.
So for me going to Australia in 2011 in the NZ Schools Team was a huge factor for my future motivation. Competing in new terrain, being with lots of other fellow Orienteers was something that made me more excited to train more. My performance in Australia wasn’t great, but it gave me some techniques to work on and I met some great people. I didn’t go to JWOC the next year, and I don’t think I deserved to either. However, 2013 was the last year I could go and so I made an effort to get there. The mentality of “now or never” isn’t exactly great long term motivation, and it relies on having exciting competitions to go to, but that’s often a large part of what gets me off the couch…sadly.
Going to JWOC 2013, Czech Republic, with a number of the same people I went to Australia with was super fun. The experience of running at such a big competition, running in new and far more interesting terrain than I had experienced, and meeting so many new people was too addicting to not try go to the World Unis in Czech Republic the following year. So I did and also went to a number of other competitions around Europe, which again fuelled my motivation to keep up my fitness for WOC 2015.
WOC 2015, Scotland, was quite different than JWOC and WUOC, in that it wasn’t as social and was pretty daunting. I was annoyed with my middle distance performance but it again taught me how much I struggle with concentration and nerves. I went to Oringen again and had a blast. After returning I took a break from going to Europe to focus on Uni.
Europe 2019
I decided to go to Europe again this year as I was having withdrawals and had started training more. But again, there’s still this mentality of “I don’t know how long I will be motivated for to keep training “, so I needed to go to Europe this year to jumpstart my enthusiasm again. Again, Europe was what I had hoped for; I went to three main competitions, JWOC tour, Oringen, and Slovak Karst Cup.
The weather, good company, and especially the quality of courses and exciting terrains makes orienteering in Europe so great. So of course I put in effort because otherwise I would’ve felt like it was a wasted opportunity. The length of each event is also very important as it means you get a good length of time to be a tourist in between races and also to chill out with friends and meet people.
Moral of the story, and how this could help New Zealand Orienteering become better for people’s training
1. Motivation and increase in number of competitors:
For me, and I am sure other people, motivation for training is influenced by how soon, big, well organised, and novel the next competition is. Other people just seriously love training. But motivation to go to Orienteering events doesn’t just affect junior and senior elites who are needing to train all the time to stay at the top level. It also affects people in other grades, especially those who may be struggling with Orienteering, particularly our new adults. What we also forget is
how much changes for highschool students when they leave school. Again a drop in competitions and not going away on road-trips to school Nationals or North Islands with friends removes a big social side out for them, and consequently we see a huge drop off. Even many of our best highschool orienteers loose interest in the sport once they don’t have as many events to look forward to, the team aspect disappears, and there are little training opportunities to keep them improving and interested. This has a huge impact of how big orienteering can grow in New Zealand.
2. Implications for NZ Orienteering:
The reason why I am talking about different motivational attitudes is because in New Zealand a lot of people’s enthusiasm disappears because of the lack of events, and particularly events that are enticing. For e.g, Oringen isn’t actually that cheap, but the cost is worth the experience. If there is one big event a year (like in New Zealand), putting heaps of effort into it feels risky; if you don’t do well at this event for whatever reason, that’s it…you spent all this time training and don’t even enjoy it. But for a solid four-five month summery period, Europe has an onslaught of big exciting, well organised, and extremely social events that are only one short flight away from each other.
There has definitely been some great NZ Nationals, where the sun was out and a large number of NWOCers all stayed together at a great location, and we had organised activities to do as well. Immediately this made the entire event better, even if it was only four days (such was the case forNationals held at Labour Weekend in Hawkes Bay 2017). But this isn’t often the case.
The social side is such a huge draw card for orienteers that even if you aren’t feeling your fittest, or are still struggling with orienteering, flying all over Europe to Oringen, Swiss O-week, Fin-5, Karst Cup, OO cup, Bubo Cup, O-France, O-Spain, JWOC tour, WOC tour etc etc, isn’t a big deal.
The difference is huge and I think something needs to change in New Zealand. We have next to 0 week long events, particularly during our summer. I think also, many of our club events such as AOS events mean very little in terms of getting a competition going. There is no overall winner, and prizes for podium getters, and so for many, the AOS series becomes a training exercise, not something super enticing to many experienced orienteers.
Why am I talking about this?
This goes back to the issue of motivation. But it’s not just that. It’s also to increase the size of our events and draw people of all skill levels back to events time and time again. In other words, going to a five-day event with nice weather, great atmosphere, and plenty of things to do after your race, encourages a huge range of people to compete. This is what is so obvious in Europe. There are people of all physical and navigational abilities, but there was an appropriate course for all of them.
The fact they were running the “21-short course” or the “open easy”, rather than 21 Long or Elite, wasn’t an issue as there are still so many competitors in each grade and the courses are still quality and the atmosphere is great.
In New Zealand, we have a limited range of grades and many people don’t want to run against one other person in the B grade. So its’s totally understandable when people who aren’t super skilled step up into the A grade, but ultimately not doing great things for their progression in the sport. But in Europe the number of people in each grade and how social it all is, is such a draw card that the grade you’re running in isn’t that important.
In terms of the motivation to train, you continuously have events coming up and then it’s not even a very big break until that summery period is back again. So how do we fix this?
We should want to increase the number of competitors at events and overall to ensure they come back in the future. To help improve motivation, for junior and seniors, and increase peoples enjoyment at each big event. Sprint the Bay did this well, even though it was only three days; Great maps, courses, and atmosphere.
1) More and longer events during summer
2) Perhaps moving Nationals to Labour weekend; having it at the beginning of the year seems odd and it also affects the grade people run in depending if they’re using this event as qualification for WOC, WUOC, and JWOC
3) Different styles of events (forest sprints, more relays, knock out sprints, chasing starts)
4) Better event centre layouts to increase atmosphere
5) Variation of grades for those not as experienced – even grades where men and women can compete together if they are very new.
6) Social and planned exercises for people to do after each event
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