Intrinsic Motivation

Day after day of rain and I am starting to consider breaking down and buying an indoor bike trainer which will allow me to bike in my apartment.

Perhaps you are wondering why I have resisted acquiring a trainer device in a city where every other self-respecting triathlete is spending every evening during the rainy season on one?   And after reading postings in this blog that are so often dominated by long lamentations on cycling in Tokyo traffic?

Well my philosophy has always been that cycling should be driven by the sheer pleasure of getting out and seeing the world and feeling the wind in your face.  My philosophy on running is much the same.  (Swimming of course is another matter). 

After a difficult week of work I really looked forward to running around Tokyo's Imperial Palace this evening, enjoying the views of the moat and the lights of the city's skyscrapers.   I frequently hear other runners talk about their preference to run in the morning so they "can get their run over with."  I am a bit troubled by this sentiment - I am not eager to "get my run over with" -- it is one of the best parts of my day -- it is something to be savoured.  

Yes, quite a few times it is a challenge to get out on a ride or swim, but I certainly don't see training as drudgery and duty.

I was intrigued to read an article in yesterday's New York Times(and copied below), about  high-level competitive athletes who become overweight couch potatoes after successful competitive careers because they relied on "extrinsic motivation".  It is a shame to see people miss the joy of sports for its own sake.  Perhaps if these individuals had a community like Tokyo's Namban Rengo they wouldn't feel like they are "running in a treadmill in a sea of anonymous gym-goers".  Perhaps if they cultivated an enjoyment of going out and cycling along the seaside they would not just talk about how they should be training.

 

July 6, 2006

Once an Athletic Star, Now an Unheavenly Body

By JILL AGOSTINO

THESE days the thought of running makes Howie Zebersky cringe. As an all-state runner from Long Island and a college competitor, he used to stop at nothing to outperform his rivals. But Mr. Zebersky, who hasn't laced up his sneakers in about a decade, knows that he'll never run as fast as he once did, so what's the point?

"When you run at such a competitive level and come back to do it at a recreational level, that is a hard transition to make," said Mr. Zebersky, 32, who raced for the State University at Albany almost every weekend of college. "With no goal, I find it hard to get out there. There's nothing to shoot for."

Karen Potenziano, who was an all-American lacrosse player at Ithaca College in upstate New York, feels the same. Without a reason to train and no teammates to push her, Ms. Potenziano, 39, a mother of three from North Yarmouth, Me., said, "I just can't seem to make it happen."

The dirty secret among former high school and college jocks is that many don't remain active as adults. In their glory days they were the fittest among their peers. But as adults many are overtaken by nonjocks who embrace fitness as a commitment to health, forget the varsity letter.

Onetime elite athletes often languish once organized competition is over and a coach isn't hounding them, sports scientists and exercise physiologists say. Many are burned out. Others become discouraged when their lackluster fitness can't compare to their highlight reels. Running on a treadmill in a sea of anonymous gym-goers doesn't compare to the thrill of being an m.v.p. on campus.

"Basically, they've been to the mountaintop and now they're on these little hills, and that is difficult to deal with," said Dan Gould, the director of the Institute for the Study of Youth Sports at Michigan State University in Lansing.

Extrinsic motivation is tricky business, said Dr. Gould, a professor of kinesiology. He said he has found that athletes who played for trophies or attention are more at risk of becoming sedentary as adults than people who have taught themselves to get off the sofa and exercise, those with "intrinsic motivation."

Stephen J. Virgilio, the author of "Active Start for Healthy Kids" (Human Kinetics, 2005), agreed. People who grew up without the stress of sports often enjoy hitting the gym, he said, but those who competed in athletics at a younger age have trouble exercising merely for upkeep, especially when many coaches don't emphasize fitness. "In high school and college, they do the sports to win games, not for personal health," said Dr. Virgilio, a professor of physical education at Adelphi University in Garden City, N.Y. "What happens when the sport is finished? They feel like they're finished."

While it may seem logical for disciplined competitors to continue a workout routine, experts say it takes significant reprogramming. "Exercise just seems to lack purpose or meaning," said Tom Raedeke, an associate professor of sport science at East Carolina University in Greenville, N.C. "It's pointless."

Part of the problem is that some athletes were more involved in the game than in the exercise, said Bill Karper, an associate professor of exercise and sport science at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

That seems to be the case with John Deodato. As a teenager, he played baseball every day, either with equally gung-ho friends or for his team at Sachem High School on Long Island. But after graduation, without his coach telling him to run laps, he didn't know how to motivate himself. No glove, no glory.

Mr. Deodato, who recently topped out at 265 pounds on his 5-foot-11 frame, is as surprised as anyone that he let himself go. "When I was young and in high school, I was always thin, always active," said Mr. Deodato, 41. "In a million years, if you had told me that I would get to be 100 pounds overweight, I would have told you you were insane."

He always assumed he would take up another sport, but after years of inactivity, he became discouraged. "I decided I was too far gone, and it just seemed too hard," he said.

When he retired in May — after 20 years as a New York City police officer — he felt he had run out of excuses. He joined Weight Watchers and started doing 40 minutes of basketball drills every day, as well as walking and bicycling. But he wishes it had never come to this.

Other players who tire of the ceaseless demands of their sport come to think of working out as punishment. "At some point they do the drudgery — the running and lifting weights — to please their coach," Dr. Virgilio said. "They have to change their attitude about fitness."

The fatigue can often be as much psychological as physical. "The training is very stressful," said J. J. Clark, the women's track and cross-country coach at the University of Tennessee , who has trained hundreds of elite runners. "They need a mental break. They don't want to have to worry about what time they get up or what they eat. A lot of them after long careers, they just say, 'That's it.' "

But taking too long a break from conditioning can be dispiriting for people accustomed to being better than average, making it even harder to start an exercise routine. "It's a case of 'disimprovement,' " said Dr. Raedeke, who worked with swimmers at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs. "It's very personal. It can be so discouraging to go into the gym and be lifting, maximum, what they used to be lifting for a warm-up."

It's easier for many former athletes to plant themselves on the couch and shout advice to the television. "They are still into their sport, but as a spectator," Dr. Virgilio said. "If they played football, they'll watch a lot of football, drinking beer and eating snacks."

But that doesn't have to be the case. John Nitti played football and baseball and ran indoor track in high school. Then he played football at Yale and was a National Football League running back for three seasons until he injured his knee. Once it healed, he started making time for exercise.

Now he plays basketball on Sunday morning and runs, bicycles and lifts weights before work. As a marginal player in the N.F.L., he said, he always did extra workouts on his own, and he remains a self-starter. Nostalgia also keeps him active. "It's the only piece of football that I've still got," said Mr. Nitti, who now works in information technologies. "I never wanted to let go."

For others changing activities can be a way to lower their ambitious expectations. It also provides a fresh challenge.

Barb Reichert, a former Division I collegiate softball player, won't step onto a softball field anymore. "My sport is no fun to play because my skill set is not what it used to be," she said. But in the last two decades she has dabbled in activities like hiking and mountain biking. "I watched some of the people I played with and see how out of shape some of them got."

Ms. Reichert, 44, a newspaper editor in Muskegon, Mich., said she still sees herself as an athlete. "And I love that my body does that for me," she said."

After she tore an Achilles tendon playing soccer five years ago, she switched to kayaking for miles on Lake Michigan.

Mr. Zebersky, the runner, is hoping to regain that passion as well. He says he misses running and lately has talked of starting up again. For now, it's just talk.