If you’re a coach, trainer, mentor of any kind within any discipline, you’ve probably recognized by now that you have the unique position to motivate positive change in another persons behavior. Sometimes, however, having to motivate unwilling or unmotivated athletes can take its toll on us. Think of it as running a relay race alone, instead of splitting the difference and sharing the work load, you have to pick up the slack and do it all yourself, all the time. Eventually, that workload can make you a less effective motivator, that which your athlete so greatly needs.

As a coach, we actually feed off of the very motivation that we inspired within our athletes. It’s the gift that keeps on giving. The Scientific American published an article by Daisy Yuhas entitled ‘Three Critical Elements Sustain Motivation’ and starts off with this statement -“Got motivation?