Effect of Different Motivational Techniques during Training and in Testing upon Strength Performance

Abstract

Abstract The effect of applying different motivational techniques during training and in testing upon strength performance was investigated. After initial testing, 120 male subjects formed four experimental groups and trained on one isometric press exercise 3 days per week for 8 weeks as follows: Group I (no purposefully induced motivator), Group II (knowledge of scores), Group III (knowledge of scores + assigned goal), and Group IV (knowledge of scores + assigned goal + placebo effect). An iso-scale was used to obtain training and testing scores for each subject. Following 6 weeks of training under the assigned types of motivation, each subject was given a final training test without assigned motivation and later was again tested under a special motivational testing situation which resembled an athletic contest. The findings in this study would appear to warrant the conclusions that motivational training promotes significant strength gains, whereas nonmotivated training is of little practical value conce...