Posts

Coaching, Motivation, and Cultural Norms: Rethinking the Power of Words

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 Kia Ora koutou, This is Hiro. Today’s topic is “Coaching, Motivation, and Cultural Norms: Rethinking the Power of Words.” I’d like to talk about the power of a coach’s words and how these words can affect their athletes.   Contents -           Motivation -           Understanding the Coach and Understanding the Athlete -           Positive (Gain) vs. Negative (Loss) Framing of Motivation -           In Actual Coaching Practice -           Understanding the Athlete’s Cultural Background -           Norms and Motivation in Running Culture -           New Norms and Stress -           Practical Takeaways for Coaches -    ...

“Are your decisions truly your own, or are they shaped by someone else’s vision?” (Part2)

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 Kia Ora koutou, This is Hiro. Welcome back to Part 2, where the topic is: “Are your decisions truly your own, or are they shaped by someone else’s vision?”  (If you have not read Part 1, that is from here.) In the previous section, I shared my personal experiences of how team norms and coaching environments shaped my decisions, often without me realising it. Now, let’s look at how we can analyse these influences more clearly. Using psychological tools like Self-Determination Theory (SDT) and Multiple perspectives , we can begin to untangle which of our actions are truly self-driven and which are shaped by pressure, fear, or external expectations. The goal is not to reject team culture entirely, but to reclaim your reasons for running, training, and competing in a way that feels right for you. Where does your motivation come from? Gaining Multiple Perspectives To begin with, we need to view ourselves and our environments from multiple angles: What is the norm ...

“Are Your Decisions Truly Your Own, Or Are They Shaped By Someone Else’s Vision?” (Part1)

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 Kia Ora koutou, This is Hiro. Today’s topic is: “Are your decisions truly your own, or are they shaped by someone else’s vision?” We all engage with athletics and running in different ways. For many, it begins as a fun hobby, a way to enjoy exercise, and it's naturally integrated into daily life. But as we continue running by joining a club, training with teammates, or competing in races, our involvement is getting deeper, larger or changing. When athletes begin performing at high levels, they may gain opportunities to join more competitive teams or training environments. As we become part of these communities and receive more external evaluation, our decision-making will be separated into two types. One is led to positive behaviour by autonomy, and one is influenced to push us into emotional hardship by outside stimuli. In my own university athletics experience, I struggled mentally, yet I convinced myself that everything I was doing was the “right” decision. So why do ...

Why Runners Say “I Haven’t Trained Much”: A Psychological Perspective

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  Why Runners Say “I Haven’t Trained Much”: A Psychological Perspective Kia Ora koutou, This is Hiro. It’s been quite a while, around 2 and a half years, since the last update. Over the past year, I’ve accumulated some new insights from a slightly different perspective on athletics and coaching. I’d like to gradually share them with you. Today’s Topic: Why do runners say, “I haven’t trained much”? If you’re involved in the sports of athletics, you’ve probably heard this phrase many times, either from teammates or maybe even from your mouth: “I haven’t trained much lately.” This is something often said before or after a race. In this post, I’ll explore what kind of psychological state this phrase reflects and how we, as athletes, coaches, or teammates, can better understand and respond to it. How do you feel about your result today? 1. A Psychological Safety framing: Loss Aversion This is something most athletes can relate to. The athletics field often involves tra...

“Less effort will make your running better”

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  “Less effort will make your running better”   Today’s topic is “Less effort”. Distance runners love to train harder and harder. Why do we think so? We have some reason… -         We estimate that the training was Good or Bad after a workout. It would be follow by our effort that how much we through. -         We think “one more” and “faster” are good on a training. -         We feel great after we have done a hard training. -         We believe that the hard training will make our physical and mental stronger always However, Is the maximum effort required for our workouts to improve our sport performance always? The answer will be “No”. Minimum effort will work to improve our running sometimes. Let’s think about it. 1, The factors to improve running performance -         Physical s...

A Habit of Jog

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  Today’s topic is “A Habit of Jog”.   “Jog” or “Easy run” amount to 60-75% of our total training mileage. We understand the major training build the our running base when look the volume. However, the intensity and volume are underrated, and also we don’t have any purpose each jog sometimes. I will introduce about the jog(Easy run)as the topic is “A Habit of Jog”, and how we can improve it. (Wellington has a lot of great places to have a jog. So we can not stop it sometimes.) 1, Getting faster and stronger with Jog for the first step   We are able to be fit and stronger with any exercise when we start and keep an exercise for the first phase. We can feel that we get used to a stress when I have the cycle of stress and recovery. Our running training starts with jog always. The first attempt is hard even if it’s slow and only 10 minutes when we are a beginner or after took a break. However, we get used to the 10 minutes jog soon and try to run longer o...