The RMP in Sports

The way a coach works with an athlete, a player or a team is important in sport, just like the way of working is crucial in the case of managers working with teams in business. For this reason, it is essential that the coach, even before starting motivational work with Reiss Motivation Profile®, gets to know his or her own motivation profile and, above all, understands how his or her motives influence his or her perception of others.

The coach – working with Reiss Motivation Profile® – will also benefit from realizing that his or her motivation profile and intrinsic needs do not coincide with those of the athletes partly or at all. The coach should aim at understanding the possible “blind spots” of their cooperation with the athlete. It means that a coach may try to motivate the athlete using his or her own motives, e.g. a high need for power. An athlete whose need for this motive is low will perceive it as the coach attempting to exert pressure on them. As a consequence, the coach’s opportunity to motivate the athlete using his or her own needs will remain unused.

Thanks to the Reiss Motivation Profile®, coaches are able to develop training techniques tailored specifically to the athlete’s personality, which allows them to achieve the best solutions, even in stressful conditions.

By learning about your motivational profile, you are able to find the source of your mental strength to help you achieve results.

In the recent years, the best proof that psychological strength allows to achieve extraordinary results was Germany’ weightlifter Matthias Steiner winning a gold medal in the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. As part of the project “Operation Gold” the Sports Director and coach of the national team in the German Weightlifting Federation (BVDG), while preparing the athletes for the sporting event in China, took advantage of the opportunities offered by Reiss Motivation Profile®.

Methodological German coaches have been training the Olympic staff of the Rhein-Neckar Olympic Preparation Centre for many years. They created motivation profiles for the athletes and for the national team coach, to later advise the team based on these profiles. The peculiarity of this method lies in the fact that it reveals the structure of each person’s life motives and values. This knowledge is a valuable aid both in the individual orientation of each athlete during competitions and in identifying the potential for long-term success. In addition, RMP provides specific guidelines for communication and cooperation between the coach and the athletes. This could for example be information on how to organise training in accordance with the athletes’ motivation profile or the most effective ways in which a coach may address the athlete during the competition. The aim of this method is to motivate the athlete every time.

In team sports, Reiss Motivation Profile® helps you understand what motivates your team-mates and how individual motives and players interact with each other.