Monthly Archive for February, 2013

There may be many aspects that make the difference between a champion and a good athlete and that depend on the physical characteristics and physiological state of each, the quality and quantity of training, living in a social environment that sustains and protects and the psychological skills developed in daily work and in the race. All these features are necessary and often lead to say that this particular athlete is just a talent. They are not sufficient to predict the success that the sport stars reach. In my opinion, the decisive characteristic lies in the reaction to the difficulties, it is then that you wonder if the young man has what it takes to be a champion. The pragmatic North Americans from the time they realized it and they coined the saying, “No matter how many times you fall, but how fast you get up.” In this way, the error is never seen as an expression of failure but as a common difficulty encountered in the path and as such it needs to be addressed. Sometimes instead of athletes after an error have problems refocusing again on their performance, for the reason that they continue to remain a prisoner of thought connected to the error. So after the error are confused, because they think the causes which led up to, rather than continue to stay focused on what is happening in the field. Other times they start the competition with the belief that they will not make mistakes and so when they do the first, they are shocked and are not ready to react. Other times the error is not living as a fact likely, but as a demonstration that they are not  skilled enough to deal with these situations and this thinking accentuate their insecurity with the effect of increasing the probability of making another mistake.

The most serious error is to assume that, since you have been exercising well, the race will be good. In this case, the athlete enter in a state of conceit, when in fact it is assumed that there will be no problems. The situation, however is just the opposite, because in every competition there are phases of difficulties that challenge the athlete’s conviction and determination. Those who think that it is enough to be fit and not willing to react to problems with strength and decision will provide a performance under his possibilities. In other words, the athletes have to train themselves to live the difficulties with the following  spirit of : “Great I am in a difficult time, so I have the opportunity to train to get out of this problem.”