Nadal says that tennis is a difficult and lonely sport in which the mental aspect is dominant over everything else. It’s a description of this game, profession, explaining in a few words how hard it’s to be successful in court, and contains in itself the reason why so many young players leave but very few become high-level players, and became part of the top 100 in the world. Tennis is a sport that challenge the self-confidence, because at the end of each game one loses and one wins and this is repeated many many times, spaced a few seconds apart. Submit themselves to this subtle torture it’s what the players love and hate, but when you are in this meat grinder of ups and downs, which stimulate contrasting feelings only few resist the temptation to give up and maintain high confidence in themselves .
Monthly Archive for September, 2013
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Tell your dream. We will help you to reach it.
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The big matches can be turned into positive the team play and that is what it’s happening to the Copenhagen team. The desire to play well can turn a team with a poor play in a team more technical and combative. Juventus, on the other hand, while playing a positive match does not appear combative and aggressive as usual. Combat means fighting all the time as if it were the decisive one; this attitude is very hard to maintain because it requires continuous physical and mental readiness as well as tactical intelligence to play as planned. The Champions League requires this mental approach that Juve in the first half has shown little while in the second the team alternated positive moments with other in which it appeared distracted.
The career of the athletes is lengthening more and more, especially that of most who continue their winning streak. From Roger Federer to Valentina Vezzali or Francesco Totti are many the sport stars who find themselves in this situation. So what it’s the basis to take the decision to continue rather than to give up the sport. Putting aside any physical problems that may prevent or limit the continuation of the career, the decisive element to be taken into consideration is the motivation and dedication that must continue to be strong and intense.
- Motivation means that they will reach the goals set through their commitment.
- Dedication is referred to the intensity with which the purpose is pursued and results in the commitment with which they are working on a daily basis.
When the athletes show these two psychological dimensions they know that it’s not yet time to withdraw and their coaches have a sure parameter to measure the will of their athletes, instead of relying only on the chronological age or years of career variables that can stimulate the prejudices and stereotypes of the coaches.
The search for talent is often based on a basic idea that can be summed up as: Why teach a dog to climb a tree, when the monkeys do it so well. Apparently the reasoning is flawless and as a result scientists have made search for them and discard the dogs. Then arose the first problems, so for example the lemurs while being at ease on the trees are too slow, others are too unruly and attack and so on. Despite these limitations still many scientists screen athletes/monkeys on the basis of their physical characteristics and motor skills. The nature leads us, however, also other examples that are not usually considered. The story of the caterpillar becomes a butterfly or that of the swan as a young is not really a splendor as it is an adult teach that the appearance, so how the young are at a given moment of development, may not correspond they will become. These stories should teach us that research on talent should not be based on the simple sum of the capacity possessed in a specific time but must be a long-term journey, because it’s not true that the best at 14 years old, they will be also at 16 . Commitment and dedication are two dimensions that usually are not part of the dimensions examined, however, they are considered as the most important by top athletes; they should instead begin to be taken into account. The other key aspect to succeed as an athlete is to assess the degree of improvement of the young during the competitive season. Athletes initially less competent can come to compete with the best ones, thanks to a greater willingness to learn from training. So do not discard a priori all dogs, interesting surprises may be happen.
In the winter, no one takes to the streets dressed in summer, because we know that in this way we get sick and then to prevent this eventuality, we dress to winter. Why so frequently, first do we make a mistake and then we try to correct ourselves, instead to work to prevent it? It’s said that to prevent is better than cure. In sports errors represent what it should be avoided, the disease from which we must free ourselves, and usually taught that the cure is to learn to react to them as quickly as possible. This teaching is well summarized in the phrase: “No matter how many times you fall but how quickly you get up again.” To achieve this goal, the athletes are trained to get back to being focused on performance immediately after they did a mistake. But if it’s better to avoid getting sick, what is the way to prevent errors? This means being aware of which behaviors to avoid and what to put in place instead. Regarding to sport, it means being aware of what mistakes we can make in that workout or race and to know what it’s the way to avoid them. Consequently, the athletes should be aware of situations that must be met, think about the mistakes that they could commit and that they has committed in the past and focus only on the actions that must take to do well. In this way, they will learn not so much to eliminate the difficulties, which are always present in a race, but to deal with them in a winning way.
Thought for the day
The races are to challenge ourselves to overcome moments of difficulty that inevitably there are in every competition. Who wants to escape this challenge will never expand his/her limits.
It’s been a year from the enthusiasm giving rise to the Paralympics in London and it continues to do little or nothing to promote sports and movement among people with disabilities. The initiatives are left to the individual associations that need to find themselves spaces to reduce exclusion that continues to be their more frequent social status . It’s of today the news of the initiative of Pietro Scidurlo, paraplegic from birth, young man “with a bad relationship with his disability … and with a strong need to do something of extraordinary for him and people like him.” In search of a better life for him, a year ago he has covered in handbikes the Camino de Santiago de Compostela and after this experience he founded a non-profit organization, FreWheels, to prove that “the barriers are only in our minds. If the others do the things, we can do them ourselves with disabilities,” in order to promote physical independence and social inclusion of youth with disabilities. Few days ago he has just finished a canoe trip of 500 km in 8 days, from Ticino to Po, starting from Somma Lombardo (Varese) and arriving inPiazza San Marco in Venice.
An aerial view shows people in a formation of the words “thank you” and displaying signs that collectively read “Arigato” (Thank You) during an event celebrating Tokyo being chosen to host the 2020 Olympic Games, at Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building.
The football team promoted in Serie A, Sassuolo, has paid heavily the first two matches taking 6 goals. The coach called for greater cohesion to get out of this negative moment. As always the question at this issue is not so much what you ask for as a team, but how the coach will teach it. Depended on me, I would like to start from the results of the matches, providing significant information on the team’s mentality. In fact, in both games the first goal has been taken within the last 5 minutes of the first half. Similarly, the second goal was taken after about 20 minutes of play in the second half (60° and 63° minute). Therefore in relation to the first goal, it’s to know how to improve cohesion in the final minutes, when the players probably imagine to have already ended the game and play with less fighting spirit. Regarding the second goal, it must be analyzed the difficulty to maintain for a long period the concentration and the cohesion in the game. In each case, the team had failure after half of the second time: how to recognize and prevent this negative moment. So it should be good to remember that the team cohesion is essential, but obviously the coach must not only make a statement but to find solutions for the moments of weakness.
