Monthly Archive for October, 2013

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New York self-esteem campaign for young girls

Published on October 8, 2013 in Generale, Giovani and Stress. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s New York City Girls Project aims to foster young girls’ self-esteem and encourage positive body image. According to the project’s website, New York is the first city to implement this type of program.

“The project aims to help girls believe their value comes from their character, skills and attributes, not appearance, while also expanding the definition of beauty behind an unhealthy, manufactured ideal,” said Samantha Levine, the director of the New York City Girls Project.

The $300,000 project will organize a curriculum for after-school programs, as well as posters for subways and buses. The project aims to capture the attention of girls who are 7 to 12 years old.

Levine said self-esteem issues are starting younger and younger.

“We hear stories of 7-year-old girls refusing dessert or telling their moms they feel fat, undergoing plastic surgery because they are bullied about their appearance,” Levine said. “Not only is this troubling on a visceral level but there are real health consequences to negative body image and poor self-esteem, eating disorders, obesity, bullying, alcohol use, smoking, early sex and teen pregnancy. These consequences made a compelling case for New York City to take action. Nobody has been a greater public health leader than Mayor Bloomberg.”

(From http://nyunews.com/2013/10/07/girls-3/)

 

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There is a lot of excellence in the Italian sport

Published on October 7, 2013 in Calcio. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

We speak constantly of Italian fashion, food, art, and there is less talk of the excellence in our sport. Italian newspapers, starting from sports one, are bent to the will of the football power which participates in killing other sports. Pages for the resurrected Francesco Totti, if he has to be called in the national team, and a few lines or at most a column for Vanessa Ferrari, who won the silver medal at the age of 23 at gymnastics world championships or Giovanni Pellielo who won for the fourth time the trap world championships at forty years old. They are just the latest examples of how the sports culture is not part of us but only in the days of the Olympics. While we should be concerned about the crazy football dominated  in many cities by violent fans.

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Simone Biles

Published on October 6, 2013 in Giovani. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Simone Biles from the US during the all-around final at the artistic gymnastics World Championships in Antwerp, Belgium, Friday, Oct. 4, 2013. She won the gold.

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Italian psychologist ignore the topic of the performance psychology

Published on October 5, 2013 in Giovani and Stress. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

At a conference dedicated to the sport psychology and organized by the register of psychologists in Veneto which was attended by about 200 psychologists, today I gave a talk on the performance psychology applied to sport. I realized once again that the performance psychology is a subject little known by Italian psychologists.  This is probably due to the lack of this type of teaching at the university, all centered on understanding the different forms of distress and psychopathology rather than providing cognitive tools to know how to become experts in something.  The paths to become expert athletes or coaches are disregarded. This training deficiency determines  a vision of the human being in which the psychological difficulties that the individuals experience in their professional path are often interpreted in terms of psychopathology, not understanding instead that these difficulties are stimulated by the complexity of the performances to be provided. In football missing a penalty is not an extraordinary event but it could be if  the team lose an important game and the player who makes this mistake can live with this extreme discomfort this mistake, not because he/she has a psychopathology but for the consequences of the action. Psychologists ignore these implications and hide themselves behind words to their reassuring such as performance anxiety. They do not possess the theoretical tools to understand this phenomenon and they ignore how to deal with it, without going to the categories of psychopathology. It takes years to introduce the changes necessary to modify this way of thinking, because at this point the young psychologists can apply these knowledgel in the area of expert performance.

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Confidence and decision are two key factors of a match

Published on October 4, 2013 in Allenatori and Calcio. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

In team sports, the technique and tactics must become automatized through training, in this way the players can implement them without thinking in advance how they should have to play, but based on what it’s happening at any given time on the field they know in advance what to do. The intensity and quality of training allow teams to put in place their competences even in difficult conditions, under  stress and fatigue. In addition, the teams that have also top-players obviously have more weapons to prove their worth and prevail over their opponents. There is, however, another factor that may hinder or promote the team play skills. It’s a psychological factor that refers to the mental attitude with which a team takes the field and can thus arise:

  • it’s an attitude convinced of the own abilities and decided to assert them in the field with a combative behavior of the players,
  • it’s an attitude convinced of the own abilities, but for some reason the team believes that this attitude will spontaneously out during the game,
  • it’s an approach not fully convinced of the own abilities and those fears are manifested during the game through game errors.

I am personally convinced of the need to train the players to live the matches with the first attitude of the three, in which the belief is combined with the awareness of having to show this attitude in any moment of the match. Many teams do not always show this attitude and then they make mistakes like those of superficiality made by Juventus players against Galatasaray. Then to play at the highest levels the top players are necessary and the same for the tactical schema, but in the same time it serves to demonstrate that the team  is able to exert a constant pressure on opponents.

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Juventus small mentality

Published on October 2, 2013 in Allenatori and Calcio. 0 Comments

Since some matches Juventus  has stopped pushing as it did in other years. Mentality small, poor results. It’s the same said for Napoli.

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Napoli was not ready, but it didn’t know it

Published on October 2, 2013 in Allenatori, Calcio and Stress. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

Be aware the team was going to enter the field with the wrong attitude; this is missed to Napoli against Arsenal. Hamsik summarizes the thinking of the team: “In matches like this one you cannot give 15′.” Then it becomes difficult to reassemble. They have been devastating, but we started very badly.” Right, but what they did in locker room to be in the mental condition necessary to be immediately competitive. Many times teams think to have the right attitude, but it’s not true and they do almost nothing to train themselves to recognize if their pregame mood  is useful to play well or it can be an obstacle. Think to be ready is not the same to feel ready, if you do not understand this difference, you cannot improve and you have to wait to play the first 5 minutes of the game to find out. There are techniques to get to know/put yourself in the best pregame condition, I guess Napoli did not know it.

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Nibali’s courage to have afraid

Published on October 1, 2013 in Generale. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

What is clicked in the head of Nibali after the fall in the rain cycling world, because he pulled the brakes once climbed a bicycle?

“This is a problem that only the strongest, not the one who is in the middle of the group. Nibali is a champion, not an amateur cyclist: he found himself in a moment of extraordinary difficulty, one of those cases where one plus one does not makes two but three. Stress becomes excessive and leads you to doubt about your ability. At top level just a nothing not to believe more in yourself. ”

How do you overcome the fear of falling?

“I do not know the person but Nibali should consult a psychologist, not a motivator. He have to determine which is the measure of risk, because again it will rain, only you do not know when.  The athletes must do everything possible to reduce the emotional stress, these top athletes have to work on specific mental aspects. Nibali is not like us, he’s a world-class athlete: he’s like the first violin of  Scala Teather that he/she cannot take a cue.”

(I have been interviewed by Nando Aruffo, Corriere dello Sport)

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