Monthly Archive for January, 2021

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The beauty of sport is the race

Published on January 10, 2021 in Allenatori, Calcio, Corsa, Generale, Mental coaching, Olimpiadi, Stress, Tennis and Tiro a volo. 0 Comments Tags: bellezza, gara, psicologo.

The beauty of sports is the “day of truth”, the race, there is nothing that can give the same emotional intensity. The challenge is: “Are you ready? Show it.”

It means delivering the best performance you are capable of.

I think anyone who has never experienced this demand (in any life situation) is at a loss to understand what it means to live in this moment. For me it means, not only having the knowledge that I have done the work that I should have done in the previous weeks, but also saying/doing (which often involves not saying/not doing) what is best to get the best result.

The pre-race is made up of moments and sensations that not only the athletes but also those close to them must know how to exploit. These are sensitive moments in which the athletes expect something or do not want anything because they are okay, those who are close to them live the same situation but with a different role and it is necessary that mutual expectations meet.

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Athletes needs expert coaches

Published on January 9, 2021 in Allenatori, Calcio, Corsa, Generale, Giovani, Mental coaching, Olimpiadi, Stress, Tennis and Tiro a volo. 0 Comments

Sometimes in high level sport there is the idea that the strong athletes when they go to the competition and in the days before the competition now no longer need the coach because they are ready and it is the athlete at that point that must demonstrate his/her value. It is thought that the psychological aspect of the approach to the race and the management of the same is a private matter, in fact it is time to demonstrate.

My professional experience is absolutely the opposite: precisely because they can provide exceptional performance these athletes need qualified people at their side who know how to direct them to live this experience in an effective and positive way.

I have in mind athletes asking you what they need to do or more simply wanting to talk to someone who knows them and is willing to listen. Without this last phase, which can be carried out by the coach or the psychologist, it is possible to throw away months or years of preparation for not having appreciated its importance.

I have in front of me athletes who before the Olympic final say that they are nauseous and do not want to go on the field or that three hours before they tell you that they do not remember what to do, or coaches who are surprised by unsatisfactory performance without having done anything to prevent it.

Today, when everyone feels like a motivator or mental coach, this lack is even more paradoxical, highlighting the fact that it takes specific professional skills to be the right person and that it is not enough just to stick this label on yourself, without understanding that training and competition are fundamentals in the consolidation of knowledge between coach, psychologist and athlete.

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Be focused on the performance and not the outcome

Published on January 8, 2021 in Allenatori, Calcio, Corsa, Generale, Giovani, Mental coaching, Olimpiadi, Stress, Tennis and Tiro a volo. 0 Comments Tags: Errore, mentalità, mindset.

I often wonder if it isn’t repetitive to keep talking about thinking about the performance rather than thinking about the result.

Nevertheless, I still find myself talking about this topic with the young people I work with, for the reason that they bring it up. Some says: “I always think about the result of the match, since the day before so I get tense and nervous and this doesn’t help me” or even “I think about the most important match even if it is in a month and not about the ones that come before”. A tennis player: “Before I was always thinking about the point, now I think more about pushing”.

Let’s just say that most athletes are not trained to think about performance, which concerns the behaviors to put in place to achieve the result goals (win, do your personal best, get into the final) but they think more easily of the result of their actions, I won/lost.

Many young people still think that the result should be their main thought.

Athletes must be aware that the mistake is always technical, if a shot in soccer goes out instead of into the goal it means that the ball has been hit badly, but this is only the effect, the question that the athlete and the coach must answer is:

the mistake is technical because the young has tried a shot that he/she does not yet fully possess due to some technical limitation.
the mistake is mental because he/she had to pass the ball, since from that position he/she would never have hit the goal.

The same mistake can be caused by different factors, if the coach continually puts the emphasis only on technique or tactics, the athlete will develop a mentality in which every mistake is always technical and therefore he/she never think to train the mindset.

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The sport psychologist mindset

Published on January 7, 2021 in Allenatori, Calcio, Corsa, Generale, Giovani, Mental coaching, Olimpiadi, Stress, Tennis and Tiro a volo. 0 Comments Tags: atteggiamento, psicologo.

There is a lot of talk about the knowledge and skills of the sport psychologist.
Much less is said about the attitude with which this professional should approach:

The situations that occur in training and competition
The relationship of collaboration with coaches and health staff
The prejudices and expectations of a sports environment regrading the psychologist and his/her role
His/her personal and professional weaknesses
The flexibility and determination with which to propose and carry out their work

Below I propose some attitudes that may be useful to the psychologists as moments to think and evaluate of themselves:

Willingness to listen and observe, limiting as much as possible subjective projections or personal rigidity
Maintain a balance between the proposed program of intervention and the necessary adaptability and flexibility in the face of the needs and problems that emerge in everyday life
Calibrate one’s role and credibility in the relationship with coaches, technical staff and sports managers.
Aptitude and interest in performing a function of facilitation, mediation and animation according to the needs of the group
Being able to find a credible role as a psychologist in the team, with the technical staff, overcoming possible and widespread prejudices
Perceive sufficient confidence and self-esteem in dealing with critical situations and with closed or conflicting groups
Know how to use examples and language typical of the sport environment, based if possible on a real conviction and knowledge.
Be able to illustrate methodologies and suggestions with a language and a degree of detail appropriate to the participants.
Be motivated to perform a function of balanced group facilitation, patient support for growth, or incisive mediation between people. Flexibility in playing different roles in contact with the groupOpenness to recognizing one’s own emotional involvement in following the athletes and being able to distinguish between different individualities and sensitivities, avoiding projection or excessive identification
Knowing how to observe and deal with the social and interpersonal factors present in the team-groups and training groups, to grasp the positive emotional implications and those of conflict.
Know how to propose the degree of appropriate and necessary stimulation for different types of athletes, to raise an appropriate level of arousal and stress, collaborating constructively with the technical staff
Evaluate their professional performance on the basis of sports results, recognizing their own emotional involvement in following the athletes and being able to distinguish between the different individualities and sensitivities, avoiding projection or excessive identification.
Knowing how to observe and deal with the social and interpersonal factors present in the team-groups and training groups, to grasp the positive emotional implications and those of conflict.
Know how to intuit the degree of stimulation appropriate and necessary, for different types of athletes, to raise an appropriate level of arousal and stress, collaborating constructively with the technical staff
Evaluate their professional performance on the basis of sports results. the degree of acceptance of the work done and the involvement of athletes and coaches on what has been proposed.

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The relationship between goals and failures

Published on January 6, 2021 in Allenatori, Calcio, Corsa, Generale, Giovani, Mental coaching, Olimpiadi, Stress, Tennis and Tiro a volo. 0 Comments

“As much as you set your goals too high and are unable to achieve them [skills], your enthusiasm turns to bitterness [motivation]. Seek a more reasonable goal and then gradually surpass it [experience]. That is the only way to get to the top.” (Emil Zatopek).

What happens in the world reveals that often people are not able to accept their limits and negative results, therefore, some give up, some lose confidence in themselves, someone else looks for shortcuts or turns to gurus who should make them change. Still others unknowingly follow Zatopek’s advice and thus continue their journey with renewed enthusiasm.

This sentence should be present in every school classroom, in every locker room or workplace because it explains what attitude to have when faced with mistakes and difficulties. It makes it clear that there are no shortcuts but only commitment and dedication (the sweat Hemingway talked about). Obviously not even the coach or the psychologist can replace this attitude, they can certainly explain that this is the best way to react, but the real work to achieve this thought is the one done by the person who is in difficulty to overcome it, no one can replace him/her.

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The decline of sports for all goes on

Published on January 5, 2021 in Allenatori, Calcio, Corsa, Generale, Giovani, Mental coaching, Stress, Tennis and Tiro a volo. 0 Comments Tags: obesità, sedentarietà, sport per tutti.

Italy: 10 years ago I wrote this blog and I would say that the negative predictions I was making have come true.

This is not a topical issue because it is a constant fact of our daily lives. It is about sport for all. What has been called: sport for everyone. The 80′s and 90′s were those of the increase of active sportsmen and women and the great sports associations reached millions of adherents. It was an incredible success and a great social experience and search for well-being by Italians who had always been a population of sedentary people. Today, however, this drive has been lost, the maximum number of practitioners is in middle school and then decreases steadily: at 20 years old, 40% of girls and 60% of boys do sports, even irregularly; at 30 years old, 30% of women and 50% of men, which at 50 years old are reduced to 20% and 30%.

So what to do?

It is obviously not enough to organize thousands of running races in our cities every Sunday, because this does not increase physical activity. If we don’t want to find ourselves in a few years with a percentage of obese people and growing health problems, it is necessary that those who deal with sports for all get out of the traditional approaches that were so effective more than twenty years ago. We need new ideas, new kinds of collaboration among sports organizations to avoid ending up leading a life divided between home, transportation, school or work, transportation and home. We need to move out of the denunciation phase and into the choice phase.

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Why do you practice sports?

Published on January 5, 2021 in Allenatori, Calcio, Corsa, Generale, Giovani, Mental coaching, Olimpiadi, Stress, Tennis and Tiro a volo. 0 Comments

I often wonder if talking about sports is not a way to escape the most serious problems of the society in which we live. Then I am convinced that sports for all and sports of excellence are significant manifestations of people’s lives.

So much so that even in ancient Greece wars were suspended during the Olympics. Not only that … sport in all its forms and at any level and age is a human expression that allows us to affirm ourselves for the pleasure of doing it (a nice run in a meadow) or because it allows us to self-actualize.

In this way there is room for all desires, for those who want to walk and live their environment in the most natural way they are allowed and for those who want to excel.

Mountaineers are often asked “Why do you want to climb Everest knowing that it is a dangerous undertaking”. The answer is always the same “Because it’s there”. That’s how sport is, an endeavor that everyone can choose how to tackle.

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Italians increasingly fat and sedentary

Published on January 4, 2021 in Allenatori, Calcio, Corsa, Generale, Giovani, Mental coaching, Stress, Tennis, Tiro a volo and Webinar. 0 Comments Tags: obesità sovrappeso, sedentarietà, stile di vita.

In Italy, the plague of sedentary life continues to haunt us, we have always been among the least active Europeans in terms of sports and, above all, in 17 years the percentage of practitioners has increased by only 5.7% while sedentary people have decreased by 2%.

There is no real hope that in the next 10 years this trend will be reversed in a positive way, in the absence of any kind of government policy.

The year that has just begun will certainly not be the year of sport, the one that will encourage people to undertake any kind of motor activity on an ongoing basis.

The only data that increases in Italy is the prevalence of overweight and obesity, so much so that if excess weight affects 1 in 4 children, the share almost doubles among adults, reaching 46.1% among people aged 18 years and over. The highest prevalence is found in both genders in the 65-74 age group (61.1%) and, while the majority of men are overweight from the age of 45, for women this occurs after 65.
In the last 30 years, moreover, an increase in the incidence of excess weight equal to 30 percent has been recorded and the role of the territory of origin emerges strongly.

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Happy 2021

Published on January 4, 2021 in Allenatori, Calcio, Corsa, Generale, Giovani, Mental coaching, Olimpiadi, Stress, Tennis and Tiro a volo. 0 Comments Tags: 2021.

To begin this new year I suggest to read:

Sport psychologist: new tendency and professional development

Sport psychology is a scientific and professional field in continuous development as many other areas of psychology and in the last 10 years occurred several situations that have changed this job deeply. This contribution will be described seven areas regarding these changes. They refer to:

sport psychology and performance psychology
the psychologist in youth programs
sport psychology performance and stress management
sport psychology and mental health of athletes
sport psychology and disability
sport psychology and physically active lifestyle
sport psychology 4.0.

The purpose of this article is to deepen the knowledge in the areas of sport psychology consultancy, providing cues to think where this work context is going and how is moving, stimulating the professionals to develop counseling programs, updated to the new demands of the sport world.

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In soccer players’ talent is not enough to win

Published on January 2, 2021 in Allenatori, Calcio, Corsa, Generale, Giovani, Mental coaching, Olimpiadi, Stress, Tennis and Tiro a volo. 0 Comments Tags: numeri, squadra, statistica, talento, Vincere.

In soccer, as in all team sports, it is good to remember that in order to win, “The champion team beats a team of champions”, indicating that even the ideal team composed of only champions must still integrate the skills of each one despite possessing a priori a better quality potential at the individual level.

So how often does the favored team win?

A statistician Chris Anderson together with a behavioral economist David Sally have studied this phenomenon [2013] and found that in the European soccer championships this happens in just over 50% of the games, the percentage rises to about two-thirds of the time in German handball, USA basketball and football while in baseball it is about 60% of the matches. To understand team performance we must reduce the focus on the intrinsic value of the teams highlighted mainly by the level of individual talent and put more interest in the study of the skills needed to work together.

What to do to increase the likelihood of winning?

An important key parameter for distinguishing winning teams from others relates to the positive/negative connotation and frequency of dialogue between players on the field. It has been shown that the three positive effects most cited by players are:

Increase in player coordination that stimulates mental repetition of critical situations.
Improvement of their concentration and the refining of the precision of their movements.
Increase in their ability to make correct decisions accurately and in the shortest possible time [Farina and Cei, 2019].

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