Monthly Archive for February, 2021
Page 2 of 3
The 16-year-old Dutch girl, Maya Weug, will move to Maranello and in 2021 will take part in all the activities of the academy, she is the first girl to enter Ferrari’s Driver Academy. “When you lower the visor of the helmet we are all equal, you can no longer see the difference between male and female…. Entering this academy is a great feeling. To be the first woman to get in here is historic, I’m happy to be able to prove that it’s possible to do it.”
Maya’s arrival at the same school attended by Mick, Schumi’s son, is a tangible sign of the Scuderia’s commitment to making motorsport increasingly inclusive. Marco Matassa, Director of the Ferrari Driver Academy: “We are very happy to welcome Maya to the Ferrari Driver Academy. We were impressed by her dedication and preparation both from an athletic point of view and in terms of her approach to competition”.
Maya Weug herself states, “I will remember this day forever! I am beside myself with joy at becoming the first Ferrari Driver Academy driver. Winning the final round of the FIA ‘Girls on Track – Rising Stars’ program makes me realize that I have done well in pursuing my dream all these years. I will give it my all.”
What is the Italian female skiers lacking? Probably the total involvement with their performance while instead dominating a mental condition of anxiety and excessive worry.
Peak performance is provided by the athlete whose mental condition is called the “flow state” or “ideal performance state” and in this condition the person is totally absorbed by the task relevant components. It was a matter of asking athletes to develop knowledge around a relatively simple idea: “If you are physically present in a given situation, why aren’t you fully present? What does it take for your mind to also be fully engaged in this competition?”
Already in the 1980s, Orlick and Partington interviewing world-class Canadian athletes found that for them it was of fundamental importance to be, before the start of the competition, in a condition of global involvement, a state of mental readiness that almost resembled a form of dream come true. The same regards the top professional golfers. The dominant image in these golfers, an expression of total absorption in the task was as follows: to be focused only on the shot that is about to be executed and on nothing else inside or outside.
People then develop a strategy that allows them to be totally absorbed in the task, which starts with the use of methods that encourage learning and refining a particular task. The pianist, Alicia del la Rocha to optimize the execution of difficult passages of a score uses a strategy based on playing them in a slower, almost whispered way. Time management is also essential in this path of concentration, not everyone should use the approach of the German writer Goethe who claimed that the “early hours of the morning have gold in their mouth”. While there are differences in the conception of what the best hours to work are, it has nonetheless been shown that those who structure their writing time prove effective, just as those who devote more time to their activity are more likely to achieve the desired results. Thus, in any activity, expertise is fostered by the quantity and quality of time spent combined with its temporal organization.
A practical application of this approach can be found in the description that Alessandro Del Piero gives about wanting to learn a certain way to kick a free kick: “At the World Cup in Italy ’90 I was very impressed by Schillaci’s goal against Uruguay … I remember that after every training session at the Comunale, I stopped to try free kicks, especially that famous shot by Schillaci. The coach would sometimes ask me what I was still doing on the field, and he would ask me to stop so that I wouldn’t get too tired. I went on anyway, on my own. I would fix the ball, making a kind of small hole with my shoe, and I worked a lot on the support foot. In short, I wanted to recreate the conditions that had produced that famous shot, and in the end I succeeded: it was a Bologna-Juventus match, we won 3-1 and I finally scored that blessed ball in that blessed way”.
Today I started a new professional story with Francesco D’Aniello. We met in 2000 or maybe a year or two before. He was a shooter of the Fiamme Oro at the beginning of a successful sporting career that then he had with the peaks obtained by winning 2 world championships and the silver medal in Beijing in shooting. We worked together for many years, every week on the shooting range in Lunghezza, Rome. I didn’t take part in the competitions abroad because I didn’t work for the federation but we met anyway, I took part in the competitions with athletes from other countries and so we had the opportunity to confront each other on the range.
Becoming a champion has never been easy and requires not only time and intelligent practice but also an intense mental investment supported by an equally intense mental preparation. For many years we met, together with his coach Pierluigi Pescosolido, another historical collaboration in my career, practically every week, including the cold months from December to February, when most shooters dedicated little time to training. With Pescosolido we organized training sessions always based on the quality of the technical action and never on quantity. The philosophy was: better to shoot less but well, always training both technique and concentration. When I say that we saw each other often, I mean that we spent at least 50 days a year together and continuously for at least 10 years. I mention this because today many young people even in shooting think that just a few meetings or a few months are enough to reach an optimal level of performance. There is nothing more untrue while the superficiality of this reasoning is demonstrated.
The novelty is that today Francesco D’Aniello manages the Lunghezza range and I have started to work with his group of young shooters. So the story starts all over again, educating and mentally training young people to learn to train mentally, in a sport like trap shooting in which stay focused is decisive for excellent performance. For me it is a positive stimulus, because it is a matter of starting again from the basic elements of mental skills, giving these young people time to learn and to confront their fears in competition and discover who will be more toughness and desire to continue in this path that is very demanding and does not guarantee results.
With Francesco we will try to transmit above all the passion for improvement regardless of the race results, the value of intelligent commitment for itself and not for what they can achieve.
National survey: Educational Poverty in Children and Youth in Italy
Economic poverty is often caused by educational poverty. The two feed off each other and are passed on from generation to generation.
In Italy, the most affected group by poverty is children. In 2005, 3.9% of minors under the age of 18 lived in absolute poverty and that number currently triples and exceeds 12%. In today’s Italy, the younger a person is, the more likely is to experience absolute poverty.
Educational poverty, on the other hand, prevents too many boys, girls, and young people from having equal “opportunities” for growth, by lacking access to child services, education, training courses, culture, musical education and art, sports, meeting places, and health care. Fighting against educational poverty, therefore, becomes a fundamental action for the development of the country. A real change is possible only by guaranteeing all minors equal access to quality education. To achieve this, there should be a common link between the local educational institutions, primarily between schools and families, but also between educational institutions and organisations from the third sector. By and large, it is a process that involves all those who are part of the “educational community”, including the children themselves, who from being recipients of services become protagonists in their own future.
Nielsen’s review of 2019 ratings in the US shows that almost all of the most-watched content is from the traditional sport behemoths. So it might seem surprising that there is little complacency in the boardrooms of major sports rightsholders that I’ve visited recently around the world.
The dawning reality is that the coming generation, those now aged 16-24, are far from certain to slot neatly into the lucrative sports consumer franchise developed since the invention of mass media in the 1950s. Declining attendance and viewership is already a reality for those not evolving quickly enough. It is time to act.
There are a number of key differences with this new generation which stem from the environment they’ve grown up in. They have higher expectations for entertainment experiences than their elders, and new ways to discover and consume content.
Data from the Nielsen Fan Insights study across eight different markets (China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, the UK and the US) reveals that those aged 16-24 prefer shorter, “snackable” content and, from a sporting standpoint, are less inclined to watch entire games.
This doesn’t mean that their attention spans are shorter – if the content is sufficiently engaging and provides regular opportunities to interact, they are still prepared to invest meaningful time. Fans of watching online video gaming in the US provide a case in point – 29% under the age of 25 state that they watch continuously for one to two hours, whilst 14% watch for three to four hours at a time.
Another myth worth busting is that this generation has no money, or is unwilling to pay for content. Our research shows Gen Z consumers are not averse to paying for premium content, but they are increasingly expecting a tailored value proposition – that is, they want to be able to pay purely for what they want, where and when, and without any long-term contractual commitment.
Largely for these reasons, they are helping to drive the increasing tendency amongst consumers to ‘cut the cord’ on traditional pay-TV subscriptions. And what they want to watch is also shifting towards a larger share of more authentic original content, for example behind-the-scenes, documentaries, etc. They want to be closer to their favourite sports and players beyond just watching a game or a sporting event.
The growth in the streaming of live sport does not necessarily equate to the demise of big screen viewing, though – for example, DAZN states that almost two-thirds of consumption of its platform is still via the TV, with mobile devices only used when necessary. In Australia, 58% of viewing on the Kayo Sports OTT service since launching in November 2018 has been via the big screen. And, of course, a larger proportion of this new generation is still living at home, compared to previous cohorts, so will be watching on the family big screen or escaping to the local sports bar.
Marquez now needs a psychologist.
This is what Alberto Cei, the psychotherapist of the sportsmen, says.
- Confidence - He is not only confident, but he tries to make his team have the same feeling. According to the player, “In some degrees, I think you can fake until you make it, and I think you can show enthusiasm and confidence even when it’s just beginning. As a leader, you have to bring it to the team.”
- Work under pressure - In the past he often lost his temper when he was under pressure. Of course, there is a lot of adrenaline when you are playing, but Brady was often seeing screaming at his coach’s face or at anyone who he believed was on his way. Now he knows how to do under pressure and he became much more mature.
- Understand his adversary - Tom Brady doesn’t just spend a lot of time improving his moves and motivating the team. The best way to beat your opponents is by knowing how they think and predicting their next step. Tom Brady knows it, and before a match, he thoroughly analyses the other team and studies their strategies and moves. This dedication gives him and his team advantage on the competition.
- Be competitive - Tom Brady is known for being “the most competitive person you will ever meet.” Of course, there are some downsides of it: we have seen his anger when he loses. Teammates revealed that he gave the team a pep-talk to make sure they would win a charity game against an amateur team.
- Deals with constructive criticism - Tom Brady is one of the best quarterback of all time. But Bill Belichick, his former coach, didn’t hold back when he needs to call Brady’s attention to his behavior on a match or when he doesn’t deliver what was expected. Brady recognizes the need for that criticism.
- Great communication - Tom Brady is a master of communication. Josh McDaniels, the Patriots offensive coordinator, praised Brady for his ability to communicate with players of all ages.
- Works hard and love it - ”I just love working hard. I love being part of a team. I love working toward a common goal,” the athlete revealed during an interview. His dedication also motivates the team to be committed and work just as hard as he does.
- Have a supportive family – Tom Brady is married to Gisele Bündchen. He has three children, two of them with the Brazilian model, and all the family is very proud of his success and very supportive. Gisele celebrated when Tom Brady won his sixth Super Bowl. She shared a family picture, praising the player for his “tireless commitment, discipline and hard work.”
- Take responsibilities - As a great leader, Tom Brady takes responsibility for his actions and also for his team. When the Patriots were not on their best shape, we often saw the quarterback saying it was his fault. In 2018, after the Patriots lost a game, he affirmed that “it was definitely my fault.”
- Take a rest - “Proper sleep has helped me get to where I am today as an athlete, and it is something that I continue to rely on every day,” Brady said. During the offseason, he goes easier on himself and we often see Tom Brady and his family enjoying life on Costa Rica, where they have a house.
The championship of the totems, writes today Maurizio Crosetti on Repubblica. They are CR7 and Ibrahimovic, respectively 36 and 39 years old, dragging Juventus and Milan despite their age.
They are not the only ones, Tom Brady is 43, LeBron James 36, Federer 39 to name but a few.
Why continue to talk about them, everything has already been said.
Yes, they are champions, but they have something to teach everyone, and that is besides their talent and winning mindset, they tell us that the secret of their long sporting life is in the continuous search for physical fitness, to take care of themselves at 360 degrees.
A question: How many non-sportspeople, i.e. the majority of the population, have ever stopped to reflect on the fact that personal well-being is largely based on physical fitness?
