Monthly Archive for June, 2022
Page 3 of 3
- It is thought to be imposed
- It is believed to be useless
- It is believed to be impossible
- It is thought to have already given much
- For lack of information
- People don’t listen
- One is impulsive
- One feels incapable
- One does not see the benefits
- One has always done that way
- One is afraid of making mistakes
- One thinks about something else
- One is too busy
- One is suspicious
- One is arrogant
Goal: Practice sport requires to the young athlete to develop specific mental and interpersonal most of which will be useful to succeed not only in this setting but also at school and in the daily life.
Coaching and competitions are real situations where the young show their competences and their desire to do the best in the respect of the rules. Also UN and CIO have been written guidelines in this direction, recognizing the great role played by sport in the human growth of the children and adolescents.
Starting from this perspectives this program propose to develop specific mental and interpersonal skills in the young with the collaboration of their coaches.
The main skills that could be learned and developed are the following:
- Learn from the experiences made during the sessions and in competition
- Techniques to relaxation and stress management
- Techniques of mental warm-up
- Visualization of the sport performance
- How to focus in the shooting sports
- The role of mental rehearsal in the shooting sports
- The positive dialogue: how to encourage ourselves through the self-talk
- How to react to the errors
- How to cooperate with the coaches
Mental repetition of a movement, even as simple as raising an arm or as complex as performing a high jump, results in a moderate increase in the level of activation of the muscle districts involved in the actual execution. It is a process analogous to that which takes place in the actual movement and also results in feedback information to the brain that is perceptible to the subject. It occurs in the following way:
1. The person imagines jumping focusing on the action of the legs (information from the brain to the muscles)
2. The leg muscles contract (effect on the muscles of mental repetition)
3. The person feels the sensations from that part of the body (information back from the muscles to the brain).
This result is known under the name Carpenter effect and confirms the relevance of thought to movement. Mental repetition immediately before a motor or sports performance puts the body in a condition of physical and psychological readiness that predisposes the individual to perform it effectively.
Nadal reminds us that his philosophy is, “I don’t let go, I look for the solution in every moment, we see how far my opponent can go, he has to give his best to win.”
To achieve this mindset, we need to orient young people to:
- Plan, monitor and adjust their thoughts more in relation to different tasks.
- Focus on the task, improve goal monitoring and willingness to change strategy after a negative result.
The role of the coach:
- Encourage reflection and provide strategies for improvement after mistakes. Strategies may involve technical aspects or the demand for more effort and persistence.
- Show enthusiasm, with high interaction, defined goals and supportive feedback.
A survey by the Ipsos Research Institute on mobility and the Italian perception of the bike:
- 49% Italians own a bike.
- 30% say they use it to engage in motor activity
- 10% to get to work
- 6% of Italians do not have access to a car they can use
- 8% say they use bike share.
- 37% recount that they use it at least twice a week
- 13% say it is their primary mode of transportation
- 88% believe that using bikes is the best way to reduce CO2 emissions and traffic
- 62% state that riding a bicycle in their living area is dangerous,
- 71% think that new mobility projects should prioritize bikes over cars.
- 50% of those looking for a bike want it electric (Source: Idealo)
If on the day the final of a tournament played against the all-time opponents, Argentina, the analysis of the Italian national soccer team’s patita is presented on page 8 of Gazzetta dello Sport it means something very negative. The heroes of Wembley, as they are still rhetorically called, are no longer such but have been reduced to the role of sparring partners. On the contrary, the theme dominating the Gazzetta today is the purchase of Milan by a U.S. fund. It is true that the newspaper sells widely in Milan and this justifies the 7 pages on Milan. On the other hand, this enthusiasm is also demonstrated by the 250% increase in sales at the Milan store.
In an era when what matters is winning, it seems consistent to me that a team that loses too often like Italy does not arouse interest, not least because the most important players (Donnarumma, Jorginho, and Verratti) do not play for Italian teams and almost no one plays for the top four teams in Serie A. Another good reason for fans not to be passionate about a team in which they do not recognize players from their teams.
Also, I wonder what interest foreign funds and owners have in developing young players through youth activities, when their primary interest is to build a stadium they own (only 7 % of stadiums are not reported to be publicly owned). They also come from an American culture where it is colleges and universities that train young athletes who will then play in professional clubs.
It seems to me that with the entry of these new owners our soccer sports model is changing at great speed, and that is not necessarily a bad thing. I would like to know from those within these new paths what the interest and goals are for youth activity.
The reason is obviously economic. In fact, if there are 833,000 registered players in youth activity, corresponding to about 20 percent of the Italian male population between the ages of 5 and 16 is registered with the Federcalcio, how is it ever possible that we are not training absolute level players? The reason is economic since training a young footballer is very expensive and requires a commitment of years, the shortcut is to take one left without a contract in his home country who will go to play in the spring team, where they have currently become 33%.
