From my experience in opposition and individual sports, such as tennis, table tennis, and badminton, it seems to me that the difference between athletes lies essentially in their ability to think and act accordingly.
I observe that many young people, boys and girls, demonstrate technique at a good level but fail to put it into action because they are dominated by their emotional condition, determined in large part by not knowing how to guide their thoughts, so the first mistakes are followed by others because there is no brake to limit them.
In this regard, some time ago I had been struck by the thoughts of some girls who at a tournament had seen higher level tennis players play and had said that in their opinion they did not play better because of better technique but were more consistent in their play, regardless of the mistakes they made.
Thinking better means putting in place the tactics, the game that is useful to play at a given moment. This is what seems to me to be conspicuously lacking in many young people, they think about the technique they would like to be perfect, they experience mistakes as a serious thing that shouldn’t happen, therefore, they get stubborn in looking for the knockout blow instead of thinking about throwing the ball to the other side of the court and saving the point. Then at the end of the point they should use their routine to reduce their stress and restart from a game thought and put it into practice.
They are not used to thinking is that technique is improved in training while in the game you have to play your best aware of your strengths and weaknesses and reacting with a constructive mindset to every mistake, because in the end the one who has made fewer than the opponent will dominate.
The sport psychologist should support the work of coaches in teaching young people this different mental approach. To do this work it is important to remember that the key points of this mental preparation for the game are: routine between points, talking to oneself and visualizing the actions of the game.
0 Responses to “Thinking drive actions”