How to manage the competitive stress

Published on May 17, 2024 in Allenatori, Calcio, Corsa, Generale, Giovani, Mental coaching, Olimpiadi, Stress, Tennis and Tiro a volo. 0 Comments

The events of high-level sports highlight the necessity of managing stress. The stress of Massimiliano Allegri, the mental fatigue of Atalanta, the stress of those still needing to qualify for the Olympics, and the teams across various disciplines playing in playoffs are just a few examples.

The stress from difficult, long seasons in highly competitive environments generates all kinds of psychological difficulties that athletes must learn to overcome to continue their journeys successfully. It might seem trivial to emphasize the importance of psychological recovery; of course, it is not, but this practice is not as widespread among athletes as it should be.

I would say that relaxation and visualization should be two techniques integrated into an athlete’s daily life. It should be noted that relaxation leads to:

  • Better physical recovery
  • Better sleep
  • Freer and less stressful thoughts
  • Greater ability to distance oneself from daily events
  • Ability to recover quickly from stressful situations

Imagination, on the other hand, leads to:

  • Ability to immerse oneself in competitive situations
  • Better ability to focus on the present
  • Ability to stop thoughts that hinder performance
  • Better contact and awareness of one’s emotional states
  • Ability to shift from thoughts/emotions that hinder performance to those that enhance it

In essence, anyone experiencing significant and meaningful competitive situations should train psychologically in this way to avoid the risk of suffering from stress without having acquired the skills to reduce it. Unfortunately, many athletes still do not understand the value of this type of training. This often happens due to superficiality, closed-mindedness, fear of staying in touch with themselves, superficiality, and the presumption of already knowing how to handle it on their own.

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Max Allegri ‘s anger

Published on May 16, 2024 in Allenatori, Calcio, Corsa, Generale, Giovani, Mental coaching, Stress, Tennis and Tiro a volo. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Negative moments of anger can occur in a coach’s life, but they must be managed so as not to overwhelm one’s self-control. This seems to be what Massimiliano Allegri did not do during the last minutes of the Coppa Italia final and during the awards ceremony.

Losing self-control is a serious matter for anyone. It involves nearly canceling out any form of control usually present in interpersonal relationships and acting solely on emotional pressure, which blocks every logical and rational thought in the mind. Being enthusiastic or being angry are two extremes of the same continuum, one positive and the other negative, representing two different ways of investing the physical and mental energy available.

In both cases, emotions took over rational thought, which in these moments amplifies with words what the moods represent at that time. One can act in this way during the game to draw attention to oneself, to relieve pressure from one’s team, and to intimidate the referee.

Allegri is a winning coach, so it is even more surprising that he would indulge in these outbursts of anger. Whatever shortcomings he may have observed in the club’s management, he has nonetheless achieved the goals that were set for him. This would have been the response to counter criticism, not verbal violence and uncontrolled gestures.

However, history cannot be undone, and we will see in the coming days what kind of actions Allegri and those who were the object of his reactions will take.

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Sport and peace

Published on May 13, 2024 in Allenatori, Calcio, Corsa, Generale, Giovani, Mental coaching, Olimpiadi, Stress, Tennis and Tiro a volo. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

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The loneliness curve

Published on May 12, 2024 in Allenatori, Calcio, Corsa, Generale, Giovani, Mental coaching, Olimpiadi, Stress, Tennis and Tiro a volo. 0 Comments Tags: .

Loneliness in adulthood follows a U-shaped pattern: it’s higher in younger and older adulthood, and lowest during middle adulthood, reports a new Northwestern Medicine study that examined nine longitudinal studies from around the world.

The study also identified several risk factors for heightened loneliness across the whole lifespan, including social isolation, sex, education and physical impairment.

“What was striking was how consistent the uptick in loneliness is in older adulthood,” said corresponding author Eileen Graham, associate professor of medical social sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “There’s a wealth of evidence that loneliness is related to poorer health, so we wanted to better understand who is lonely and why people are becoming lonelier as they age out of midlife so we can hopefully start finding ways to mitigate it.”

Lacking connection can increase the risk for premature death to levels comparable to smoking daily, according to the office of the U.S. Surgeon General, who one year ago called for action to address America’s loneliness epidemic. Graham said her findings underscore the need for targeted interventions to reduce social disparities throughout adulthood to hopefully reduce levels of loneliness, especially among older adults.

Perhaps one day general practitioners could assess levels of loneliness during regular wellness visits to help identify those who might be most at risk, Graham said.

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Engaging in self-development

Published on May 9, 2024 in Allenatori, Calcio, Corsa, Generale, Giovani, Mental coaching, Olimpiadi, Stress, Tennis and Tiro a volo. 0 Comments Tags: .

You cannot become a responsible, autonomous adult or a winning athlete if you always have to obey someone, even if it is your boss or your best coach.

Those who live this way become dependent on the choices of others, who tell them how to do it. It is a cage one has put oneself in, and although comfortable because one can always blame others for one’s mistakes, it limits personal development.

One must strive, study, work or compete, for oneself/and not to fulfill the ambitions of others. One must learn to apologize only when one does not give 100% effort and not for the mistakes one makes.

We need to learn that anxiety is a demonstration of the importance we give to what we are going to do, so we use this energy to do our best and not to scare ourselves. Let’s use the breath to reduce tension and recover, let’s shift the energy into always encouraging ourselves, let’s put an idea in our heads and go for it.

We will not always get the best result, as so many factors can interfere along this path but we will always have acted to our best, which is all that matters.

Any athlete would like to win every race, but it is not possible. We have to be patient with ourselves and give ourselves time to learn from mistakes and defeats, because they show us the way to improve.

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To learn from mistakes: a very demanding change

Published on May 6, 2024 in Allenatori, Calcio, Corsa, Generale, Giovani, Mental coaching, Olimpiadi, Stress, Tennis and Tiro a volo. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Wanting to learn from mistakes is a positive and necessary desire, but it’s also truly challenging to put into practice. A first obstacle lies in maintaining this motivation continuously during the competitive season.

A second aspect concerns maintaining it even when the athlete feels prepared and fit and would expect to perform at their best because of this condition. Forgetting that the environment of the competition, the opponent, and the importance of the competitions are other factors that influence how they will compete.

A third aspect, closely related to the previous one, lies in the presumption of thinking that since one is in good shape, it will be assumed that they will make few mistakes and everything will go well. Being surprised if this doesn’t happen. Thinking about winning rather than thinking about how to play at one’s best is considered to be a performance killer.

A fourth aspect refers to the emotional component triggered by the mistake. The athlete knows the reasons for the mistake and would know how to change, but they allow themselves to be dominated by the frustration of the mistake and emotions of anger, disappointment, or guilt instead of encouraging themselves. In this way, even if they think correctly, the negative mood towards themselves prevents them from effectively implementing their choice.

Mental training should focus on teaching the young athlete to overcome these negative mental states, stimulate constant forms of encouragement, and develop a positive self-dialogue.

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Commemorate the Great Torino

Published on May 4, 2024 in Allenatori, Calcio, Corsa, Generale, Giovani, Mental coaching, Olimpiadi, Stress, Tennis and Tiro a volo. 0 Comments Tags: .

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Paul Auster, 1947- 2024

Published on May 3, 2024 in Generale. 0 Comments

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Those who learn from mistakes succeed

Published on May 2, 2024 in Allenatori, Calcio, Corsa, Generale, Giovani, Mental coaching, Olimpiadi, Stress, Tennis and Tiro a volo. 0 Comments Tags: .

One of the reasons why athletes fail to give their best regardless of the outcome is that they don’t engage in mental training. This means that, in addition to exercises that put them in good physical condition, they don’t practice exercises that can help them mentally. For many, mental performance is considered nothing more than an extension of physical performance, without any dedicated attention.

Unfortunately, this belief is often deeply rooted, and athletes, when faced with their mistakes, instead of reacting with more attention and determination, feel guilty and demotivated. This is particularly common in the social media era, so it’s important to train athletes to be more aware of the reasons for their mistakes, which can be used as opportunities to do better. This is not easy, but athletes should use psychological techniques to overcome these difficult moments.

This type of interpretation differentiates successful athletes from others: those who do not accept and learn from their mistakes will be unable to fully develop their resources.

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The numbers of youth distress are dramatic

Published on April 29, 2024 in Allenatori, Calcio, Corsa, Generale, Giovani, Mental coaching, Olimpiadi, Stress, Tennis and Tiro a volo. 0 Comments

The numbers of youth distress published by Repubblica.it are dramatic. They reveal that 2 million young people between the ages of 10 and 20 suffer from mental disorders. They experience school poorly and feel inadequate. It’s the failure of the school system that doesn’t prepare them for life, providing teachings to improve competence, autonomy, and relational skills. It’s also the failure of parents who haven’t been able to educate their children to become aware adults of their own abilities and responsibilities. It’s the failure of the state that doesn’t provide an educational system centered on personal development.

The hope is that networks of teachers and parents will be formed to promote ways to address this situation, involving psychologists but also implementing initiatives that can teach adolescents their value as individuals regardless of any other assessment.

There isn’t much time to help these young people because if we wait for them to leave school, this work will be much more difficult due to the difficulty of bringing them together, but above all because they will have spent crucial years despairing.

 

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