“Sport has the ability to change the perception
of the community about people with a disability
and, more importantly,
how people with a disability think and feel about themselves.”
Richard Nicholson, nine-time Paralimpic gold medallist
Archive for the 'Generale' Category
Everybody has a hard job. All real work is hard. My work happened also to be undoable. Morning after morning for 50 years, I faced the next page defenceless and unprepared. Writing for me was a feat of self-preservation. If I did not do it, I would die. So I did it. Obstinacy, not talent, saved my life.
In sports as in every other area of our lives we make mistakes. The perfect performance does not exist. Each performance is a mixture of skills and mistakes; usually win who commits fewer mistakes.
The mistakes are everywhere and they are an important part of human performance. We can’t hide from our mistakes. In addition, the result of the mistakes are always technical aspects, we see the athletes who are accelerating or slowing too much their actions, which miss a shot, too stiff to move, pulling the serve ball in the net and so on. Otherwise the cause of these mistakes can be attributed to different aspects. In fact, the mistake can be caused by different factors, going from technical incompetence to difficulties to manage the competitive stress, lack of concentration or because the athletes are too tired.
“When people feel stressed, of course, they no longer feel safe and are further inhibited in practicing new ways of acting. Instead they become defensive, relying on their most familiar habits … For all these reasons, learning … works best under conditions where people feel safe – but not so relaxed that they lose motivation. There’s an optimal level of brain arousal that helps people to learn, the state which both motivation and interest are high. A sense of psychological safety creates an atmosphere in which people can then experiment with little risk of embarrassing or fear of the consequences of failure” (From: D. Goleman, R. Boyatzis e A.MkKeee, Primal Leadership).
Since three years from the beginning of the project “Football Together”, we will attend in Roma at a tournament of integrated football between our guys and those of Totti Soccer School.
Talk, share ideas are part of the coaching. Many athletes complain that they are not listened to by their coaches, that when they make a mistake get upset, in practice often ignore them, that’s just ask to train more and when they perform bad they tell them they have no confidence in themselves or have to concentrate more.
If human beings could change only by these sentences no one would have ever problems, since the first mistake the athletes would know immediately what to do and it would correct automatically. “Are you nervous? Cool down! Are you distracted? Focus! Are you afraid? Think positively! “. We know, thanks to our everyday experiences, that this approach is good for nothing, but when many of us are taking a leading role, as a parent, teacher or coach, we forget this simple truth and we start to claim from others they will change their behaviors through these simple statements.
When the coach behaves in this way, he acts like a person who ignores the value of the performance psychological component, that is to say to have the expertise to provide a high level of performance, it does not mean doing if at that time you are afraid or not confident. Confidence that doesn’t automatically comes only increasing the load of the workout.
Adrian Moorhouse, former British swimmer, gold in Seoul and now successful entrepreneur of a large consulting company, said “The only thing my coach has not done for me is swimming.”
Daniel Costantini, former French national handball coach, world champion and best world coach for the International Handball Federation said “I felt I had to change my workout in nature but not in the nature of my relationship with the players. I launched this participation approach, leading a team with the Socrates’ maieutics.”
Alex Ferguson wrote “in the middle of the game we seemed doomed, but as I said at the end of that season: In a crisis situation you just calm people.” We scored five goals and we won.”
We could continue with other evidence to confirm the value of dialogue and sharing between coach and athlete. Two questions: why don’t many coaches behave in this way? Why are they unaware of the importance of dialogue with the athlete?
I recommend reading the excellent book by Hubert Ripoll, Le mental des coaches, 2102, Paris: Payot.
The profession of sport psychologist in Italy is not as widespread as one would expect for many reasons linked to our cultural backwardness both in sport than in the academic world. Among these reasons, there is one that concerns the lack of knowledge by managers and coaches of where and to whom to direct their offers of counseling psychology of sport for their clubs.
Often the choice of the sport psychologist occurs through the direct or indirect personal knowledge. Everyone knows doctors, but no one would think to go to an orthopedic surgeon when needed instead of a cardiologist or viceversa. In many people’s minds is dominant the idea that to work in sports is enough to be psychologists and not sport psychologists.
The reaction of the psychologist who are offered this opportunity is immediately positive but shortly after he began the frantic search for a colleague who is sport psychologist to talk to and ask for advice on what to do. Result: the psychologist will present to the club a program that includes the implementation of skills that she does not have and will bring discredit on the sport psychologist profession.
How to reduce this problem? The answer: the sport psychologists should be able to document their work, describing:
- the request and the hypothesis
- the method used
- the results obtained
- the future implications for other activities
This approach would allow the sports psychologists to gain greater credibility with regard to the professional sports world, it would be a stimulus to research how to support their interventions and to share on a wider audience their activity.
We need to get out from logic “believe in me” and become carriers of a culture of data-driven work.
With this aim the Italian journal of sport psychology, Movimento has planned to publish a special issue devoted to best practices in sport psychology open also to the contributes coming from other countries.
Those interested can send an abstract to this email address by June 30. I am at your disposal for any further clarification.
