On 28 July 1948 the first sports games for athletes with disabilities were held, organised by neurologist Ludwig Guttmann.
Archive for the 'Olimpiadi' Category
On the occasion of the 50st Anniversary of the International Journal of Sport Psychology and
the publication of next special issue dedicated to the history of sport psychology from the 70′s up today by Sidonio Serpa, Fabio Lucidi and Alberto Cei.
We want to highlight how at the beginning of the 70s, the affirmation of this discipline in the world of absolute sport performance was very limited. To a large extent athletes did not follow psychological preparation programs and psychologists did not attend in the most important events such as the Olympics.
At the end of the Olympic Games in Munich -1972, Ferruccio Antonelli addressed many psychologists asking “to write some short observations under psychological point of view“. Nine sent a short commentary and were published in No. 2, 1972 of the Journal.
The historical value of this initiative by Antonelli and of remembering it today, consists in documenting how the affirmation of the sport psychology applied to high-level sport has been a long and slow process. And it took about 15 years to have at Los Angeles – 1984 Olympic Games a significant number of sports psychologists on the Olympic teams.
In general, the comments denounce the lack of attention to psychology by sports organizations and sports medicine.
J. Cratty (USA), p.99:
“During the Pre-Olympic Scientific Conference, I was questioning daily why there were no psychologists accompanying the American Team. A question which I couldn’t answer, and which proved personally unsettling, particularly, when viewed in the light of subsequent performance and incidences… it is hoped that in future games trained professionals to offer emotional support for athletes will be as common as are the presently available personnel for their physical health.”
J. Ferrer-Hombravella (Spain), p.100:
“Beaucoup d’observations a Munich nous prouvent que les bases de la psychologie du sport sont ignorées par beaucoup de personnes et beaucoup des médecins sportifs inclus.”
H. Rieder (German Fed. Rep.), p.103:
“Sport continues to regard psychology exclusively as a spectacular means of improvising performance without showing any interest in an unconditional and willing cooperation as far as the rather troublesome work of conducting tests and evaluating empirical data is concerned.”
M. Vane (Czechoslovakia), p. 105-106:
We need “Individualization in the care of the competitor (guidance) starting with his education and self-education and ending with intentional psycho-prophylactic, psychoigienic and psycho therapeutic means … it is necessary to point out the development of individualized techniques of cool-up and warm-up directed to an optimization of activation level of the athlete. Th advantage of a cooperation between coach, physician, psychologist and masseur is the evident.”
A growth-oriented mindset is revealed when an athlete is convinced that his/her most basic skills can be developed through dedication and hard work, with the knowledge that intelligence and talent are only the starting point. This idea of themselves lays the foundations for researching and appreciating learning and creates a resistance to adversity essential to achieving a great result.
Based on these ideas, one can say that an athlete with a growth-oriented mentality in his/her daily life and in the most stressful events demonstrates these beliefs:
- You grow up, you learn.
- Intelligence and talent are the basic start point of any success story
- Challenges and mistakes are the only opportunity to learn
- Maximum commitment, greater competence
- Time and hard work are the best ways to improve
- Giving up on commitment is the only real kind of failure
- Setbacks are a sign of the need to work harder and more consciously
- Competitors’ success is stimulating and motivating
- Failure is the best learning tool
- Feedback and criticism are essential for progress and development
How often do you think like that?
The understanding of motivational processes is undoubtedly one of the topics that has always aroused the interest of sports psychology scholars.
Once they asked the great mountaineer George Mallory (1886-1924) why he wanted to climb Everest and he answered “Because is there.”
In few words he explained the inwardness and intensity of the motivation but it will take decades to begin to understand what it is; what it is “this hypothetical construct used to describe the internal and/or external forces that produce the beginning, direction, intensity and persistence of behavior” (Vallerand and Thill, 1993).
To reflect, what is your concept of:
- Commitment
- Difficulty of the task
- Impossible is nothing! Is it true or not? And why?
- How do you learn to set short and long-term goals?
Commitment is today an important thought to place at the centre of our daily lives.
Commitment is for the athletes and their staff who train in a period that was usually full of competitions, while today this happens only for some sports. Commitment is also feeling that your body does not respond to our stimulations as it did, because we have not trained or only partially trained.
Commitment is to keep our motivation and enthusiasm high even if we do not know what will happen in the coming months. Never as now it’s necessary to accept the present we live in, live it intensely without the certainties of the past and the precise planning of the future.
Commitment is also required in living everyday life in a responsible way, our habits or carelessness can change not only our lives but also those of other people. We prevent with our actions the spread of the virus, so we must be careful and think that the enemy even if it is not visible is still present.
