“You got a choice – you either come in & let your circumstances control your attitude – or you let your attitude control your circumstances.” Attitude is critical to overcoming adversity.
Archive for the 'Tennis' Category
Made a mistake does not mean I am a failure as an athletes. Making a mistake is a specific behavior or event. Telling that I am a loser is a global self-assessment. Telling, I lost this competition is an objective evaluation and open the door to do better the next one.
Too often the athletes say themselves:
I made several mistakes → I failed the race.→ I am a loser.
A right assessment could be:
I made several mistakes during this race → I lost it → I need to talk to the coach (or mental coach) and make a plan to avoid these mistakes.
Do this exercise: Think back to a time wen you lose a competition. Please, rewrite the story so that you don’t condemn yourself as an athletes? Be aware how changing the narrative you tell yourself can improve your confidence.
As psychologists and coaches we will teach to develop in our athletes an open attitude towards mistakes if we are willing to accept that we may even fail in this task.
Are we willing to take this risk by getting 100% involved in this challenge?
Or do we just teach sports or psychological techniques convinced that they are enough to become good athletes and save ourselves from the professional failure?
Teaching young people who want to become expert athletes is a very challenging experience and different from working with adult athletes, who have already reached a high international level. They are young teenagers, boys and girls, who have chosen to devote their lives to the task of discovering if they have the qualities to emerge in sport and to turn their passion into a high-level sports career.
In individual sports, by high level we mean an athlete able to be competitive at the international level. In team sports, we refer to playing, at least, at the level of the two highest level national championships.
We know that once these goals have been set, they must be set aside because the athletes must focus on what they need to do to improve and lead their daily life. We also know that it is not easy to acquire this mentality because of the mistakes that are constantly made. They test the confidence that must support the athletes in reacting immediately to a single error as well as to an unsatisfying performance.
Teaching young people to acquire this open-mindedness to mistakes, interpreting them as the only opportunity, must be the goal of every coach.
Arrigo Sacchi stressed another aspect of this concept, stating that to win you don’t have the problem of winning, otherwise you will never be an innovator.
The objective is therefore “to do things well”, to have a work culture. We all know that “only those who do not do, do not make mistakes”.
If we are aware of this simple truth: we will train our athletes, transferring the idea that making mistakes is a part of the physiology of the race and not something that you can avoid. Let’s train them with this idea and they will become better and more satisfied.
Billy Jean King:
76 years young today, grateful for a life filled with family and friends, and energized to continue to live each day with passion and purpose.
In an interview Novak Djokovic spoke about his co-operation with his coach Goran Ivanisevic. The Serbian player said: “I hired him because we basically have the same culture. Our mentality is very similar, he understands me very well.
I am very respectful towards him because he was the greatest player back in the day in our region and I wanted to be like him. We are friends. He is an amazing, honest and open man and a great player. He knows how it feels like to compete at the highest level.
There are many things to improve. There are days where you do not feel that well. That’s why the coach is very important. He understands how I am doing mentally and physically. So far the relationship has been great and hopefully it continues.”
“It is our attitude at the beginning of a difficult task which, more than anything else, will affect its successful outcome.” William James
Next 6 December at the Olympic Center Papendal (Netherlands), a wonderful session on “Performance Behavior in Elite Sports” will be organised by Team Netherlands in collaboration with TOPSport Vrije Universiteit Brussel
The program is addressed to psychologists and other experts working in elite sport, coaches, athletes, technical directors and sport managers and students. Check the link for registration and details: https://lnkd.in/dcMUct4
With: Paul Wylleman, Maurits G. Hendriks, Chris Harwood, Alberto Cei, Suzan Blijlevens, Jolan Kegelaers, Eveline Folkerts, Hardy Menkehorst, Takeshi KUKIDOME, Thierry SOLER, Urban Johnson, Marc Hendriks, Maria Psychountaki, Petra Huybrechtse, Pieta Van Dishoeck, Nynke Klopstra, Hafrún Kristjánsdóttir, PhD, Anaëlle Malherbe, Tanja Kajtna, Sidonio Serpa, Sylvia Hoppenbrouwers, Eefje Raedts
“To be able to face the youngest I had to reinvent my way to play tennis is constantly evolving.”
Federer shows that we can change even when we are 38.
