Tag Archive for 'Bannister'

To understand the relation between difficulty and performance

The relationship between difficulty and performance is still poorly understood, especially when you want to examine the subjective perception of difficulty. “Impossible is nothing” is the motto of a multinational sports company, on the one hand it is not true because we will never be able to run as fast as a cheetah, but it is equally true that “records are made to be beaten” and to do so we must overcome that limit beyond which no one has gone before.

This was the case for Roger Bannister, who on May 6, 1954 was the first to accomplish a feat considered impossible by doctors: running the English mile (1609.23 meters) under 4 minutes (3’59″4). His record lasted just 46 days, the Australian John Landy brought it to 3’58″0, this was possible because Bannister had broken an insurmountable door beyond which there are all passed and summarized his feat with these few words: “The secret is always that, the ability to bring out what you do not have or do not know you have.

The same was true for Reinhold Messner when on August 20, 1980 he became the first man to accomplish another feat considered impossible by science, climbing Everest (8.848 meters) without the use of oxygen, and then going on to climb all 14 eight-thousand with this approach.

The experiences of these athletes seem to support the value of having specific goals as mediators between difficulty and performance. It consists of a person’s belief that he or she will achieve the set goal. Therefore, the choice of difficulty level will depend on how comfortable an athlete is with choosing moderate, high, or extreme difficulty goals and this will depend on how convinced he or she feels in his or her condition.

The fall of Maria Sharapova

I always brought Maria Sharapova as an example to handle the compettive stress with her routine at the end of each point. “Learn from her,” I said to the girls and boys playing tennis, probably only Jonny Wilkinson, rugby, has a routine so well defined and effective way to stay cool under pressure. Young people had to take a cue from her, not by passively imitate a way of being but to understand that we must have an effective system to manage the anxiety, she was a model. Well now all this has disappeared, because this job to improve her ability to manage the stress was done by meldonium. And then I hear the talk of these days: “If you want to stay in the first hundreds you need an help”, “Look at so and so, they sometimes stop because someone have warned them that otherwise would have been accused of doping”. Writes Maurizio Crosetti on La Repubblica: “The superstar rigged almost always falls with a crash, like a redwood, but in that trunk failure was ancient and invisible, something very internal and dark.” Sports betrayed in its emotions, in being the realization of dreams, in that aesthetic beauty combined with the competitiveness that leads to deal with others, to fulfill the motto “every time the best wins.” Well, today we have discovered another top athlete who belongs instead to the category “mess”, Maria Sharapova as all the others who were caught in dope. We must accept that Sharapova is part of this category as many others who were inspired us loving their performances, were fake. We must however continue to be convinced that it is possible to reach the absolute level results even without the use of doping or drug abuse. Let us remember that the limits are often only mental. Before Reinhold Messner no one had ever gone on eight-thousand without oxygen because it was thought impossible. Before Roger Bannister everyone thought that it wa impossible to run the mile under 4 minutes, 60 years ago he did it. Sport is an experience in which the aim is to challenge the impossible, to overcome the supposed physical and mental barriers and realize perfromamces thought impossible. Prepare us for this, this sport is not for everyone, it is for anyone who wants to realize his/her dreams. We have to build a sports culture on these bases and train young people daily on these concepts. We seek “divergents people” as the saga of Veronica Roth, because they are the solution and defy the evil knowing they can do it. And this does not seem rhetorical, because it comes for all the day, when someone will propose not to play the fool and it’s time to do what they do all those who want to win and have money and contracts, otherwise you will remain a nobody. Beware, though, these characters are everywhere and can be your doctor or the parents themselves.