Tag Archive for 'coach'

Carlos Alcaraz mindset

In a tennis world that has long been looking for who will be the replacements of the Fabulous 3 (Federer, Djokovic and Nadal), Carlos Alcaraz’s victories are there to prove that perhaps he will be the next No.1 in the world ranking.

He said: “I would say my fitness has been important but definitely the most important part has been the mental game. I feel I have grown up so much in that part. That is why I am the World No. 9 right now and that is why I am playing at a good level. That is why I have been able to win great matches, so I think [my mentality] is the most important thing.”

His best ally is his coach who provides him with confidence. In fact, it’s certainly not easy to maintain the quality and continuity of play when you feel under pressure After the first 200 km/h forehand shots, Ferrero nods calmly, maintains self-control without getting caught up in euphoria or despondency. It can be said that this type of non-verbal relationship serves to keep Alcaraz in a stable emotional condition

Alcaraz maintains this self-control even in negative game situations, remaining confident. Even in these cases, he continues the nonverbal relationship with Ferrero as if to say, “Coach, don’t worry,” and Ferrero returns the nod here, saying, “Okay, go ahead!”

Open Day Online: Master for Coaches

Coaches’ key role to empower youth in sport

Tsz Lun (Alan) Chu, Xiaoxia Zhang, Joonyoung Lee and Tao Zhang (2021). Perceived coach-created environment directly predicts high school athletes’ physical activity during sport. International Journal of Sports Science & Coaching, 16(1) 70–80.

Sport participation is an important means for adolescents to achieve moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA), yet most high school students including athletes do not achieve the 60-minute daily MVPA guideline. As psychosocial factors influence athlete engagement and physical activity during sport, the perceived environment created by coaches could play a role in this influence. Guided by self-determination and achievement goal theories, this four-month prospective study examined the direct and indirect effects of perceived coach-created environment on high school athletes’ MVPA and sedentary behavior (SB) during sport. During the third to fourth week of a sport season, 225 high school athletes (Mage 1⁄4 15.24 years) completed a survey assessing perceptions of coach-created empowering and disempowering climates as well as psychological need satisfaction and frustration. Four months later, their MVPA and SB percentage times (%) during sport were measured using accelerometers. Path analyses partially supported our hypothesis, indicating significant direct effects of a perceived empowering climate on need satisfaction (b 1⁄4 .41) and need frustration (b 1⁄4 –.29), and direct effects of a perceived disempowering climate on need frustration (b 1⁄4 .38) and MVPA% (b 1⁄4 –.28). No significant indirect effects on MVPA% or SB% were found. Findings support and provide new insights into the important role of disempowering beyond empowering climates in predicting high school athletes’ PA. Specifically, when coaches display ego-involving and controlling behaviors, high school athletes may disengage during sport and achieve less overall MVPA. Further examination of these relationships using a longitudinal design across more diverse samples is warranted.

How the coaches have to build cohesion

In this early period of the team games season, I am often asked how to improve the cohesion of a team especially by the coaches who work in junior teams and and also not professional teams. I make this distinction because among these coaches there is a widespread idea that having little time available, everything that goes beyond the technical work done in the field is unnecessary work, which we do not have time to do, precisely because: “We are not a professional team, where the players are always available.”

This attitude is the motivation that drives many coaches to believe that the players must adapt to their working method and the hierarchies proposed. Physical and technical/tactical preparation are the masters and if someone doesn’t agree, it’s worse for him/her.

Leadership is essentially manifested in the administration of a training program that must be followed without discussion. They start from correct considerations (limited time, reduced economic resources, not optimal hours for training) to arrive at wrong conclusions. Those who do not accept this approach are usually labeled as lazy, unwilling to make sacrifices or presumptuous.

Unfortunately for them, the culture of work and team cohesion are essential factors in a team sport and are not built with this approach. Team performance instead draws its strength from the daily training of the concept of US: the winning performance comes from the integration of the behavior of various players, teaching more players to do different things well, together and at the same time.

Coach has to:

  1. Encourage participation by listening to the players’ suggestions
  2. Avoide favouritism
  3. Reward altruistic behaviour
  4. Reduce individualistic behaviour
  5. Assign challenging and achievable goals to each player
  6. Assign each player a specific role
  7. Encourage a learning and collaborative training climate
  8. Stimulate maximum commitment and constantly reinforce it
  9. Always support the team when it is in negative momentum
  10. Spend time with athletes to evaluate their commitment to training
  11. Analyse coldly with the team the results of the matches

The question for coaches is: how much time do you spend developing these performance factors?

Book review: Coach Wooden and Me

“Coach Wooden and Me” is a stirring tribute to the subtle but profound influence that Wooden had on Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as a player, and then as a person, as they began to share their cultural, religious, and family values while facing some of life’s biggest obstacles. From his first day of practice, when the players were taught the importance of putting on their athletic socks properly, to gradually absorbing the sublime wisdom of Coach Wooden’s now famous “Pyramid of Success”; to learning to cope with the ugly racism that confronted black athletes during the turbulent Civil Rights era as well as losing loved ones, Abdul-Jabbar fondly recalls how Coach Wooden’s fatherly guidance not only paved the way for his unmatched professional success but also made possible a lifetime of personal fulfillment.
Full of intimate, never-before-published details and delivered with the warmth and erudition of a grateful student who has learned his lessons well, it’s at once a celebration of the unique philosophical outlook of college basketball’s most storied coach and a moving testament to the all-conquering power of friendship.

The futsal mental coaching

Speaker: Emiliano Bernardi

Date: April 23, h. 6pm-7,15pm (CET + 1)

Abstract: The webinar is open to futsal players, coaches, managers, psychologists and sport psychologists. We will deepen the main psychological implications of this sport following a path in search of better performances adapted from the Emiliano Bernardi’s experiences in clubs and national youth futsal teams.

You will acquire skills of:

  • The main mental futsal skills
  •  The speed of thought
  •  Create a pre-performance routine
  •  Stay focused at critical
  •  The benefits of futsal in the players’ psychophysical growth processes.
  •  The final part of the webinar will be devoted to the question time where you can ask questions to the speaker.

You will receive a confirmation e-mail within 24h from the payment

Thank you Sir Alex

Fergie's farewell 2: Man Utd v Swansea

Fight against the pressure

Napoli football coach said it could take a break from his job at the end of this season. It is not the first to assert the need for a break from football, Guardiola has already done. This comment allows me to talk about the book by Hubert Ripoll “Le mental des coachs” which presents the story of 42 sports coaches and athletes, which also speaks of what is for them the pressure. At this regard, the perceived pressure of the coach, it says:

“You have to be strong in the head to withstand the constant pressure. Everything is played out on a wire, from heaven to hell in a few milliseconds or millimeters. Disillusionment, despair are first and foremost for the athletes but also the coach can suffer of it. To address them, there is the need  a balanced personality and a great emotional stability. This occurs when the coach is able to distance himelf/herself from the events without denying them. Adopt an attitude while remaining positive transparencies. First of all, we must not turn on themselves. This feeds in the first place of the values ​​of the coach and his motivation. But this is not enough when the pressure is so strong: the public, outside, the players, inside. ”

Learn how to manage the loneliness and the choices of tough times, this it seems to be the job of the coach that wants to win those stresses and remaining the leader of the athletes.

Info about the book: http://www.payot-rivages.net/livre_Le-mental-des-coachs–Hubert-Ripoll_ean13_9782228907637.html

Job offers in sport psychology

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 dominantt he 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 his 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 he does not have and will bring discredit on the  sport psychologist profession. Personally, I often talk to coaches who told me: “Before you there was a colleague who has spent time doing observations and we never knew what was served,” “Just that we no longer need fill tests, which are useless, “” He always questions but never gave an answer. ” These are the most common comments I’ve heard and certainly start working in a context where the psychologist has this perception on the part of coaches is not easy.
Therefore I tell to managers and coaches to use Internet to find professionals who can also direct them to colleague in their geographical area, contact the Schools of Sport of the Italian Olympic Committee for indications, contact the Italian Society of Sport Psychology, contact the university teachers of sport psychology. If you believe that the sport psychologist is professionally useful to improve aspects of a sports organization, you cannot choose the first one on the street, because it is unlikely to be the right one. We live in a period of high specialization in all professional fields, including psychology. Do it!! Because only in this way we will acquire as sports clubs  a competitive advantage in our sporting environment in terms of services and programs offered to coaches, technical team, athletes and their families.