Often, our adolescent athletes struggle to excel at the international level. This is especially evident in individual sports with a predominantly tactical emphasis (such as tennis and table tennis) and in precision sports (like shooting, archery, and golf). From my perspective, this limitation is at least partly due to insufficient attention being given to how competitions should be approached and experienced. Our best young athletes typically do not show technical deficiencies that prevent them from being competitive, but in my view, they lack the skills to manage a competition effectively, adapt to their opponents, and prepare themselves to enter a competition in a state of optimal readiness.
Technique and tactics are fundamental—they represent the grammar of sports and must be mastered to the highest level. That said, competition is a public confrontation with other athletes of similar ability, where one must assert their technical and tactical superiority and adapt to their opponent’s strategy. It is not an aesthetic performance but a demonstration of pre-tactical supremacy. Competitive sports demand the ability to dominate opponents in opposition-based sports or to achieve mastery over oneself and one’s actions in precision sports.
The question I ask is this: how is this capability trained across these different sports? Are athletes aware that the limitations they exhibit during competition stem from how they interpret what they perceive and the subsequent decision-making process—which should ideally result in the best possible course of action?
Once these two questions have been addressed, the next one is: how can these qualities be trained?
The answers are up to you.
