Tag Archive for 'gare'

Mind and physical training in equestrian sports

Psychological aspects of the dance refereeing

Evaluation and estimation in dance are really complex conscious and not conscious processes  following these characteristics:

  • Evaluation of dancer’s abilities  (what it’s the potential)
  • Evaluation of dancer’s motor and technical skills (what someone have done to show those potentials)
  • Evaluation of personal expression (how he/she acts)
  • Evaluation of artistic expression (he/she manage the meaning of art, beauty and so on)
  • Evaluation of compatibility of dancers, cohesion between both dancers (they perform together very well)
  • Evaluation of dancer’s current performance – skills and preparation (How he/she performs now),
  • Evaluation of one’s performance versus other’s performances
  • Other unpredictable factors

An estimation is based on a simple psychological rule, the human being is able to give an objective and exact evaluation  of a certain subject.

A lot of different opinions were given about the problems of objectivity and subjectivity of measurement and evaluation. We are all very sure that objectivity of judging is quite hard to reach. The more the subject is general and not well defined, the harder is the objective evaluation. In such cases the estimation is quite subjective.  A process of judging  is always under the estimators attitudes’ influence.

Avoiding errors can be reached by some important steps:

  • training of estimators
  • strong definition of estimation subject
  • not knowing dancers (which is almost impossible) or at least avoiding settlement of estimators (for competition) who have possible strong relationship to any dancer
  • erasing upper and bottom estimations
  • standardising instructions before estimating and giving warnings  according to object of estimation before any estimation
  • controlling estimators estimations (by correlation and analysing: comparing my to other’s estimations) and warning  estimators about their mistakes
  • education of estimators
  • estimation on the base of objective scale and not just on the base of “one-to another” subjective impression

The judges’ function, in addition to being sensitive to the undeniable psychological aspects involved, it’s even more difficult than that of athletes and coaches. Not enough to know perfectly the discipline, technical aspects and rules, you must know how to apply and recognize everything promptly and accurately.
The difficulties of the judgment  provision are undoubted and also stem from the
psychological tension, the complexity of the race and the position of  the Competition Judge: the place where the event occurs, or to assess the length of time of the valuation (also exceed 10 consecutive hours). All this can be addressed and managed through adequate training route which also includes mental training.

(by Daniela Sepio)

How it’s difficult to support ourselves

But how hard it’s to be the best fan of  ourselves! An athlete should show this belief toward him/herself and instead it’s one of the hardest things to do. A few examples:

  • A girl says to me “I did four races this year and none went well … then I’ll stop I cannot continue to do well only in training.”
  • A boy says to me “I was competing well then I thought that I could not continue in this way and so I made some mistakes and I did not get into the final.”
  • Another boy at the world championships before the final “This time I have to take a medal.” It came in fourth.
  • A girl “this time I lose bad, I did not believe in myself.”

Each of them has been working as a professional athlete, it’s their main activity, it’s that one in which they want to have success in life. On these occasions they have not proved to be the best fans of themselves. Competitive sport requires a high level of self-confidence and recklessness to know that the next time will be better than this one. This awareness comes from the engagement in training, to know that it is true that 1, 2, 3 0 multiple times I will lose, but it does not matter because continuing in this way the results will come. The important thing is to continue to sustain ourselves, especially when things go wrong. In summary sit needs:

  • Total commitment in training
  • Total support in the race regardless of the results
  • Confident expectation of good results

We only improve through the difficulties

Thought for the day

The races are to challenge ourselves to overcome moments of difficulty that inevitably there are in every competition. Who wants to escape this challenge will never expand his/her limits.