Tag Archive for 'gioco'

Sport means renewed joy

Published on June 23, 2021 in Allenatori, Calcio, Corsa, Generale, Giovani, Mental coaching, Olimpiadi, Stress, Tennis and Tiro a volo. 0 Comments Tags: , .

A month of planetary sporting events awaits us, not only the European Football Championship, but also the Tour de France, Wimbledon and then the Tokyo Olympics. We are living it in these days of soccer, great excitement has been created, in all of us there seems to prevail a sense of joy, of awareness that sport with the public even if for now limited in numbers represents the exit from a nightmare and the return to an ever greater freedom. We live these days as the final phase of a nightmarish period. The Italian athletes received today from President Mattarella the flag that they will carry to the Olympic and Paralympic Games. Sport is a highly emotional activity that unites everyone under the sign of the nation. There are no other activities that have this connotation so involving beyond the political and social differences. Sport unites not because it is without faults, on the contrary it has exactly all those that our society expresses, from cheating to doping.

We need it because sport is an expression of life, of the need for movement of every human being, a primary psychological need. The more sedentary and overweight our society becomes, the greater is the unconscious desire to satisfy us through the spectacle that champions offer us with their physical effort, their sporting dexterity and the search for exceptional performance in decisive moments. They can make mistakes but for us they will always be our champions, because they live unique moments that are even difficult for us to think about and then, as we know, you can’t always win. It’s okay though, sport is cathartic, we will cry with our athletes.

Sport is such a community that it keeps the athletes and all of us together, their joys are ours and that goes for the pain of defeat as well. In short, sport is much more than a game, it is a powerful activator of our deepest emotions.

Every day over the past year we have read stories of community heroes, doctors, nurses and many others. Among them are the athletes who have shown the courage to continue preparing for something that was unknown if it would return. These are stories of resilience, sacrifice and focus in the absence of any certainty for the future. For this reason the sporting events that are about to begin will involve us because they will be the demonstration that we can return to live the game with happiness.

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The break management could determine the result

Published on June 10, 2020 in Allenatori, Generale, Giovani, Mental coaching, Olimpiadi, Stress, Tennis and Tiro a volo. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

During this time I work a lot with shooting, tennis and table tennis. You may wonder what they have in common: the breaks between shots and points. These athletes share another characteristic, they often do not train this phase of the performance, and this has negative effects on the next phase. They do not train the break because it is usually considered a non-technical phase; so it is not the task of the instructor when you are a child and then the coach to teach you how to manage it.

The break is a break, so there is nothing to teach, maybe you should check your breathing and think positive about the next action. You say it in words but you don’t practice it. Some athletes understand its importance and also for this reason they become champions. Most of them, live it waiting it finishes, better if in a hurry to return to the race. In fact, this idea “return to the race” is another common thought among athletes. Pauses represent a break in performance and are not part of the performance. With this you can’t go far, rifles can’t be broken but racquets can; they are much cheaper.

Many athletes grow up with this mindset  towards breaks, they consider them an annoying part of the race and, therefore, when they are in agitation or are losing they accelerate this phase to return immediately to the race and try to recover. The effects are usually disastrous and they convince themselves that they are not able to play, while instead they don’t just know how to manage the breaks.

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Tennis: the mental approach to the match

Published on February 16, 2018 in Allenatori, Generale, Giovani, Mental coaching, Stress and Tennis. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

One of the main reasons because so many young people who want to pursue a tennis career instead undergo continuous failures lies, in my opinion, in their excessive expectations and the desire to show off a brilliant style of play that they are not able to support. Federica Brignone, bronze medal  in the giant at these Winter Olympics, said that it’s needed “work and mental strength.” Unlike, be prisoners of the expectations and focused on brilliant play are exactly the opposite, because they distract the players from what has to be performed during each point.

Expectations - They are destructive. On one side is too trivial to remember that you want to win the match, because we assume that no one starts a match with the goal of losing it. This idea should remain in the background of one’s mind, if not out, since it does not help the young to be focused only on the next point. For the young tennis players, the first thing to learn is that there is just the next point to play and they must be prepared to play it according to the match momentum. Think beyond that point means to remove concentration and determination in the present and put it in the foreseeable future that cannot be controlled, because at the moment it does not exist.

The play - Many young people are focused on the play and when you ask them how many times they have achieved this strategy, they respond that only rarely they were able to follow it, even just for the duration of one set. In my opinion, they fail because they start from a wrong assumption. To show a play style is a point of arrival and not of departure, it will be achieved through a mental journey which they are not yet able to support. Furthermore, to think about the match is an abstract concept, they need to be focused on the specific actions that, instead, should make in trouble their opponents. So, really, the players think too much and in a global way and they are not oriented to how to perform the next step.

Roberta Vinci in the match won against Serena Williams, said her thinking about the game was: “Run and throw it in there.” What do these words mean?

Run - Put in evidence you need to be fast and this physical readiness starts from the mental readiness, which triggers the reaction. This behavior happens in receiving when you are on the front of your feet ready to shoot forward and in the continuous “hopping” showed by the  champions also during the warmup. Tennis requires to be fast and, typically, this is lost when we are losing, the speed slows down we get depressed and the mistakes grow up.

Throw it over there – It means to play a deep ball without running excessive risks, waiting for the opponent mistake or the right moment to close the point. This approach to the match highlights the personal toughness in pursuing the own goals, maintaining the control of the game. Otherwise the tennis players may tend to slow down too much the play rhythm or to speed up the game, looking for brilliant shots to quickly close the point.

Then the match is a continuous succession among these moments:

  1. be fast
  2. to hit the ball that
  3. must be deep and
  4. play with the opponent at least 4/5  shots to make the point, and
  5. use the breaks to relax and
  6. refocus on next point
  7. to be fast again …

 

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Position statement on active outdoor play

Published on July 3, 2015 in Giovani. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

A diverse, cross-sectorial group of partners, stakeholders and researchers, collaborated to develop an evidence-informed Position Statement on active outdoor play for children aged 3–12 years. The Position Statement was created in response to practitioner, academic, legal, insurance and public debate, dialogue and disagreement on the relative benefits and harms of active (including risky) outdoor play. The Position Statement development process was informed by two systematic reviews, a critical appraisal of the current literature and existing position statements, engagement of research experts (N = 9) and cross-sectorial individuals/organizations (N = 17), and an extensive stakeholder consultation process (N = 1908). More than 95% of the stakeholders consulted strongly agreed or somewhat agreed with the Position Statement; 14/17 participating individuals/organizations endorsed it; and over 1000 additional individuals and organizations requested their name be listed as a supporter. The final Position Statement on Active Outdoor Play states: “Access to active play in nature and outdoors—with its risks— is essential for healthy child development. We recommend increasing children’s opportunities for self-directed play outdoors in all settings—at home, at school, in child care, the community and nature.” The full Position Statement provides context for the statement, evidence supporting it, and a series of recommendations to increase active outdoor play opportunities to promote healthy child development.

(byMark S. Tremblay e colleghi, Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2015, 12(6), 6475-6505)

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The 16 second cure in tennis

Published on May 1, 2015 in Allenatori, Generale, Giovani, Stress and Tennis. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

The court ruled that in tennis the breaks between one point and the other is part of the performance.

Why it is not taught to handle the ase time as it’s done for the game?

In English this time is called “the 16 second cure”

It consists of four phases:

  • Physical response positive – 4.3 seconds end point – go baseline, decisive steps, neutral facial expression and gesture of incitement
  • Relaxation – 06.05 seconds – back to camp, relax, look at racquet strings
  • Preparation – 04.05 seconds – back bottom line, mental rehearsal or service response
  • Ritual – 4/5 seconds ritual of preparation, ready to serve or respond

When do: always!

Easy!!!

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In tennis is easy be bad with us

Published on March 30, 2015 in Allenatori, Generale, Giovani, Mental coaching, Stress and Tennis. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

Tennis teaches me every day how easy it to play very bad for the players who are at the beginning of their professional career. These are young people, boys and girls of 18-21 years, who despite having quality of play and physical fitness cannot accept mistakes, are not confident in the court and negative about themselves. In other words, they are not tennis players accustomed to face errors and difficulties as normal and every days obstacles to overvome and above all they do not enjoy, because for them it’s an experience heavy and problematic. In my experience thing there are many more young people in the face of these difficulties choke rather than trying to master. The only way to change this situation is to start teaching to manage their emotions and thoughts in the court. At this regard, an important aspect to teach consists in the pause management (during the match but in the sessions too). Tennis players have to acquire a system allowing them to recover from the physical and mental fatigue, soon after, to get in the best mood to start a new point. This approach to the game should be practiced daily. They must know that the tennis technical and athletic component have to be trained along with the mental and that there is not a point in a game where all three are not present.

Who wants to know more information can contact me by email and receive an answer in a short time.

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Combativeness and play continuity:two problems suffered by football teams

Published on December 11, 2012 in Allenatori, Calcio and Stress. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Recent alternating results of many football teams (Roma, Inter, Napoli and Milan) come also from their mental weaknesses. Combativeness and play continuity it seems to me two problems suffered by these football teams. Continuity of the game is knowing what to do and do it, also during the negative moments of the game or whenthe team is under pressure by the opponents. In these situations  the players have to think: “This is my job and I have to go do it.” In these difficult moments, each player must return to the basic elements of his performance, he must be engaged in to keep things simple with the knowledge that in this way the opponents will feel his determination and they may feel under pressure to not be able to make the play they want. Play with continuity is closely associated with the fighting spirit, that is the attitude that every player has to show when he is in the field. Combativeness and continuity of play must therefore always be present regardless of the team technical and tactical level, because they determine the attitude with which each team has to face the game. Renounce to have this play style or show it intermittently is, in my opinion, one of the major mental errors that every coach should be taught to avoid.

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