A few days before the election of the president of the Italian Football Federation (FIGC) many talks are about of youth soccer and how to re-organize it. It’s said to teach the technique before the tactic, it speaks of the importance of the soccer school of the clubs and about coach education too. It’s all right, but the changes must inevitably go through a cultural revolution of youth football that it’s often perceived only in terms of results. In one of the last courses for youth coaches that I conducted, most of the coaches who were there, just to learn how to manage and lead teams of children, would rather not be in front of the youngest categories rowdy and playful, because they had too problems to manage and to learn to win. Most coaches would have liked to have entrusted to himself at least a team of older boys. The explanation was: the opportunity of making an adult football. I remained amazed, because I would expected the desire to grow the players of tomorrow and instead they want boys already grown up. The categories of football school seem to fear, perhaps because the enthusiasm of small noisy children and vibrant can be handled only by competent coaches who are also capable leader, able to transform children into rowdy gamers, who never lose the desire to enjoy it. Every coach wants the winning team and the small champion right away, but no one seems to want to work to build the win. The victory will probably arrive, but who could be the champion of tomorrow will be “burned” already at twelve years, because of the desire to win of an adult who thinks to know everything about football. This is one of the problems of Italian football, definitely a key part that needs new decisions for the future.
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Ask how” questions rather than “why”. If your child throws their toy train when they are frustrated and it breaks, rather than ask why, ask how he could have responded differently or how can he can help to fix the train. Your child now becomes part of the solution and not the problem.
A new way to teach optimism, Amy Lyon instructs students to become aware of their thoughts through a tool called a “grit pie.” The pie itself represents a student’s obstacle, and each slice represents a realistic cause of the problem. Students analyze whether their thoughts about the problem are permanent (“I stink at math and will never get good at it”) or temporary (“I was distracted by my friends”), and whether they blame themselves (“I didn’t ask for help when I was confused by my math assignment”) or others (“the teacher doesn’t like me”) for the problem. Ideally, students’ thoughts are temporary, and if they take at least some personal responsibility for the problem — both of which make positive change much easier.
(By Edutopia)
Sport is an activity that tests the skills of young people in managing their emotions. In sports, you win and lose, you make mistakes easily and frequently, and for these reasons it is a situation that calls constantly even self-confidence. It is therefore important for every coach to learn to recognize the emotions of the athletes as a teaching opportunity. The errors they commit as well as new learning and the performances are the optimal situations to train them to handle the disappointment and anger rather than joy. The coach might be aware of the emotions of their athletes, understand the educational opportunities they represent, listen boys and girls with an empathic style, helping them to understand and explain what it happens and seek solutions possible setting the limits within which to find them.
Coaches who act in this way they get from their athletes better results than those who behave differently .
Today is a No-day because of these numbers:
15% are managers Italian graduates
37% are managers who have completed only compulsory education
38% are Italian footballers of Serie A
5,000 young graduates who have gone abroad in Sicily
72% of the graduates are willing to go abroad
In Italy, we have other difficulties, but the ignorance of the leaders and the escape of the young people in my opinion are devastating for any nation. The players fall into the category of young people on where in Italy we do not want to invest, in this case is resolved by buying abroad often mediocre football players.
The last two Sundays I have been with shooters, 16/19 years old, and I realized again how important it’s for them even in training to be supported by a calm and peaceful mood. Trap shooting is a sport that requires before shooting a condition of total concentration followed soon after by a period of relaxation and waiting for about 40 seconds before the next shot. This psychological situation is repeated 25 times, which is the number of shots for each round. The confidence to perform effectively the shot and as a result to hit the target, is based on a mental state of calm that when it fails opens the door for a thousand doubts that hinder the performance. To these young athletes is then required to be 25 times in this state of mind, and especially after having made a mistake it’s not easy to push away the critical thoughts that appear and getting focused on the next shot. Perform this task, to quickly find serenity after an error is an exercise that educates their mind to react more positively otherwise there would be a very real possibility of committing right after another. Thing that can happen on the other hand, as it is impossible not to make mistakes. So this exercise, to relax and focus, must be performed each time, knowing that in any case some plate will not be equally hit, who is more constant in this exercise will improve more quickly than others. In this way the shooters train them to maintain a calm and peaceful mood with the awareness that it’s the basis of the confidence of knowing how to hit the next target.
One parent wrote to me talking about guys that improve their sport performances by getting the times bringing us to suspect the use of doping and of how to support his/her motivation to continue the commitment to sport. We have to face with two problems. The first concerns the suspicion of doping. At this regard, if you want to know more you should discuss about this with the managers/coaches of your sport club, to understand if your perception is correct for them or whatever. If you continue to have these doubts you should decide what you want to do and what are the procedures for reporting these allegations to the anti-doping commission of the sport federation.
In relation to the motivation of the young swimmer who feels helpless and demotivated, first the parent must certainly listen him/her, accepting the feelings of disappointment and anger. At the same time we must tell you that in the sports world there are athletes who choose shortcuts, while there are others who base their improvement only and exclusively on their commitment. These last must be his/her model and should refer to them thinking about the future as an athlete. As in any other human activity there will always be those who get the results with the fraud, they may win some battles but they will not win the war until we are many who practice a sport clean. In my opinion these are the reasons for which I would speak to my son, telling that hard work pays off, maybe more slowly at the beginning, but no one can ever take away the satisfaction of knowing that we are what we are thanks only to ourselves, to our commitment and dedication. I think this is a good reason to be proud of ourselves.
Why not train the young athlete to think. Is it expected that an athlete (as well as a child) reflects on what s/he is doing ? How many coaches ask at the end of an exercise: ” What did you do? How could you have done better?” That these are precisely the questions or others it does not matter, what it’s important is to spend the time to ask and encourage a deeper awareness in relation to the technical execution . Another thought: do the coaches believe that talking with their athletes is helpful for learning? Or do they believe that it’s a waste of time? For the reason the athletes are still not sufficiently experts to understand and therefore is it better to follow the coach’s instructions and stop? How many times have you faced on this issue with other colleagues? Is it important to train and develop the athletes’ awareness? My idea is that this is a topic which is discussed too little, because the coaching science is dominated by physiology , biomechanics and medicine, disciplines that do not question themselves on mental (cognitive and emotional) and of social factors of motor learning. As long as there will not be a unitary conception of the individual, the coaches will continue to act largely ignoring the role of thought in sports teaching .
In Italy there are few hours of physical activity in school and that there is not a global project to solve this problem. Once again, the solution of the problem is only on the shoulders of the families, who often do not have a familiarity with the active sport and even less with the movement. The union of these two constraints leads to an early exit from the sport by girls as early as the secondary school, which in the male is two/three years later. In fact, less than 50% of young people of 15 years old is involved in sport on regular basis. The Italian Society of Pediatrics, on the occasion of the International Day of the Child and Adolescent, presented the Motor Activity Pyramid, illustrating the characteristics of a healthy and active lifestyle. Unfortunately, it’s an issue that is not perceived as important by politicians but also by the adult people and for which the data showing that a sedentary lifestyle is the cause of many diseases are not so far been sufficient to give importance to this theme compared to those showing that smoking brings to the cancer, instead of which the majority of people are convinced.
Italo Calvino, the great Italian novelist, would have turned 90 years in these days and today the newspaper laRepubblica published an interview with his daughter. What struck me most is the phrase of his father that the more impressed.
“Sometimes someone thinks he/she is incomplete and he/she is only young.”
Beautiful, we should all remember when we talk to our guys.
