The goal of an athlete is to be always proactive in competitions and, therefore, not to suffer what happens in the race. Each athlete must indeed enhance self-control, because otherwise every fact can distract him/her from the performance. In my view, there are three forms of self-regulation:
- Behavioral control – means knowing to adapt your behaviors to the game situations. A player who misses an easy goal should think about his mistake and immediately understand what he must do differently to avoid falling into the same situation. For example, I do not know if Balotelli, who has lose 3 goals in the derby, after the first error stopped himself a moment to reflect on how to do better in the next occasion.
- Environmental control – concerns such as how to react to those fans who whistle at you all the time. It’s happened yesterday in Turin, where Giovinco was constantly booed by fans of his team. He continued to play without being influenced, scored a goal and not cheered.
- Thoughts and emotions control – refers to what make athletes when they are anxious or feel too much the competition and regards all those mental acts, which of course are not visible, but they help the athletes to put themselves in a favorable psychological condition.
For any athlete to be aware of these three aspects of self-control can be very useful for building a mental approach to the race that is really useful.
