Every person, in his or her daily life, tries to predict what may happen to him or her so that he or she can lead an organized life that develops in the expected way.
The same is done by the athlete who studies the opponent’s moves in order to be able to challenge him, or in sports influenced by weather conditions, they research the information they need to know what the weather situations they will encounter during the race will be.
However, we are all aware that although forecasts make it possible to know how likely what is predicted should happen, there is always at the same time a large margin of unpredictability, which can challenge the forecasts.
Therefore. unpredictability is as much a part of our lives as that of athletes. How many times has it happened that a team or an athlete would take a game as easy and, instead, lose it because they did not predict that the opponents could play so well. How many times have we heard a coach say, “We did not expect that kind of play, which put us in trouble from the start.”
On the contrary, we must be aware that the unexpected are there, and precisely because they are not predictable, we do not know when they will occur.
To the athletes and female athletes I work with, I always tell them that in every race there will be a moment when they will be in trouble and that they most likely did not foresee. That is the most important moment in the race because the competitive stress will increase, they will wonder what is happening differently, maybe they will be amazed because until a moment before everything was fine. These are the moments that differentiate experienced athletes from others. The former know that they have to reason and find a solution while the others panic and start making many mistakes.
An easy way to start learning how to handle these critical phases is to train yourself to imagine what could go wrong in a race and commit to finding a solution quickly. This strategy trains the mind to respond proactively to unforeseen events; in this way, one builds a mental file, classified management of unforeseen events, in which to place those that actually happened and those merely imagined with their solutions.
