Stop thinking with the phrases of others, made ourselves the phrase representing us. Mine is “pushing positive” and yours?
Tag Archive for 'mental coaching'
Page 3 of 3
Some of the John Wooden‘s best sentences to remember when we lose our confidence.
“Ability may get you to the top, but it takes character to keep you there.”
“Don’t let yesterday take up too much of today.”
“A coach is someone who can give correction without causing resentment.”
“It’s the little details that are vital. Little things make big things happen.”
“The importance of repetition until automaticity cannot be overstated. Repetition is the key to learning.”
Since coaches and physical coaches do not teach to perform a deep breath, I want to give you some guidelines to do it. Breathing deeply is a great way to reduce stress throughout the body and has a significant positive influence on the mind.
- Get the air – from the nose, initially fills the lower part of the lungs, so making the diaphragm is lowered and this is the reason why the abdomen gets-out. Subsequently, the air occupies the middle part of the lungs, thus the lower ribs and sternum are raised; the thorax expands immediately after, when the air invades also the upper part of the lungs. Of course, there are not three distinct phases but a single rhythmic breathing motion.
- Hold the air – for a few seconds in order to allow the lungs to absorb oxygen that you have just introduced.
- Eject the air – gradually from the mouth.
Trained to do a series of three breaths at a time x three times in succession, when you finished three breathing, before to start again, take a short break of 30 seconds.
More and more often I wonder why most coaches do not recommend their athletes to follow a program of mental training. I do not mean the beginners but who practice one sport for many years and who want to enhance their skills when they compete. The typical words of the coaches in front of the psychological difficulties are “put a little more than …” and here you can choose the psychological dimension that it is considered the most appropriate: more confidence, more focus, more determination, more effort and so on. The problem is that athletes usually do not understand these sentences, and do not know how “to be more.” On the other hand the lack of attention to the psychological dimension of the coaches is evident in the fact that almost no athlete knows how to take a deep breath; lost no time to teach! While it is well known that a deep breath permit to lower a too high psychological tension level but never mind when the coach is in this situation he will say to his athlete, the decisive sentence “be calm,” and as a result the athlete or will feel even more tense or be angry with the coach who does not able to help him.
How do we solve this problem? Simply,the athletes more aware of the mind value decide by themselves to go to an expert in mental coaching, of course there are also coaches that guide the athletes to follow this option but they are few.
The case of Mattia Destro, Roma player, who is going through a period of time in which he did not score a goal can be interpreted as an example of mental laziness that is present in the players, the coaches and managers. The general interpretation of this phenomenon is like, “it does not matter, it happen that attackers have a period in which not score a goal, it happened to Tom, the famous striker who then started to score.” These are justifications that we find only in the football. If my daughter was studying and then take the bad grades, I would not say for sure, “then go.” If a young in a company began to make mistakes you would not say for sure, “no matter it is just a temporary block”. In football, however this happens, you train and then you do not play well, but it does not matter sooner or later you will improve. In football, also there is no rush to recover because everyone expects that to happen at any moment. It’s dominant then the magical thinking, that every moment can be good to start scoring. It’s clear that with this mindset nobody will think that he could be helped by a program of mental training built just for him, because he does not need, but what counts is to cultivate the illusion that you enter in the field and score a goal, and so will everything passes. Nor should we forget that these players earn a lot of money for that in any case their life continues to be quiet for this reason. If you get bad grades in school or at work if you mess up you could lose the year or to be fired, and perhaps for this reason that these people are much more committed to practice what they need to do to improve.
I am often asked what is the mental coaching ABC. For me is to know what it does, what it says and feels an athlete after he made a mistake. We all know that it is easy to make mistakes and that the error is always present in every aspect of a competition. There are not athletes who do not make mistakes, and the champions are athletes who make less mistakes. So if you do not have direct experience working with athletes is important to read their stories, in order to understand how they have learned to react to a defeat or a negative period. In this case, before relying on psychological techniques (from the PNL to the many cognitive-behavioral techniques, the gestalt rather than to those of stress management) it should understand the value of the error in sport. For example, reading the book by Andre Agassi shows as the way of life the error is closely related to the relationship you have with the sport. The book by Alessandro Del Piero, however, shows the relevance of motivation as a child can lead a young person through the thousands of repetitions that are necessary to learn to kick the ball. The same appears in the story of Johnny Wilkinson (rugby) that to acquire the skills needed to put the oval between the posts for years he has trained to repeat these kicks through the same routine. Or how to interpret the Michael Jordan’s phrase apparently paradoxical when he says “In my life I have often failed and continued to fail. For this reason I succeed.” In other words, the ABC of mental coaching is to enter (even through reading) into the world of athletes and hear them tell their stories, before providing them with a prepackaged solution.
- Technical competence
- Autonomous in the assessment process
- Be accepted
- be physically fit
- Anticipation of the match actions
Starting from these dimensions it becomes important that the referee includes in his coaching program also the mental coaching, in order to maintain the controll of his stress during the match. Referees have to practice in this way since the beginning of their careers.
