Tag Archive for 'mentalità'

Grit: winning athletes’ mindset

Published on September 14, 2023 in Allenatori, Calcio, Corsa, Generale, Giovani, Libri, Olimpiadi, Stress, Tennis and Tiro a volo. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

“Grit” is a relatively new concept used to describe a particular attitude or mindset that combines determination, perseverance, passion, and inner strength.

Here are some key elements associated with grit:

  1. Determination - Grit is often characterized by a strong commitment to pursuing a long-term goal, without being discouraged by difficulties. Those with grit are willing to work hard and overcome obstacles to achieve success.
  2. Passion - Grit often arises from a deep passion for what one is trying to achieve. When a person is passionate about what they do, they are more likely to make the necessary efforts to succeed.
  3. Resilience - Grit also involves the ability to withstand adversity and failures. Those with grit don’t easily give up when things go wrong but instead look for ways to overcome obstacles and continue to make progress.
  4. Focus - Grit often entails intense concentration on goals and the ability to remain focused despite distractions. Those with grit are determined to stay on the path to success.
  5. Intrinsic Motivation - Grit is often driven by intrinsic motivation, meaning an internal desire to achieve something meaningful for oneself through one’s efforts.

In summary, grit is an attitude characterized by determination, passion, and resilience in pursuing goals. It is a quality that can be extremely useful for overcoming challenges and achieving success in various areas of life, including work, sports, and personal growth.

More info:

Frontini, R., Sigmundsson, H., Antunes, R., Silva, A. F., Lima, R., and Clemente, F. M. (2021). Passion, grit, and mindset in undergraduate sport sciences students. New Ideas Psychol. 62, 100870

Lee J. The Role of Grit in Organizational Performance During a Pandemic. Front Psychol. 2022 Jul 7;13:929517.

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One fundamental sports rule

Published on August 29, 2023 in Allenatori, Calcio, Corsa, Generale, Giovani, Mental coaching, Olimpiadi, Stress, Tennis and Tiro a volo. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Sports follow a simple and clear rule that climbing the world and national rankings means emerging victorious by comparison with those who have a better ranking at that time. In other words, you improve your ranking by beating those ahead of you in the rankings .

Many athletes do not have this awareness and, instead, experience the comparison with those better than them at that moment as bad luck or something that should not happen. The lack of this mentality is a major limitation that must be overcome or it will be difficult to build a successful and personally rewarding sports career.

Obviously, to win you have to put that idea aside and focus on what you want to do to express your competitive qualities to the best of your ability in that race. This step is not easy and should never be taken for granted. It must be a specific goal each time that you set yourself, aware of the difficulty you are going to face. Sometimes athletes are blinded by the possibility of winning or think that since they feel fit they will deliver a winning performance.

In this way they do not prepare themselves for the difficulties that the race may hold in store for them, and this too often leads them to not accept mistakes and to find themselves in trouble. Wanting to win is a powerful thought but one must always know that it will not be easy and that the difference in the end will be in how they accepted and reacted to the mistakes.

The question that coaches and athletes should answer is: how willing am I as an athlete to act in this way and in the case of coaches how often have I coached to overcome these obstacles?

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The different mindset between Napoli e Juve

Published on October 16, 2022 in Allenatori, Calcio, Corsa, Generale, Giovani, Mental coaching, Olimpiadi, Stress, Tennis and Tiro a volo. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Knowing the mentality of a collective allows one to predict how a team will react when faced with emotionally intense situations. In this soccer league, Napoli and Juventus represent the two extremes of a continuum in which success and team cohesion are opposed to failure and lack of cohesion. Those who want to understand the reasons for these differences between the teams should analyze the following factors:

  • Organizational quality of the football Club - The organizational system consists of the set of organizational strategies and structures, decision-making system, planning and control system, leadership style, culture, climate and values. The better the efficiency and effectiveness of the organizational quality, the better the ability of the team and coach to play with a winning mentality.
  • The quality of the image of the football club - This refers to the satisfaction of the membership and identification needs of the team and its stakeholders. This dimension is mainly concerned with, the authority of the corporate leadership, its credibility, the personality and professional competence of its key figures, and the results and prestige gained over time.
  • Team goals - This refers to the goals of the current season (winning the championship, ranking among the top four, staying in Serie A) are result goals. Then there are also performance goals (achieving a certain individual and collective performance standard) and process goals (centered on improving individual technical-tactical, psychological and physical skills). It also concerns the development of a team mentality that is able to give itself new goals on the field in relation to the different phases of play in a game. It involves knowing how to use the positive moments of a match to one’s advantage, as well as requiring the presence of a pre-ordained plan for dealing with the negative phases of the game or phases of increased competitive tension.
  • The technical-tactical quality of the team - This refers to the stock of football skills and their integration into team play, which determines much more than simply the sum of the qualities of individual players. The greater the team’s technical-tactical competence combined with an optimal degree of physical preparation, the greater the likelihood that the team will be able to cope with the different, even emotional phases of the game.
  • Collective effectiveness - It is expressed through performances that are superior to those that each could provide individually. Technical-tactical quality is part of collective effectiveness; cohesion and conviction refer to its relational and cognitive-social aspects. So the question that needs to be asked is, “How should players interact on the field for the purpose of showing unity and confidence in their skills as a team?” Napoleon was accustomed to say that he also won his battles with the dreams of his soldiers; this phrase is an effective metaphor for what should be meant by collective effectiveness.
  • Players’ motivational orientation - Players and the team as a whole must manifest a growth-oriented mindset. An example of the application of this concept to soccer may involve the purchase of a soccer player. Generally this is done on the basis of technical and tactical background; thus, it is believed that a player who performs well on one team will manifest the same effectiveness on another. In many cases, this phenomenon has not been repeated, and this can probably be attributed to this static conception of mentality, which does not take into account the different conditions between one club and another and how these affect the players’ adaptation and consequently the quality of their performance.

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The new Napoli winning mindset

Published on October 5, 2022 in Allenatori, Calcio, Corsa, Generale, Giovani, Mental coaching, Olimpiadi, Stress, Tennis and Tiro a volo. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Great game that of Napoli at home to Ajax ended with the score of 6-1. These matches against worthy opponents are won in this overflowing way when a team is not only satisfied with playing well. They are a demonstration of what should be meant by a winning mentality. When the determination of the team is welded with the quality of play and the desire of individual players to want to continue playing at their best until the referee’s final whistle.

The conjunction of these three aspects has a multiplier effect that is far more beneficial than the sum of individual wills. This Napoli new mentality is geared toward personal and team growth, and matches represent challenges generating strategies for improvement that culminate in playing consistently at a high level. In fact, it was these Champions matches played against Liverpool and Ajax that taught the team what its potential was that had hitherto been unexpressed. Matches like these are remembered for a lifetime and, more importantly, they keep motivation and confidence high, so any subsequent high-stress competitive situation will be approached with the belief that they can repeat what was done in these Champions League matches.

It is often stated that in order to win these matches Italian teams should increase the speed of their play and maintain this approach for the entire duration of the match. Napoli’s matches teach us that this characteristic, however, always goes to motivation (I want to do it) and conviction (I do it). In this way you realize what I have often heard Gianni Rivera say, that in soccer you should not run but make the ball run. So speed of play only happens when mind, technique, tactics and team work together for 90 minutes.

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10 rules of growth mindset

Published on March 18, 2022 in Allenatori, Calcio, Corsa, Generale, Giovani, Mental coaching, Olimpiadi, Stress, Tennis and Tiro a volo. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

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The wrong mindset to the game in soccer

Published on March 14, 2022 in Allenatori, Calcio, Corsa, Generale, Giovani, Mental coaching, Olimpiadi, Stress, Tennis and Tiro a volo. 0 Comments Tags: , .

In our soccer league, it is clear that a problem that affects the game of the teams and, therefore, the result is the inability to maintain a standard of continuity of play. Even this week, we heard Inzaghi, Inter’s coach, say that the team had entered the field to play the match against Torino with the wrong mentality. It means starting a match with superficiality in the hope that sooner or later a goal would have decided the game in their favor.

Wrong mentality means conducting a warm-up just to avoid getting hurt, having the mind occupied by other thoughts that do not concern the game or absenting themselves from what happens on the field.

When this lazy approach affects a team it is very difficult to change it during the course of the game: at the beginning it dominates the presumption that the result will change in their favor, as if it were obvious, while at the end a state of apathy can take over with a game almost stopped or paroxysmal agonism, dominated by a sterile agonism.
This is a problem that Juventus had in the first few games of the season, in a more evident way, and that was so serious as to compromise the entire championship. The other teams pretending to the title have manifested it more in this second phase of the season with a series of useless draws with lower level teams.

It is these lost points that will decide the championship, without prejudice to the possibility of collapses or resounding comebacks and that will always give us a demonstration of the team mentality.

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The mindset of “All is well”

Published on December 9, 2021 in Allenatori, Calcio, Corsa, Generale, Giovani, Mental coaching, Olimpiadi, Stress and Tennis. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

There are athletes who have no difficulty understanding that mental training is a daily commitment. They often say, “All is well.”

When I was young, Everything is fine was the phrase I used to write to my mother when I sent her postcards in the summer, it was a way to reassure her. Of course she thought I didn’t really want to say how I was doing and she was right.

How did the training go: “All right.” Do we learn anything from this sentence about how that session went? Yes, that the athlete is not aware of what they did or more trivially that they don’t want to talk about it.

When the response refers to psychological aspects of training it is meant to mean: “I did what the coach told me and I committed to doing my best.” This seemingly positive response excludes any information regarding how I did the exercises, how I dealt with mistakes, how I corrected myself, and so on. In other words, the athlete’s response is global but does not provide specific information about the performance of the training. We don’t know, for example, if there were drops in concentration or if the activity was carried out with the necessary level of intensity.

We learn, first of all ourselves, not to use these two terms “All right” and teach athletes to be specific and not to take refuge in this reassuring approach.

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Be focused on the performance and not the outcome

Published on January 8, 2021 in Allenatori, Calcio, Corsa, Generale, Giovani, Mental coaching, Olimpiadi, Stress, Tennis and Tiro a volo. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

I often wonder if it isn’t repetitive to keep talking about thinking about the performance rather than thinking about the result.

Nevertheless, I still find myself talking about this topic with the young people I work with, for the reason that they bring it up. Some says: “I always think about the result of the match, since the day before so I get tense and nervous and this doesn’t help me” or even “I think about the most important match even if it is in a month and not about the ones that come before”. A tennis player: “Before I was always thinking about the point, now I think more about pushing”.

Let’s just say that most athletes are not trained to think about performance, which concerns the behaviors to put in place to achieve the result goals (win, do your personal best, get into the final) but they think more easily of the result of their actions, I won/lost.

Many young people still think that the result should be their main thought.

Athletes must be aware that the mistake is always technical, if a shot in soccer goes out instead of into the goal it means that the ball has been hit badly, but this is only the effect, the question that the athlete and the coach must answer is:

  • the mistake is technical because the young has tried a shot that he/she does not yet fully possess due to some technical limitation.
  • the mistake is mental because he/she had to pass the ball, since from that position he/she would never have hit the goal.

The same mistake can be caused by different factors, if the coach continually puts the emphasis only on technique or tactics, the athlete will develop a mentality in which every mistake is always technical and therefore he/she never think to train the mindset.

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Covid and mindset: a lost war

Published on June 22, 2020 in Allenatori, Calcio, Corsa, Generale, Giovani, Mental coaching, Olimpiadi, Stress, Tennis and Tiro a volo. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Now begins the phase of self-control. There was a case of covid in an international golf tournament, the same happened in Adria in the tournament promoted by Djokovic, where a finalist was positive. In Italy, in football there will be a bland quarantine in case the virus hit a player or other members of the team. Small but negative signals that push us to live in apnea, as if waiting.

Always negative and more relevant signals come from Italy. There are statistics that say that the number of positives is not falling as expected, probably due to inadequate behaviors. And this would increase the probability of a second wave in the autumn. According to research conducted by the Catholic University, 41% of Italians do not seem willing to vaccinate against Covid. At the moment only a few million people have downloaded the Immuni App. It is mainly people between 35 and 59 years (with 48%) to declare that they do not want to be vaccinated, it is also a transversal group in relation to professions that unites workers and entrepreneurs, employees and professionals. They share a psychological profile in which prevails a “fatalist”, “individualist and selfish” and do not perceive the value of social responsibility. The research has shown that compared to March, the self-control of the population to respect the rules has decreased, dysfunctional behaviors have increased and the emotional willingness to continue to respect them has decreased.

Therefore, these people show a difficulty in integrating the return to normality within the framework of rules that are not the usual ones, but which imply awareness of the social role of each person with regard to the management of their own health and responsibility towards their community. These dysfunctional attitudes are the usual ones that people use to justify to themselves behaviors that are clearly negative for their health, just think of the problems related to smoking, nutrition and sedentary lifestyle, just to remember the most common ones in our society. The fatalistic approach (“I will certainly not die of cancer because I smoke” or “You have to die of something anyway”) and the individualistic approach (“They say what they want me to smoke” or “Life is mine and I do what I want”) are enemies of social life and personal self-control. We are faced, therefore, with the reactions that people show to those problems requiring solutions that are developed in the long term and do not end quickly. They are not reactions different from those they have used in the past, but until now they have mainly involved only themselves.

To this approach should be added that crowding into a square to have fun with friends immediately produces positive emotions, while respecting the rules of physical distancing to stay healthy will only produce a positive effect over time. In essence, these behaviours are reinforced by the immediate benefits that they bring and that outweigh the costs and consequences over time.

We need a change of mentality because now it is completely different and the effects of our actions have an effect on the health of others we come into contact with.The difference lies in the pandemic that involves the whole of society, which has hit everyone’s daily life very hard and still continues to change the rules of social coexistence and work. All this requires a collective solution that drastically reduces dysfunctional behaviors and the whole country will have to actively move in this direction.

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LeBron James: NFL owners have “slave mentality”

Published on December 23, 2018 in Allenatori, Generale and Giovani. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

“In the NFL they got a bunch of old white men owning teams and they got that slave mentality,” James said. “And it’s like, ‘This is my team. You do what the f— I tell y’all to do. Or we get rid of y’all.’ ”

“I’m so appreciative in our league of our commissioner [Adam Silver], … He doesn’t mind us having … a real feeling and to be able to express that. It doesn’t even matter if Adam agrees with what we are saying, he at least wants to hear us out. As long as we are doing it in a very educational, non-violent way, then he’s absolutely okay with it.”

“I am very educated about what I believe in and I’m not doing it in a violent way,” James said. “I’m not knocking on your door saying, ‘Listen, I’m kneeling today and if you don’t kneel with me, I’ll knock you the f– out.’ But you know people go crazy when things are done outside the box. People don’t know how to react.”

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