Tag Archive for 'pausa'

When the brain requires breaks

Published on July 31, 2023 in Allenatori, Calcio, Corsa, Generale, Giovani, Mental coaching, Olimpiadi, Stress, Tennis and Tiro a volo. 0 Comments Tags: attenzione, break, pausa, prestazione.

In an age when one must be “always on,” athletes represent a type of population to which this rule fully applies. The issue is that with this type of life setting it is not at all easy to find a balance between competitive demands and personal well-being.

Therefore, it is important for those pursuing a career in sports to find a way of life in which mental breaks are present in order to be able to continue to improve their ability to do quality work and sustain their well-being.

But the most compelling reason for taking a brain break is that it may improve your ability to do quality work. A 2022 systematic review found that even short breaks lasting 10 minutes or less reduced mental fatigue and increased vigor (meaning the willingness to persist when work became difficult).

These breaks especially improved performance on tasks requiring creativity.
The concept of micro-breaks originates in the ergonomics literature, defined as scheduled rests that individuals take to prevent the onset or progression of physical symptoms, such as musculoskeletal pain or discomfort. In the organizational literature, this concept was introduced as a brief resource-replenishing strategy, taken informally between work tasks.

Micro-breaks can be seen as natural reactions of the cognitive system to a possible cognitive overload that could affect performance.

In terms of specific outcomes, there are two individual-level components of well-being relevant for recovery: vigor (a pleasant activation) and fatigue (unpleasant deactivation). For the athletes, vigor is an intrinsic resource that must be replenished when exhausted. Vigor contributes to the willingness to invest effort into the tasks at hand and persist when difficulties arise.

Performance represents another key outcome on which micro-breaks are considered to have an impact. It is well known that cognitive and motivational factors are the main determinants of human performance. Breaks can improve task performance through beneficial resource-strain, cognitive, affective, and motivational mechanisms. Breaks are essential for performance on tasks requiring continuous attention, suggesting that the vigilance sensitivity decrement is influenced by the frequent use of cognitive resources.

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Which is the goal to manage the pause during the performance

Published on February 16, 2023 in Allenatori, Calcio, Corsa, Generale, Giovani, Mental coaching, Olimpiadi, Stress, Tennis and Tiro a volo. 0 Comments Tags: pausa, routine.

In many sports there are breaks between points. There are in fencing, shooting and shooting, tennis and table tennis, but also in team sports such as volleyball. Often, however, athletes do not make good use of these moments, viewing them as suspension phases and not as moments that are integral to their performance. When this belief is dominant, pauses are experienced as a waiting time before the actual action begins. In general, it can be said that only elite athletes make good use of these moments to reduce stress and refocus on what is about to happen. And yet it is not uncommon to see breaks misused even by athletes who are in the top 100 in tennis and table tennis, hence professionals.

Many athletes are unaware of a simple rule and that is that the before determines the after. They do not know that what they do during the break will determine the quality of their performance at the next point. In competition they become prey to their worries, they put doubts in their minds and think about the result. They are convinced that just being fit is enough to deliver an excellent performance; they do not think that it is their beliefs before the action that will enable them to perform the next point in the way they are capable. On the other hand, many young people do not train to handle breaks, so how can they do something in competition that they never do in training?

I don’t want to get into how to train breaks and how to use them in competition, I’m interested, meanwhile, in stimulating coaches to teach their athletes what to do during breaks and for athletes to practice this approach in training for the purpose of stabilizing their own routine, consistent with the different phases of competition and scoring.

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The break management could determine the result

Published on June 10, 2020 in Allenatori, Generale, Giovani, Mental coaching, Olimpiadi, Stress, Tennis and Tiro a volo. 0 Comments Tags: gioco, pausa, tennis tavolo.

During this time I work a lot with shooting, tennis and table tennis. You may wonder what they have in common: the breaks between shots and points. These athletes share another characteristic, they often do not train this phase of the performance, and this has negative effects on the next phase. They do not train the break because it is usually considered a non-technical phase; so it is not the task of the instructor when you are a child and then the coach to teach you how to manage it.

The break is a break, so there is nothing to teach, maybe you should check your breathing and think positive about the next action. You say it in words but you don’t practice it. Some athletes understand its importance and also for this reason they become champions. Most of them, live it waiting it finishes, better if in a hurry to return to the race. In fact, this idea “return to the race” is another common thought among athletes. Pauses represent a break in performance and are not part of the performance. With this you can’t go far, rifles can’t be broken but racquets can; they are much cheaper.

Many athletes grow up with this mindset towards breaks, they consider them an annoying part of the race and, therefore, when they are in agitation or are losing they accelerate this phase to return immediately to the race and try to recover. The effects are usually disastrous and they convince themselves that they are not able to play, while instead they don’t just know how to manage the breaks.

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